New Battle of Regulators and Bigtech, redistribution on the E-Grocry market and the consequences of IPO for Reddit

The topic of release is the new problems of American IT giants. What are we from this?

Over the past couple of weeks, American technohigans have increased problems. A new accusation was brought against Facebook, which threatens the company's sales company, Google - on the verge of a new loud trial and conspiracy accusations, Apple, under pressure from regulators, had to partially abandon their key advantage - commissions in the App Store. The pressure of the regulators and authorities on the largest players intensifies, and the change in the rules of the game, which will affect the entire world IT industry, looks inevitable. In this release of technology buildings, we tell you what exactly threatens the Bigtham and what all this means for Russian users.

Apple: Asia is a response blow

The proceedings around Apple are perhaps now the most important process for the entire IT market. It is interesting that although American companies have long been fighting against 30%of commissions that the company takes from all payments within the iOS applications, the Apple struck was struck by the regulators not American, but Asian ones.

It all started with an unprecedented decision of the authorities of South Korea: on Wednesday, the country first adopted a law that limits the monopoly of Apple and Google for payments. At least in South Korea itself, companies will now be required to provide users with the opportunity to use alternative payment systems. Before the law entered into force, one step remained - it should be signed by the president.

After only one day, Apple herself announced that since 2022, the world will allow part of the applications to post links to the websites of companies, where it will also be possible to pay for the subscription. Of course, it was not voluntary to soften the rules of the company: this is a response to the claims of the Japanese commission for conscientious competition (JFTC), which, since 2016, has been looking for violations of local antimonopoly legislation in the work of the giant.

The assignment that the corporation went to many seemed small: the new rules will act only for the “Readers” applications selling media content (for example, books, music or films) by subscription. Game applications that bring Apple the most money will not be included. But the shares of the largest media services on the news about the concessions of the corporation immediately grew up : Spotify by more than 6%, Netflix - by 2%.

Apple problems are unlikely to end: just a few hours after the decision of the Japanese regulator, its antitrust investigation against the company began India. The local regulator is also investigating the history of the commission in the App Store, which, in his opinion, can interfere with competition and harm the developers of applications. Given that the EU continues its investigations, the consequences for the company can be even more global and serious.

Google: new conspiracy accusations

For Google, the coming months can also be very restless. Not only is the whole story with the commissions in which Apple is now focused on, and Google is fully concerned, and the US Ministry of Justice is also preparing a new federal antimonopoly claim against the corporation. A new case may be in court until the end of 2021. The company is again accused of conspiracy, but this time not with Apple, but with Facebook. The case is based on accusations of abuse of a monopoly position in the advertising market by manipulating auctions that determine the order and cost of advertising shows.

Active antimonopoly investigation against Google and other Internet giants began in Donald Trump's presidency. Even then, officials began to investigate the work of Google in the advertising market, but the first to prefer to file another lawsuit - about the abuse of the monopoly in the search market. The new lawsuit will be based on the antimonopoly complaint of a group of state prosecutors, headed by the prosecutor of Texas, which concerned advertising outside the search services. The main accusation is the Google conspiracy with Facebook about the manipulation of auctions on which advertising on third -party sites is sold.

The lawsuit described such a story: in 2017, Facebook threatened Google that she would open its own advertising auction service, but then the companies agreed that Google would provide Facebook decisive advantages over all other advertisers in their system. Thus, Facebook has twice as much as all other participants, and company representatives were familiar with the details of the auctions mechanism that were never disclosed to everyone else. In return, Facebook promised to submit applications for 90% of the auctions available to it and spend at least $ 500 million per year on them. In Google, the agreement received the code name "Blue Jedi", which refers to the color of the Facebook logo.

In response to the appearance of the news, Google said that it is not a dominant player in the online advertising market, which is “filled” with large companies, including Amazon, Facebook and Comcast, and so competitive that the level of relevance of advertising shows is constantly growing, and the price is reduced.

Like the recent Dragon antimonopoly decree against technological companies, new claims to Google are a consequence of the personnel permutations arranged by Joe Bayden: if the July decree is the famous critic Amazon, the new head of the FTC Lina Khan, then the newspaper of the Ministry of Justice of the Ministry of Justice Jonathan Canter, a lawyer who presented competitors for many years, was a lawsuit. Google (including Microsoft and News Corp.) in litigation against the company and has always been an active critic of Google.

Facebook: either a monopoly, or not

Facebook, which can soon be accused of conspiracy with Google, has enough other troubles. This week, WhatsApp was fined € 225 million in the EU - almost $ 270 million - for the fact that the company violated the law on the protection of personal data of GDPR. According to the Irish regulator who investigated, the messenger did not fully disclose how exactly he uses user data.

This case is a consequence of the new WhatsApp confidentiality policy in May, according to which the messenger has the right to share a large set of data with other Facebook companies. The new policy immediately caused great discontent. Now the European regulator has ruled that the messenger does not meet the EU requirements to inform its users. It is interesting that, according to the sources of WSJ, Ireland initially wanted to make a fine almost five times smaller, but observers from other countries did not allow her to. The reason for the special attitude of Ireland is that the European headquarters Facebook is located in Dublin.

For the use of their dominant position Facebook, whose services are used by 2.5 billion people in the world, threatens the trial in the United States. At the end of August, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a second lawsuit against the social network. The first in June rejected the court. The judge did not suit the judge that FTC did not give enough evidence that Facebook is a monopolist in the social networks market.

The main claim of the commission is that Facebook "illegally bought and buried competitors when their popularity became a real threat." We are talking about Instagram and WhatsApp, which, according to the regulator, Tsuckerberg bought so as not to allow them to grow up and become competitors for his own social network.

The new version of the prosecution says that Facebook and its services are the so -called “personal social networks”, which are used for personal contacts, performances for a wide audience and search for other users. In the United States, the most popular such services are Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, all other large social networks, according to FTC, do not relate to this category. Because they are either highly specialized, or do not give users a common social space for communication, or, conversely, work only on broadcasts, and not for personal ties, such as Reddit or Twitter. YouTube and Spotify are also not considered, because there the user only passively consumes content. And even Tiktok, according to FTC, is not a personal social network, because they either just watch content there, or share people unknown to the author.

It is not yet clear how the court will perceive FTC's modified complaint, but the regulator’s position has many critics among IT experts. For example, the famous analyst Ben Thompson, in his mailing list, Stratechery called the commission’s actions by the desire to identify a monopoly where it is not. FTC wants Facebook to sell WhatsApp, while by the definition of the commission itself, the messenger is not a competitor to the social network. And the very thought that Instagram is like Facebook, but it does not look like Tiktok seems to be ridiculous analyst. “Facebook is much more like LinkedIn, and Instagram is Tiktok, but this is a problem for FTC, because it destroys their business,” he writes .

Whose side the court will take is still unknown, but, given that the head of the commission under Joe Bayden was the famous critic of the technohigant Lina Khan, it is unlikely that the regulator will easily surrender even in case of failure.

What does it mean

For Google: distant consequences can be severe - in the fall the House of Congress representatives called the division of the company's business, and as one of the options, the allocation of its advertising services was called in a separate company. But this is a completely radical scenario - and even when it should be taken into account that the hearings in the case will last years. But, one way or another, the company will have to waste time and attention to fight back from several large antimonopoly lawsuits-like Microsoft in the early 2000s. Then this distracted the company's management to such an extent that it created the opportunity for the appearance of new technological companies like Google itself, it resembles Wired and admits that a repetition of history can lead to a change in the landscape in the technological sector, regardless of the outcome of the proceedings.

For Facebook: although the assertion that Facebook is a monopolist in the social networks market, it causes a lot of disputes, one can say one thing: the authorities are immediately worried about how much the corporation collects data about its users and how they dispose of them. And if the FTC reaches the end and learn to divide the technohigants into parts, then the participation of Facebook inthe race for the “Internet of the future” - metavselnaya may be at risk. In order to develop in this new market, Facebook, which has already become a leader in the sales of the VR Schles, you need to strengthen your positions and continue to buy a smaller developers and studio. And many do not like this: the company has already been accused of pressure on competitors and copying their services. The question of the time when the next regulator is interested in this topic.

For Apple: Although after the pressure of regulators of different countries, the company went to unprecedented concessions, analysts and experts believe that the changes themselves are still not so large -scale. Many application developers that were not among the “Readers” were unhappy with the reform and expect the following steps from the company that the technology gym can leave without a decent piece of revenue (in the first six months of 2021, users spend $ 41.5 billion in the App Store, the company takes from all payments from 15% to 30%).

For you and me: although all three processes can potentially greatly affect the market, including in Russia, the situation with Apple will have the most direct effect on us. The company that has controlled all the processes and money within the services for IOS for many years has made concessions, and this will greatly affect the economy of many services, experts say.

Now the user of the conventional Bookmate overpays for the service from 15% to 30% depending on the contract between the company and Apple, says an IT expert, author of the @addmeto telegram channel Grigory Bakunov. And for the service, which has an annual subscription costs about 2 thousand rubles, the difference of 600 rubles will be significant. “I am sure most users of subscriptions to music, films and books will do anything to pay less for it. Although it is unlikely that 30% will take off the services at once, but if even 25% of the current subscription price is thrown away, it will still be beneficial to both sides, ”he said.

Prices for services will also become lower because the developers are more profitable for the user to pay through their own systems in every way, and not through Apple, he continues. “Apple is very lacking in flexibility: according to the rules of the system, you cannot just reduce the price of subscriptions by 3 rubles, the minimum step for change is the dollar. And there are many different restrictions there. And when companies control their subscriptions themselves, they can make individual discounts, reduce and raise prices depending on the situation and monitor the return, ”Bakunov is sure.

True, there is a risk that it will not be so noticeable in Russia, the expert believes: most of these services - like Yandex.Musicism and Sber. Zovuk - are only parts of large corporations for which the income of such applications is so small that this will hardly affect the general situation.

Despite this innovation, Apple itself is unlikely to be left without money, says Bakunov. Many applications will most likely continue to work in the old way, simply because they do not have their own sites and the ability to process payments. Plus, games in the near future will also not be able to make payments past Apple. The most profitable of them now do not ask for money for subscription, but work for donates: when the user pays for a game advantage. And here Apple’s position is very tough, it is shown by the court against Epic Games.

Now it is worth expecting the same steps from Google: if the company does not voluntarily make them, the same Asian regulators will force it. In addition, the most paying audience is in iOS. Now it will also become more profitable. So Google will have to make concessions, just to continue to compete, the expert believes.

E-gracery

Sber and Aliexpress want to invest in the X5 Group online business.

A new large transaction is being prepared in the Russian market for products. This week, Kommersant wrote that the X5 Group put up its online business for sale, and among potential buyers were Sber and Aliexpress. According to the interlocutor in the market, negotiations with the latter were indeed, but were unsuccessful, but about whether the largest Russian bank with the largest Russian retailer would be able to agree on is also not known yet. But there are chances: the question of investments by Sberus is supervised by the first deputy chairman of the Bank of the Bank Lev Hasis, and he was head of X5 five years before 2011. Such an interest in this business is understandable: online sales of products in Russia for the first half of 2021 increased 2.7 times and reached 149 billion rubles, calculated the Data Insight agency. The X5 digital businesses include VPROK.ru Perekrestok, the Services of the Express Dress and “North”. In June, the retailer allocated them into a separate structure, without excluding its IPO. For possible listing in 2022–2023, experts estimated the online business at $ 3–4.5 billion.

IPO

Reddit is preparing in full swing for an exit to the exchange

Reddit is looking for investment consultants and lawyers to prepare for an IPO in New York. During the last round of financing, the company received an estimate of $ 10 billion. According to one of the Reuters sources, by the time IPO, Reddit hopes to get an estimate of $ 15 billion by the time IPO was conducted at the beginning of the next year. The history of the field of the stock market became one of the most loud last year. At the beginning of the year, Reddit users declared a war against the “collapsed with Wall Street”, dispersing the shares of companies on the fall of which hedge funds were put. In February, investors with Reddit dispersed silver quotes to many months of maximums. However, the IPO may follow the end of the phenomenon of “sofa investors”: access to the exchange will lead to control by American regulators. About the story with the Battle of Gamestop, when the army of investors from Reddit raised the capitalization of a dying company to $ 7 billion and forced large hedge funds Wall Street to fix losses on shorts, we talked here . About where private investors came from crazy money for high -handed assets, you can read here .

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