President Biden, who named Big Tech critic Jonathan Kanter to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division last week, has assembled a strong antitrust team to address concerns about the dominant strength and influence of major tech companies across industries including pharmaceuticals, agriculture, healthcare, commerce and finance. If confirmed by the Senate, Kanter will join the Federal Trade Commission’s chairperson Lina Khan, who is known for her work in antitrust and competition law, and Tim Wu, a long-time advocate of breaking up Big Tech who is now Biden’s special assistant for technology and competition policy. Read more

Experts have warned that the semiconductor shortage will endure, and now Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger has added his voice with the prediction that the shortage could stretch into 2023. Volkswagen also cautioned that the shortage may get worse in the next six months. The chip shortage is not only causing production delays in the auto industry but raising prices for consumer electronics. Gelsinger said it could take one or two years to achieve a “reasonable supply-and-demand balance.” “We have a long way to go yet,” he suggested. Read more

Amazon and Microsoft dominate cloud computing but more businesses are leveraging smaller cloud rivals such as Google, Oracle and IBM. Experian, for example, launched with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2014, but is now using Microsoft, Google and Oracle, according to Experian global chief enterprise architect Mervyn Lally. At Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, executive vice president Clay Magouyrk said that more customers “adopt a multi-cloud strategy simply because some workloads run better or more cost-effectively on different clouds.” Read more

AT&T reported advances made by HBO in Q2 2021: a net gain of 2.85 million total domestic HBO Max and HBO subscribers, including 2.38 million retail net additions, for a total of 47.0 million at the end of the period, representing a gain of 10.7 million over the last year in the United Sates. HBO and HBO Max counted 67.5 million customers worldwide, up 12 million from last year. AT&T chief financial officer Pascal Desroches noted that the numbers exceeded Wall Street forecasts as well as AT&T’s own expectations. Read more

The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), a trade group with members including Disney, ESPN, FOX, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS and others, urged the Media Rating Council (MRC) to strip Nielsen’s accreditation, stating that, “Nielsen’s COVID-period conduct as a ratings service violated at least five minimum standards, with the damage done to their largest subscriber clients still creating material negative impact into July 2021.” MRC chief executive George Ivie said his group takes the VAB’s concerns seriously but has “an independent process to execute.” Read more