Law

The FTC sued to stop a huge grocery merger

The Federal Trade Commission is trying to block the largest merger in supermarket chain history. The FTC announced on Monday that it’s suing to block the $25 billion Kroger–Albertsons merger, arguing the move would raise prices, lower wages, and reduce competition in the industry.

The merger — if it were to go through — would combine the second and fourth largest grocery store chains in the US, and if the FTC is to be believed, would heighten grocery prices at a time when Americans are already paying more for their food than they have in 30 years.

Why do Kroger and Albertsons want to team up?

The grocers claim customers would see lower prices if they merged, contrary to the FTC’s beliefs. Although the FTC claims the merger would result in lower wages and worse conditions for workers, Kroger and Albertsons note that they are mostly unionized, unlike other grocery behemoths like Amazon, Costco, and Walmart.

Both companies, who together would control 13% of the US grocery market, say the merger would allow them to better compete with dominant retailers (like the ones listed above).

The lawsuit comes half a year after Kroger tried to mitigate criticism of the deal by divesting 400 of its stores, a move the FTC argues in its lawsuit will not increase competition, calling the proposal “inadequate” and said it fell “far short of mitigating lost competition.”

This is nothing new for the FTC

Under the Biden Administration, the FTC has challenged several mergers that it claims could drive up consumer prices, including last summer's failed bid to prevent Microsoft's $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the proposed JetBlue–Spirit deal, and Meta’s acquisition of the virtual reality company Within.

The Supreme Court is debating over free speech online

In one of the biggest Supreme Court cases regarding online speech, they will tackle how social media moderates political content. The Supreme Court will decide whether Texas and Florida’s state laws regarding political moderation on platforms like X, Facebook, and Youtube are constitutional.

The US’s highest court is looking at the cases NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice; both are proposed by trade groups that represent social media sites including Meta and Google and are challenging state laws in Florida and Texas.

The state laws ban tech companies from doing two things:

• Removing content on their social media sites that could be seen as political.

• Banning accounts based on the viewpoints they share.

Why do the states have these laws?

Both Texas and Florida argue the platforms are essentially digital public squares where First Amendment free speech rights should be protected.

Social media platforms, as things currently stand, have a lot of discretion when it comes to what is published on their sites, and argue their product is protected as free speech, similar to newspapers. Critics of the laws claim extremist content would proliferate under them.

• The social media companies maintain that they need to be able to remove harmful content, citing examples like spam, harmful speech, and misinformation.

  • Critics argue what constitutes harmful speech and misinformation is subject to interpretation, and social media platforms have too much discretion in taking down posts and accounts.

We can expect a decision to be reached early this summer. During Monday’s oral arguments, the justices seemed to be irresolute in their opinions regarding the states’ laws. The justices claimed that they didn’t have enough information about which sites would be affected and what actions on those sites would be enveloped. Both state laws have been temporarily paused while the Supreme Court decides if they can survive a First Amendment challenge.

Tech

Is Google getting worse?

Ironically, if you use Google’s own service to type in “Is Google getting worse?” you will get a full list of links ready to tell you how its gone downhill. While people have various complaints, there seems to be a common issue… Google struggles to keep sites with misleading product reviews out of its top results, at least according to a group of German scientists.

While Google was found to perform better than rivals like Bing and DuckDuckGo, the engine’s missteps are taken a bit more seriously, given that it commands over 90% of the world’s search market. But just because it’s the top dog in the search engine world doesn’t mean it can just kick its feet back.

A new wave of AI-powered tools are threatening Google’s supremacy as the status quo for those who want to know if the wart on their foot is dangerous or not.

• OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is reportedly building its own search product and lending AI capabilities to Microsoft’s Bing.

• The AI bot Perplexity (backed by Jeff Bezos) summarizes information from the internet and provides links to reputable sources. It’s valued at $520 million after a recent fundraising round.

Is Google really getting worse?

Canadian blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow seems to think so. Doctorow claims we have entered a new era of search engines (specifically citing Google) where online platforms have faltered by choosing to prioritize profits at the expense of user experience.

He also claims that Google’s top results have become “dominated by spam, scams, and ads.” Doctorow says it’s too easy for sites to push useless content on users and manipulate the guarded algorithm that ranks search results.

Doctorow goes on to say that Google became a search engine behemoth in part by assuring regulators that it would spend swaths of resources fighting spam. But instead, Google worked to ensure you choose its product without a second thought.

• It was recently revealed that Google paid the Apple and Samsung $26 billion in 2021 to be their devices’ default search engine.

• Because of maneuvers like these, the Justice Department is suing Google for alleged illegal tactics to become a search engine monopoly, with a ruling expected in May.

So what now?

Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that he wants “people to know that we made [Google] dance” as he flaunted Bing’s alleged upgrade it got from OpenAI. Since that point, Bing has failed to win any new market share, according to The Information, while Google has been making its own efforts to compete with OpenAI.

• Google launched its own AI chatbot called Gemini shortly after ChatGPT debuted, and it’s been experimenting with adding AI-generated summaries to search.

  • However, Gemeni was pulled temporarily after users criticized its image generator for creating inaccurate and offensive imagery that showcased racial bias in its generation of images.

• Google has reportedly been working with TikTok to embed search results into the app, among other plans that antitrust activists criticized as efforts to expand its search monopoly in a letter to the DOJ.

A Google spokesperson said its spam-deterring systems “help keep search 99% spam free”, and told the WSJ that it routinely updates its search engine to filter out undesirable results. However, Google will need to keep providing value to users as AI search engines threaten to change the way we surf the internet.

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Cybersecurity

Cyberattacks carried out by China exposed

Did we see this coming? Yes. Is it still a little awkward? Also yes. US officials have ranked the Chinese government’s cyber-espionage efforts as one of America’s top security threats, and now, an anonymous whistleblower has confirmed our suspicions.

What did the whistleblower leak?

A couple of weeks ago, they leaked hundreds of pages posted to GitHub that elaborate on how officials in China hire private-sector hackers to surveil and disrupt societies both within China and abroad, acting as a dynamic cyberspying marketplace.

The documents exposed one Chinese hacking firm in particular, ISoon. According to the files, over at least eight years:

• ISoon hackers contracted with Chinese government bureaus to target political dissidents in China and government officials in over 20 foreign nations by infiltrating social media or email accounts, wi-fi networks, and other infrastructure.

• The firm mostly helped China get information on other Asian countries, including road network data from Taiwan, which could help the Chinese military in an invasion.

• Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail accounts, and Apple iOS smartphone GPS, contacts, and recording were among some of the services ISoon’s product list claimed it could gain access to.

  • However, internal chats show that ISoon frequently failed to steal info from governments.

The US is worried. China’s support and payment of contracted hackers has enabled such a massive cyberespionage network to flourish that the country’s hackers outnumber the FBI’s cyber and intelligence agents 50 to 1, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Congress last month.

American Healthcare was subject to a cyberattack

The US healthcare system was victim of cyberattacks earlier this week, with hackers shutting down critical infrastructure essential to hospitals operations. Pharmacies and hospitals nationwide are dealing with a debilitating cyberattack against the prescription processor Change Healthcare, owned by America’s biggest health insurer, UnitedHealth.

The health tech company noticed the breach last week and hurried to disconnect its systems in order to prevent further damage. But since they disabled them so quickly, it hindered the pharmacies’ ability to hand out prescriptions. Change Healthcare said on Tuesday some of its services were still paused, and it's unclear if any patient information was stolen.

What happened?

At first, drugstores nationwide were unable to run patients’ insurance, but UnitedHealth told CNBC earlier this week that pharmacies have since found alternatives as they continue to find ways to address the problem.

The situation highlights just how effective and malicious cyberattacks can be:

• Change Healthcare serves over 67,000 pharmacies and handles up to a third of all patient records in the US.

• While independent pharmacies were the most affected, CVS said it was also impacted.

Who hacked healthcare? UnitedHealth suspects a “nation-state associated” culprit (I’m sure this has nothing to do with our previous article), but Reuters reported others think an independent hacker group named BlackCat might be responsible. BlackCat was previously involved in hacking MGM casinos and Reddit, stealing their data and demanding a ransom.

Due to the sensitive nature of the industry’s data, the healthcare industry suffered a record number of cyberattacks last year, according to the HIPAA Journal.

Fast Facts

Apple Automotive: Apple is shutting down its decade-long electric car project. Many employees who were developing the vehicle will move over to Apple’s AI division.

Newsworthy Newlywed: The Economist is getting some interesting replies after it published an article titled “Cousin marriage is probably fine in most cases.” Nice one.

American Mentality: The Florida Man Games took place this past weekend. Events included wrestling while holding pitchers of beer and running from the police in an “evading arrest” obstacle course. ‘Merica.

Bitcoin Bounce: Bitcoin hit $60k for the first time since November 2021, marking a 40% jump in value in 2024 and a 20% increase in just this week.

Flipping Font: Microsoft Word changed its default font from Calibri to Aptos after 17 years. The new typeface rolled out across Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Excel.