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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/03/you-a-holes-court-docs-reveal-epic-ceos-anger-at-steams-30-fees/

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has long been an outspoken opponent of what he sees as Valve's unreasonable platform fees for listing games on Steam, which start at 30 percent of the total sale price. Now, though, new emails from before the launch of the competing Epic Games Store in 2018 show just how angry Sweeney was with the "assholes" at companies like Valve and Apple for squeezing "the little guy" with what he saw as inflated fees.

The emails, which came out this week as part of Wolfire's price-fixing case against Valve (as noticed by the GameDiscoverCo newsletter), confront Valve managers directly for platform fees Sweeney says are "no longer justifiable."
[...]
The first mostly unredacted email chain from the court documents, from August 2017, starts with Valve co-founder Gabe Newell asking Sweeney if there is "anything we [are] doing to annoy you?" That query was likely prompted by Sweeney's public tweets at the time questioning "why Steam is still taking 30% of gross [when] MasterCard and Visa charge 2-5% per transaction, and CDN bandwidth is around $0.002/GB." Later in the same thread, he laments that "the internet was supposed to obsolete the rent-seeking software distribution middlemen, but here's Facebook, Google, Apple, Valve, etc."
[...]
The second email chain revealed in the lawsuit started in November 2018, with Sweeney offering Valve a heads-up on the impending launch of the Epic Games Store that would come just weeks later. While that move was focused on PC and Mac games, Sweeney quickly pivots to a discussion of Apple's total control over iOS, the subject at the time of a lawsuit whose technicalities were being considered by the Supreme Court.
[...]
In a follow-up email on December 3, just days before the Epic Games Store launch, Sweeney took Valve to task more directly for its policy of offering lower platform fees for the largest developers on Steam.
[...]
After being forwarded the message by Valve's Erik Johnson, Valve COO Scott Lynch simply offered up a sardonic "You mad bro?"

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/email-microsoft-didnt-want-seen-reveals-rushed-decision-to-invest-in-openai/

In mid-June 2019, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella received a rude awakening in an email warning that Google had officially gotten too far ahead on AI and that Microsoft may never catch up without investing in OpenAi.

With the subject line "Thoughts on OpenAI," the email came from Microsoft's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, who is also the company's executive vice president of AI. In it, Scott said that he was "very, very worried" that he had made "a mistake" by dismissing Google's initial AI efforts as a "game-playing stunt."

[...] As just one example, Scott warned, "their auto-complete in Gmail, which is especially useful in the mobile app, is getting scarily good."

Microsoft had tried to keep this internal email hidden, but late Tuesday it was made public as part of the US Justice Department's antitrust trial over Google's alleged search monopoly.

[...] In an order unsealing the email among other documents requested by The Times, US District Judge Amit Mehta allowed to be redacted some of the "sensitive statements in the email concerning Microsoft's business strategies that weigh against disclosure"—which included basically all of Scott's "thoughts on OpenAI."

[...] Mere weeks later, Microsoft had invested $1 billion into OpenAI, and there have been billions more invested since through an extended partnership agreement. In 2024, the two companies' finances appeared so intertwined that the European Union suspected Microsoft was quietly controlling OpenAI and began investigating whether the companies still operate independently. Ultimately, the EU dismissed the probe, deciding that Microsoft's $13 billion in investments did not amount to an acquisition, Reuters reported.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/judge-finds-google-destroyed-evidence-and-repeatedly-gave-false-info-to-court/

A federal judge yesterday ruled that Google intentionally destroyed evidence and must be sanctioned, rejecting the company's argument that it didn't need to automatically preserve internal chats involving employees subject to a legal hold.

"After substantial briefing by both sides, and an evidentiary hearing that featured witness testimony and other evidence, the Court concludes that sanctions are warranted," US District Judge James Donato wrote. Later in the ruling, he wrote that evidence shows that "Google intended to subvert the discovery process, and that Chat evidence was 'lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation' and 'with the intent to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation.'"
[...]
After yesterday's ruling against Google in the Northern California federal court, a US Department of Justice attorney submitted a notice of the sanctions to the DC-based court. Google is fighting the request for sanctions in that case, too.

Related:
US DoJ, Microsoft and 35 States Support an Appeal of Epic Games-Apple Decision (20220202)
Google's Antitrust Case Won't Go to Trial Until Sept. 2023 (20201221)
Google Reportedly Could be Hit With Second Antitrust Lawsuit This Week (20201217)

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