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from the I-don't-have-to-accept-your-business dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow5743
Portland, Oregon, was one of the cities we mentioned where Uber employed the so-called "Greyball" tool. The city has now released a scathing report detailing that Uber evaded picking up 16 local officials for a ride before April 2015, when the service finally won approval by Portland regulators.
The Greyball software employs a dozen data points on a new user in a given market, including whether a rider's Uber app is opened repeatedly in or around municipal offices, which credit card is linked to the account, and any publicly available information about the new user on social media. If the data suggests the new user is a regulator in a market where Uber is not permitted, the company would present that user with false information about where Uber rides are. This includes showing ghost cars or no cars in the area.
The city concluded that, when Uber started operating in the city in December 2014 without Portland's authorization, the Greyball tool blocked 17 rider accounts. Sixteen of those were government employees. In all, Greyball denied 29 ride requests by city transportation enforcement officers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:39AM
That's stretching the bounds of even cognitive dissonance.
Every example I even listed was them clearly using their current market dominance to try to gain an unfair advantage in other industries. Windows 10 S take this to an entirely new level where only apps from the Windows Store will even run, behavior they reportedly plan to make an auto opt-in for default Windows 10 which is one of the most absurdly anti-competitive actions in the software industry, perhaps ever. They're even engaging in shenanigans with browsers. Windows 10 is conspicuously unstable when running Chrome. Once the program crashes, Windows 10 automatically and without consent forces the user to begin using Edge. Or things such as "secure boot" which is literally intended to ensure it's impossible for the user to run non-Microsoft operating systems. And data harvesting is quick becoming the biggest industry in existence. And Microsoft has turned Windows 10 into the most widespread spyware in existence.
What they were sued for in 1998 is a joke compared to their actions of today.