Peace is at Hand: Amazon, Visa, Settle Differences

The simmering dispute over payment fees in the United Kingdom and elsewhere between Amazon and Visa has been settled. The eCommerce giant and the global payment company reached a deal to end the months-long dispute over rising card fees.

To the glee of Amazon and its customers, Visa will no longer issue a surcharge to use the credit card in Australia and Singapore. The threat to ban Visa card acceptance in Amazon stores in the U.K. and on Amazon’s eCommerce marketplace threatened to upend payments.

See also: Amazon, Visa Strike Global Deal on Card Fees

The news wasn’t so rosy for Alphabet’s Google this week.

POLITICO got a hold of confidential that revealed gatekeeper search engines are funneling low-value ads to smaller search partners. The exclusive report alleges Google and Microsoft Corp. are using the online advertising market to the detriment of smaller rivals.

The action threatens to establish a new antitrust clash in Europe, according to the previously unseen data. These two tech giants appear to be inundating smaller search engine partners with spam ads while keeping the most valuable adverts for themselves, the report found.

As Google faces accusations of siphoning cheap ads to its smaller search partners, regulators have been in limbo as they await Google and other Big Tech companies to enhance privacy settings and rules to protect consumers.

When Google announced on Feb. 16 that it is planning to curtail cross-app tracking on Android Phones to develop more privacy-focused replacements, the same regulators were probably wondering if this is what they were looking for.

See also: Regulators Still Deciding If Google´s Plan to Stop Cross-App Tracking Is Good

In the “could this be true” news department, Big Tech learned that it has a friend in Washington, D.C. with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  The trade group that calls itself the biggest lobbying group in the country is taking up the latest antitrust threats coming out of the White House and Congress.

Representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations, the U.S. Chamber issued a report, U.S. Antitrust Legislative Proposals: A Global Perspective, offering a far-reaching comparative critique of how the U.S., China, and the European Union grappled with policy approaches.

For more: US Chamber Aligns with Big Tech to Fight Antitrust Battles