The amount of big tech acquisitions increased about 20 percent per year between 1987 and 2018, signaling weak antitrust enforcement, the American Antitrust Institute reported Monday. Google had the largest percentage of total acquisitions at 32 percent, averaging about 13 yearly acquisitions between 1987 and 2019. That was followed by Microsoft at 31 percent and seven yearly transactions, Apple at 15 percent and three transactions, Amazon at 11 percent and four acquisitions and Facebook at 11 percent and seven acquisitions.

Facebook was working to restore service for Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook users Wednesday, it said: “We’re aware that some people are having trouble uploading or sending images, videos and other files on our apps. We're sorry for the trouble and are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.” More than 14,000 Instagram users, 7,600 Facebook users and 1,600 WhatsApp users reported outages to Downdetector.com.

Facebook downplayed Wednesday the amount of access and control it will have over a new cryptocurrency project (see 1906190060). Lawmakers and consumer groups sought a moratorium on the so-called Project Libra. The company has done a lot to “democratize free, unlimited communications for billions of people,” and it wants to do the same with digital money, blogged Calibra Head David Marcus: The key difference this time is Facebook will “relinquish control over the very network and currency we’ve helped create.” The company created the subsidiary Calibra, a virtual wallet service integrated with Libra. Facebook will own and control Calibra but “won’t see financial data from Calibra,” Marcus wrote. Facebook also is only one of 28 founding members that include Mastercard, Visa and PayPal. All members will play a part in naming a managing director and establishing governance rules, Marcus said. The system is designed to limit the power of any single organization, he said. The company is committed to working with lawmakers, central banks and regulators as it prepares to launch the new currency, said Marcus, who will testify before the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees “in the weeks to come.” Libra's goal is to “bring the world closer together,” he said. Individuals who can’t afford traditional banking services, struggle with meeting minimum balances and can’t afford associated penalties, he said.

The FTC plans a workshop in Atlanta on truth-in-advertising basics and data security compliance, Aug. 15 at the Georgia Bar Center, 104 Marietta St. NW. Commissioner Rohit Chopra and Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr will speak. It’s the first of “Green Lights & Red Flags” event the FTC and regional partners plan in cities nationally, the agency said.

Intel led a collaboration of 11 automotive and mobility industry players that published a framework for design, development, verification and validation of safe automated passenger vehicles (AVs). “Safety First for Automated Driving” combines expertise from global automakers, suppliers and technology providers to guide development of AVs that are “verifiably safe by design,” Intel said Tuesday. The framework is built on Intel’s responsibility sensitive safety (RSS) model, said to be a “technology-neutral” starting point for the industry to align on what it means for an AV to drive safely. “RSS formalizes human notions of commonsense driving into a set of mathematical formulas that are transparent and verifiable, providing a 'safety envelope' around an AV’s decision-making capabilities,” said the company. The paper has 12 guiding principles and “the steps necessary to realize them.”

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is accepting comment through July 19 on a draft plan for “federal government engagement in advancing artificial intelligence standards for U.S. economic and national security needs,” the agency announced Tuesday.

For a second time, District of Columbia Superior Court denied Facebook’s request to block the city’s lawsuit (see 1906190028) over the platform’s data privacy practices. The court issued an order Sunday denying Facebook’s motion to certify the case for interlocutory appeal. “We will press ahead with discovery and take another important step toward holding Facebook accountable for its privacy and data security failures,” said D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine (D). The company didn’t comment Monday.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology will host the third in a series of public workshops on developing a privacy framework July 8-9 at Boise State University, the agency said Friday (see 1812170032).

With full eight transmit and eight receive antennas, 8 x 8 MU-MIMO provides the biggest benefit to total system throughput and capacity in Wi-Fi 6 networks vs. other features of Wi-Fi 6, said Strategy Analytics Friday. Marketing messages about Wi-Fi 6 have typically focused on benefits of orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), important for reducing congestion, but access points with 8 x 8 MU-MIMO can simultaneously address up to four times as many 2 x 2 client devices as OFDMA alone, said analyst Christopher Taylor. Many entry-level and mainstream Wi-Fi 6 access points use only two or four antennas, but more than two-thirds of access points SA identified in the premium tier use the full eight, he said, highlighting Quantenna, Qualcomm, Marvell and Celeno as suppliers of Wi-Fi 6 chipsets capable of 8 x 8 MU-MIMO. “The benefits of MU-MIMO have been proven in the cellular world with LTE,” and smartphone and laptop PC OEMs have shown strong support for Wi-Fi 6 with MU-MIMO, said analyst Stephen Entwistle.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said he doesn’t necessarily “disagree” with a proposal from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to break up big tech companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon (see 1904170046). During the first Democratic primary debate Wednesday, Booker said companies like Amazon “that pay nothing in taxes” should be singled out and policies changed. On antitrust, Booker said he would appoint judges who enforce and would enable a DOJ and an FTC that will “go through the processes necessary to check” corporate concentration: “We have too much of a problem with corporate power growing.” Corporate consolidation hurts small business and limits innovation, Warren said: The antitrust laws are in place but “missing is courage, courage in Washington to take on the giants.” Warren said returning the government to the people means "calling out the names of the monopolists and saying I have the courage to go after them.”