Agency 63

SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE had a Romantic vision when he created the World Wide Web in 1989. In his words, he helped “weave” it together as a way of connecting anything to anything—as if he were sitting at a loom, not at CERN, a particle-physics laboratory in Geneva. But those were halcyon days. Now the web…

The case against the technology giant is at once narrow and grandIT WAS A long time coming. On October 20th the Department of Justice (DoJ) at last launched a federal antitrust lawsuit against Google. It is the first time American trustbusters have gone after big tech since their protracted battle against Microsoft 20 years ago.…

IN THE EARLY 17th century the best place to gather news in London was the old cathedral of St Paul’s, a place that buzzed with gossip on politics and was described—unusually for a house of worship—as “the ear’s brothel”. Some of the informants were entrepreneurs; they had recently started writing “letters of news” which they…

Demand for farm equipment has soared amid the pandemicWERE ANY more evidence needed to reflect how surprising 2020 has been, consider tractor sales. In April Hemant Sikka, president of Mahindra & Mahindra’s farm-equipment business—which makes around 300,000 of the things a year, more than any other company anywhere—sat in his Mumbai flat near his shuttered…

Antitrust cases over past behaviour have proved mostly ineffectual. So regulators are turning their attention to forward-looking rulesANY DAY now America’s Department of Justice (DoJ) will file a lawsuit against Google, accusing it of abusing its monopoly in online search. It will be the first big antitrust case in technology since the DoJ went after…