AT&T boss John Stankey has said that tech giants, including Apple, hold too much power over streaming. He made the comments, reported by the Daily Mail at the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live event.

Where the bottlenecks are sometimes occurring are in these commercial agreements,’ Stankey said during the Wall Street Journal’s annual Tech Live event Monday that was hosted online due to the pandemic.’ We should ask ourselves, is that friction somebody really feeling their oats and maybe having market power above and beyond what’s reasonable for innovation?’ he added. HBO max launched in late May as a new video app, similar to Amazon Video, Apple TV+ and Disney+ seeking to profit of the demand for online TV, and offers series like Friends, The Big Bang Theory and HBO’s library of original TV series.   AT&T is trying to grow their HBO Max subscriber base and convince existing viewers to switch to the Max app. This provides AT&T with better profits than the meek HBO line-up offered through cable partners like Comcast.’Our focus probably needs to be on equity of rules and engagement,’ Stanke said Monday.

Microsoft updated its Xbox app to allow iPhone and iPad users to stream games. However, Sky News reported Apple still won’t allow Microsoft’s xCloud or Google’s equivalent cloud gaming platform, Stadia, into the App Store. It means iPhone users can still only stream games that are playing on their own console.

Apple currently does not allow users to use their devices to play games using cloud computing – having the games run on hardware the phones are connecting to remotely – which would give gamers the ability to play higher-quality games on their mobile devices. Microsoft has criticised Apple for not allowing its users access to the xCloud games streaming platform, as well as Google’s cloud gaming service Stadia. Microsoft said Apple “stands alone as the only general purpose platform to deny consumers from cloud gaming and game subscription services like Xbox Game Pass”. “[Apple] consistently treats gaming apps differently, applying more lenient rules to non-gaming apps even when they include interactive content,” Microsoft added.

The U.S. government on Tuesday filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, Reuters reported. It alleges that the search giant used its market power to repel advances by rivals.

More lawsuits could be in the offing since probes by state attorneys general into Google’s broader businesses are under way, as well as an investigation of its broader digital advertising businesses. A group of attorneys general led by Texas is expected to file a separate lawsuit focused on digital advertising as soon as November, while a group led by Colorado is contemplating a more expansive lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit comes more than a year after the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission began antitrust investigations into four big tech companies: Amazon.com Inc , Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Google. Seven years ago, the FTC settled an antitrust probe into Google over alleged bias in its search function to favor its products, among other issues. The settlement came over the objections of some FTC staff attorneys. Google has faced similar legal challenges overseas.