Year: 2019

YouTube is asking the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for further clarification and better guidance to help video creators understand how to comply with the FTC’s guidelines set forth as part of YouTube’s settlement with the regulator over its violations of children’s privacy laws. The FTC in September imposed a historic fine of $170 million for YouTube’s violations of COPPA (the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). It additionally required YouTube creators to now properly identify any child-directed content on the platform.

To comply with the ruling, YouTube created a system where creators could either label their entire channel as child-directed, or they could identify only certain videos as being directed at children, as needed. Videos that are considered child-directed content would then be prohibited from collecting personal data from viewers. This limited creators’ ability to leverage Google’s highly profitable behavioral advertising technology on videos kids were likely to watch.

As a result, YouTube creators have been in an uproar since the ruling, arguing that it’s too difficult to tell the difference between what’s child-directed content and what’s not. Several popular categories of YouTube videos — like gaming, toy reviews, and family vlogging, for instance — fall under gray areas, where they’re watched by children and adults alike. But because the FTC’s ruling left creators held liable for any future violations, YouTube could only advise creators to consult a lawyer to help them work through the ruling’s impact on their own channels.

Today, YouTube says it’s asking the FTC to provide more clarity.

“Currently, the FTC’s guidance requires platforms must treat anyone watching primarily child-directed content as children under 13. This does not match what we see on YouTube, where adults watch favorite cartoons from their childhood or teachers look for content to share with their students,” noted YouTube in an announcement. “Creators of such videos have also conveyed the value of product features that wouldn’t be supported on their content. For example, creators have expressed the value of using comments to get helpful feedback from older viewers. This is why we support allowing platforms to treat adults as adults if there are measures in place to help confirm that the user is an adult viewing kids’ content,” the company said.

Specifically, YouTube wants the FTC to clarify what’s to be done when adults are watching kids’ content. It also wants to know what’s to be done about content that doesn’t intentionally target kids — like videos in the gaming, DIY and art space, for example — if those videos end up attracting a young audience. Are these also to be labeled “made for kids,” even though that’s not their intention?, YouTube asks.

The FTC had shared some guidance in November, which YouTube passed along to creators. But YouTube says it’s not enough as it doesn’t help creators to understand what’s to be done about this “mixed audience” content.

YouTube says it supports platforms treating adults who view primarily child-directed video content as adults, as long as there are measures in place to help confirm the user is an adult. It didn’t suggest what those measures would be, though possibly this could involve users logged in to an adult-owned Google account or perhaps an age-gate measure of some sort.

YouTube submitted its statements as a part of the FTC’s comment period on the agency’s review of the COPPA Rule, which has been extended until December 11, 2019. The FTC is giving commenters additional time to submit comments and an alternative mechanism to file them as the federal government’s Regulations.gov portal is temporarily inaccessible. Instead, commenters can submit their thoughts via email to the address secretary@ftc.gov, with the subject line “COPPA comment.” These must be submitted before 11:59 PM ET on Dec. 11, the FTC says.

YouTube’s announcement, however, pointed commenters to the FTC’s website, which isn’t working right now.

“We strongly support COPPA’s goal of providing robust protections for kids and their privacy. We also believe COPPA would benefit from updates and clarifications that better reflect how kids and families use technology today, while still allowing access to a wide range of content that helps them learn, grow and explore. We continue to engage on this issue with the FTC and other lawmakers (we previously participated in the FTC’s public workshop) and are committed to continue [sic] doing so,” said YouTube.

AWS held its annual re:Invent customer conference last week in Las Vegas. Being Vegas, there was pageantry aplenty, of course, but this year’s model felt a bit different than in years past, lacking the onslaught of major announcements we are used to getting at this event.

Perhaps the pace of innovation could finally be slowing, but the company still had a few messages for attendees. For starters, AWS CEO Andy Jassy made it clear he’s tired of the slow pace of change inside the enterprise. In Jassy’s view, the time for incremental change is over, and it’s time to start moving to the cloud faster.

AWS also placed a couple of big bets this year in Vegas to help make that happen. The first involves AI and machine learning. The second, moving computing to the edge, closer to the business than the traditional cloud allows.

The question is what is driving these strategies? AWS had a clear head start in the cloud, and owns a third of the market, more than double its closest rival, Microsoft. The good news is that the market is still growing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The bad news for AWS is that it can probably see Google and Microsoft beginning to resonate with more customers, and it’s looking for new ways to get a piece of the untapped part of the market to choose AWS.

Move faster, dammit

The worldwide infrastructure business surpassed $100 billion this year, yet we have only just scratched the surface of this market. Surely, digital-first companies, those born in the cloud, understand all of the advantages of working there, but large enterprises are still moving surprisingly slowly.

Jassy indicated more than once last week that he’s had enough of that. He wants to see companies transform more quickly, and in his view it’s not a technical problem, it’s a lack of leadership. If you want to get to the cloud faster, you need executive buy-in pushing it.

Jassy outlined four steps in his keynote to help companies move faster and get more workloads in the cloud. He believes in doing so, it will not only continue to enrich his own company, it will also help customers avoid disruptive forces in their markets.

For starters, he says that it’s imperative to get the senior team aligned behind a change. “Inertia is a powerful thing,” Jassy told the audience at his keynote on Tuesday. He’s right of course. There are forces inside every company designed with good reason to protect the organization from massive systemic changes, but these forces — whether legal, compliance, security or HR — can hold back a company when meaningful change is needed.

He said that a fuller shift to the cloud requires ambitious planning. “It’s easy to go a long time dipping your toe in the water if you don’t have an aggressive goal,” he emphasized. To move faster, you also need staff that can help you get there — and that requires training.

Finally, you need a thoughtful, methodical migration plan. Most companies start with the stuff that’s easy to move to the cloud, then begin to migrate workloads that require some adjustments. They continue along this path all the way to things you might not choose to move at all.

Jassy knows that the faster companies get on board and move to the cloud, the better off his company is going to be, assuming it can capture the lion’s share of those workloads. The trouble is that after you move that first easy batch, getting to the cloud becomes increasingly challenging, and that’s one of the big reasons why companies have moved slower than Jassy would like.

The power of machine learning to drive adoption

One way to motivate folks to move faster is help them understand the power of machine learning. AWS made a slew of announcements around machine learning designed to give customers a more comprehensive Amazon solution. This included SageMaker Studio, a machine learning development environment along with notebook, debugging and monitoring tools. Finally, the company announced AutoPilot, a tool that gives more insight into automatically-generated machine learning models, another way to go faster.

The company also announced a new connected keyboard called DeepComposer, designed to teach developers about machine learning in a fun way. It joins DeepLens and DeepRacer, two tools released at previous re:Invents. All of this is designed for developers to help them get comfortable with machine learning.

It wasn’t a coincidence the company also announced a significant partnership with the NFL to use machine learning to help make players safer. It’s an excellent use case. The NFL has tons of data on its players, and it has decades of film. If it can use that data as fuel for machine learning-driven solutions to help prevent injuries, it could end up being a catalyst for meaningful change driven by machine learning in the cloud.

Machine learning provides another reason to move to the cloud. This shows that the cloud isn’t just about agility and speed, it’s also about innovation and transformation. If you can take advantage of machine learning to transform your business, it’s another reason to move to the cloud.

Moving to the edge

Finally, AWS recognizes that computing in cloud can only get you so far. In spite of the leaps it has made architecturally, there is still a latency issue that will be unacceptable for some workloads. That’s why it was a big deal that the company announced a couple of edge computing solutions including the general availability of Outposts, its private cloud in a box along with a new concept called Local Zones last week.

The company announced Outposts last year as a way to bring the cloud on prem. It is supposed to behave exactly the same way as traditional cloud resources, but AWS installs, manages and maintains a physical box in your data center. It’s the ultimate in edge computing, bringing the compute power right into your building.

For those who don’t want to go that far, AWS also introduced Local Zones, starting with one in LA, where the cloud infrastructure resources are close by instead of in your building. The idea is the same — to reduce the physical distance between you and your compute resources and reduce latency.

All of this is designed to put the cloud in reach of more customers, to help them move to the cloud faster. Sure, it’s self-serving, but 11 years after I first heard the term cloud computing, maybe it really is time to give companies a harder push.

AWS held its annual re:Invent customer conference last week in Las Vegas. Being Vegas, there was pageantry aplenty, of course, but this year’s model felt a bit different than in years past, lacking the onslaught of major announcements we are used to getting at this event.

Perhaps the pace of innovation could finally be slowing, but the company still had a few messages for attendees. For starters, AWS CEO Andy Jassy made it clear he’s tired of the slow pace of change inside the enterprise. In Jassy’s view, the time for incremental change is over, and it’s time to start moving to the cloud faster.

AWS also placed a couple of big bets this year in Vegas to help make that happen. The first involves AI and machine learning. The second, moving computing to the edge, closer to the business than the traditional cloud allows.

The question is what is driving these strategies? AWS had a clear head start in the cloud, and owns a third of the market, more than double its closest rival, Microsoft. The good news is that the market is still growing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The bad news for AWS is that it can probably see Google and Microsoft beginning to resonate with more customers, and it’s looking for new ways to get a piece of the untapped part of the market to choose AWS.

Move faster, dammit

The worldwide infrastructure business surpassed $100 billion this year, yet we have only just scratched the surface of this market. Surely, digital-first companies, those born in the cloud, understand all of the advantages of working there, but large enterprises are still moving surprisingly slowly.

Jassy indicated more than once last week that he’s had enough of that. He wants to see companies transform more quickly, and in his view it’s not a technical problem, it’s a lack of leadership. If you want to get to the cloud faster, you need executive buy-in pushing it.

Jassy outlined four steps in his keynote to help companies move faster and get more workloads in the cloud. He believes in doing so, it will not only continue to enrich his own company, it will also help customers avoid disruptive forces in their markets.

For starters, he says that it’s imperative to get the senior team aligned behind a change. “Inertia is a powerful thing,” Jassy told the audience at his keynote on Tuesday. He’s right of course. There are forces inside every company designed with good reason to protect the organization from massive systemic changes, but these forces — whether legal, compliance, security or HR — can hold back a company when meaningful change is needed.

He said that a fuller shift to the cloud requires ambitious planning. “It’s easy to go a long time dipping your toe in the water if you don’t have an aggressive goal,” he emphasized. To move faster, you also need staff that can help you get there — and that requires training.

Finally, you need a thoughtful, methodical migration plan. Most companies start with the stuff that’s easy to move to the cloud, then begin to migrate workloads that require some adjustments. They continue along this path all the way to things you might not choose to move at all.

Jassy knows that the faster companies get on board and move to the cloud, the better off his company is going to be, assuming it can capture the lion’s share of those workloads. The trouble is that after you move that first easy batch, getting to the cloud becomes increasingly challenging, and that’s one of the big reasons why companies have moved slower than Jassy would like.

The power of machine learning to drive adoption

One way to motivate folks to move faster is help them understand the power of machine learning. AWS made a slew of announcements around machine learning designed to give customers a more comprehensive Amazon solution. This included SageMaker Studio, a machine learning development environment along with notebook, debugging and monitoring tools. Finally, the company announced AutoPilot, a tool that gives more insight into automatically-generated machine learning models, another way to go faster.

The company also announced a new connected keyboard called DeepComposer, designed to teach developers about machine learning in a fun way. It joins DeepLens and DeepRacer, two tools released at previous re:Invents. All of this is designed for developers to help them get comfortable with machine learning.

It wasn’t a coincidence the company also announced a significant partnership with the NFL to use machine learning to help make players safer. It’s an excellent use case. The NFL has tons of data on its players, and it has decades of film. If it can use that data as fuel for machine learning-driven solutions to help prevent injuries, it could end up being a catalyst for meaningful change driven by machine learning in the cloud.

Machine learning provides another reason to move to the cloud. This shows that the cloud isn’t just about agility and speed, it’s also about innovation and transformation. If you can take advantage of machine learning to transform your business, it’s another reason to move to the cloud.

Moving to the edge

Finally, AWS recognizes that computing in cloud can only get you so far. In spite of the leaps it has made architecturally, there is still a latency issue that will be unacceptable for some workloads. That’s why it was a big deal that the company announced a couple of edge computing solutions including the general availability of Outposts, its private cloud in a box along with a new concept called Local Zones last week.

The company announced Outposts last year as a way to bring the cloud on prem. It is supposed to behave exactly the same way as traditional cloud resources, but AWS installs, manages and maintains a physical box in your data center. It’s the ultimate in edge computing, bringing the compute power right into your building.

For those who don’t want to go that far, AWS also introduced Local Zones, starting with one in LA, where the cloud infrastructure resources are close by instead of in your building. The idea is the same — to reduce the physical distance between you and your compute resources and reduce latency.

All of this is designed to put the cloud in reach of more customers, to help them move to the cloud faster. Sure, it’s self-serving, but 11 years after I first heard the term cloud computing, maybe it really is time to give companies a harder push.

Berlin-headquartered streaming guide JustWatch has grown to over 10 million users across 38 countries in under 5 years. Now, it’s expanding its U.S. presence with the acquisition of New York-based rival, GoWatchIt, from Plexus Entertainment. Deal terms were not revealed but were a mixture of cash and stock for the smaller operation, which had just 8 people on board.

JustWatch says its interest was mostly in the commercial team based in New York. As a result of the acquisition, GoWatchIt founder and CEO David Larkin will remain in New York and will become JustWatch’s SVP Marketing and Strategy.

GoWatchIt is one of now several services that offer a comprehensive guide to movies and TV aimed at helping people find things to watch across an increasingly fragmented streaming landscape, which now includes new services like Apple TV+ and Disney+, and soon, NBCU’s Peacock and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max. As a result of all the new entries, it has become more difficult for consumers to know what’s available, where it streams, and how much it costs. Plus, consumers also want help in finding new shows and movies across services that are personalized to their own interests.

This is where services like GoWatchIt and JustWatch came in.

GoWatchIt was founded in 2011 at a guide to streaming content, as well as digital content and even movies playing in theaters. The service additionally offered an API to partner sites who wanted to inform their visitors and readers where content was available. These partners included The New York Times, National Cine Media, and Common Sense Media, among others.

According to JustWatch, the acquisition of GoWatchIt made sense as the U.S. had already grown to become JustWatch’s largest market, in terms of user numbers. However, the acquisition wasn’t about gaining market share, the company tells TechCrunch. It was more about the B2B partners and clients and the commercial team, particularly founder David Larkin whose new job will have him marketing JustWatch B2B products like the partner API, competitive VOD market intelligence, and JustWatch’s entertainment advertising products in the U.S.

“We are very happy with the acquisition of GoWatchIt and to welcome David Larkin at JustWatch,” noted JustWatch founder and CEO David Croyé, in a statement. “We have already known each other for several years and I’m excited to work with David to increase our footprint in the US. His network in the streaming industry will help us find many more partners for our B2B data and API offerings,” he said.

GoWatchIt was backed by Scout Ventures and other private funding.

Its total team was just 8 people, but only two are joining JustWatch as the technical staff wasn’t needed. JustWatch today has a team of over 50 in Berlin who will continue to run its product development and technology.

In addition, the GoWatchIt website will be closed in the near future, with traffic redirected to JustWatch.com instead. Partner sites using the GoWatchIt API will be transitioned to the JustWatch API, as well.

“I’m excited to join JustWatch from New York and help to accelerate the growth with my industry experience and network,” said Larkin. “Over the last years, JustWatch has grown very fast to become the biggest streaming guide worldwide. The streaming wars are heating up and the biggest growth will come from outside the US. JustWatch is the only truly international player to help users find out what to watch and where to watch it.”

JustWatch competes with a range of services in this market, including also Reelgood which just raised $6.75 million for its own streaming guide, TV Time which has raised $65 million (according to Crunchbase), and many other apps and services all aiming to be consumers’ go-to platform.

JustWatch is nearing the launch of new TV apps for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV, which will be available in the days ahead.

 

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. China moves to ban foreign software and hardware from state offices

China has ordered the replacement of all foreign PC hardware and operating systems in state offices over the next three years, according to a report in the Financial Times. The government has previously ordered purges of western software, but they were more limited or related to certain security issues.

This time, the goal includes hardware as well, with tens of millions of devices targeted for replacement.

2. Snapchat Cameos edit your face into videos

Snapchat is preparing to launch a new feature that swaps out faces in videos with your own selfies. Some French users received a test version of the feature today.

3. The new Mac Pro goes up for order December 10

When Apple announced the new Mac Pro in June, it left out one key detail — when, precisely the latest version of the high-end desktop would arrive. Now Apple says orders will begin on December 10, although the shipping date remains unknown.

4. In wake of Shutterstock’s Chinese censorship, American companies need to relearn American values

By now, it’s well-known that China’s search engines like Baidu censor political photography. What we’ve been learning more recently, however, is that it isn’t just Chinese companies that are aiding and abetting this censorship.

5. Will the 2020s be online advertising’s holistic decade?

InMarket founder Todd Dipaola predicts that marketers will be held to a higher standard — both by clients demanding world-class performance and proof, as well as consumers who want relevancy, helpfulness and privacy from their brand relationships. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. See Atomico’s most senior VCs onstage at Disrupt Berlin

Atomico is among the most widely respected venture firms in Europe. And you’ll be able to hear from its leaders at TechCrunch’s big event in just a couple of days.

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

Equity takes a look at Harlem Capital, one of the largest funds that’s focused on backing minority entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, Original Content reviews the latest season of Netflix’s hit series “The Crown.”

Early-stage startups have a massive problem: there are way, way too many things to do, and never enough people to do them. Whether it’s growth marketing, or product design, or software engineering or a myriad list of other tasks, something somewhere isn’t going to get done by the founding team and early employees.

And so it is only natural to seek outside help to assist with those tasks, part-timers (and sometimes full-timers) who can add their talent and experience to a company’s early success.

There’s just one problem: consultants are horrifyingly misaligned with startups, as a recent discussion about how to be a great consultant attests. And so if you are going to work with consultants as a founder, there are massive traps you must avoid in order to make effective use of these people.

I’m a big fan of The Browser, an email newsletter by Robert Cottrell which curates a list of five articles a day across the web that Cottrell thinks are the best of the day. One of his selections in a recent issue was part two of a four part series on being a great consultant written by Tom Critchlow, who is adapting lessons from the theater world into the work of being a consultant.

An online company that allows users to obtain a copy of their birth and death certificates from U.S. state governments has exposed a massive cache of applications — including their personal information.

More than 752,000 applications for copies of birth certificates were found on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) storage bucket. (The bucket also had 90,400 death certificate applications but these could not be accessed or downloaded.)

The bucket wasn’t protected with a password, allowing anyone who knew the easy-to-guess web address access to the data.

Each application process differed by state, but performed the same task: allowing customers to apply to their state’s record-keeping authority — usually a state’s department of health — to obtain a copy of their historical records. The applications we reviewed contained the applicant’s name, date-of-birth, current home address, email address, phone number, and historical personal information, including past addresses, names of family members, and the reason for the application — such as applying for a passport or researching family history.

The applications dated back to late-2017 and the bucket was updating daily. In one week, the company added about 9,000 applications to the bucket.

U.K.-based penetration testing company Fidus Information Security found the exposed data. TechCrunch verified the data by matching names and addresses against public records.

Fidus and TechCrunch sent several emails prior to publication to warn of the exposed data, but we received only automated emails and no action was taken. We are not naming the company. When reached, Amazon would not intervene but said it would inform the customer.

We also reached out to the local data protection authority to warn of the security lapse, but it did not immediately comment

Read more:

• Sprint contractor left thousands of US cell phone bills exposed
• Tuft & Needle exposed thousands of customer shipping labels
• StockX was hacked, exposing millions of customers’ data
• Stop saying, ‘We take your privacy and security seriously’
• Capital One breach also hit other major companies, say researchers
• Macy’s said hackers stole customer credit cards — again

Microsoft has for years promised it would eventually shut do to-do list app Wunderlist, which it acquired in 2015, in favor of its own app, To Do — after it felt the latter was able to offer a competitive experience that included Wunderlist’s best features. Today, Microsoft is finally announcing a shut-down date for Wunderlist of May 6, 2020. After this date, Wunderlist to-do’s will no longer sync but users will still be able to import their content into Microsoft’s own To Do app.

To be fair, Microsoft allowed Wunderlist to operate far longer than expected, compared with how most acquisitions of this nature tend to fare. And the company prepared Wunderlist users for the app’s inevitable closure as far back as April 2017.

In the meantime, Microsoft has been working to ensure that users’ favorite features — like list groups (folders), steps (subtasks), file attachments, sharing, and task assignments — made their way over to Microsoft To Do.

In September, Microsoft unveiled another upgrade for To Do which hinted the Wunderlist shut down could be nearing, with the addition of new backgrounds, smart lists and a personalized daily planner offering smart suggestions of tasks to be accomplished. It also integrated To Do with other Microsoft apps like Outlook, Microsoft Planner, Cortana, and Microsoft Launcher on Android.

At the same time, Wunderlist’s creator Christian Reber took to Twitter to express remorse over Wunderlist’s coming closure, and even suggested he would buy the app back if allowed. Reber wasn’t expressing sour grapes, necessarily, but rather a desire to fulfill his original vision for the app which included building out features like shared folders and cross-team collaboration, for example. (Reber is currently involved with a new content collaboration startup, Pitch, which he co-founded. So returning to Wunderlist never really seemed feasible.)

Microsoft says it decided to now move to close down Wunderlist because it has stopped releasing new features for the app and, as the app ages, it will become more difficult to maintain. In addition, it wants to at last focus its full energies on making its To Do app the best alternative to Wunderlist.

While Wunderlist to-do’s will no longer sync after May 6, 2020, the app will be supported until that time. As time goes on, Microsoft will make no guarantees that everything will continue to work properly after the end date.

Microsoft also says that, as of today, it’s no longer accepting new sign-ups for Wunderlist in preparation for the app’s closure.

To make the switch, To Do users can access the iOS, Android, Mac, PC, or web app to use the Wunderlist importer. (A link to the importer is in the Settings.) You can also choose to export lists from Wunderlist to To Do from the Wunderlist app, if you prefer.

Once your content is properly imported, users can switch over to To Do, which now features a similar design following the fall update, but introduces new features as well, like the personalized My Day home screen. In addition, Microsoft Outlook emails and Planner tasks can now be sent to To Do. Meanwhile, a Planned Smart List will how everything with a due date, and this can be configured to only show today’s tasks, if you prefer.

“Some of you have been on this journey with us since the very beginning,” said Microsoft, in an announcement. “You, our users, mean everything to us, and we hope that you continue to share our vision and join us on this next step of our journey. You helped us make Wunderlist what it is, and we’d love for you to help us do the same with To Do. Tell us what you love and what you’d like to see added or updated. With our latest additions – printing, smart due dates, and dark mode – you can be sure that we always take your feedback into consideration when building new features,” the company said.

The next big thing in robotics and automation just might be construction. Technology has already revolutionized manufacturing and logistics, and now a number of well-funded startups are looking to do the same to the construction industry. This March at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI, we’ll be bringing together a trio of companies that have the industry and investors buzzing.

Noah Campbell-Ready is the founder and CEO of Built Robotics, a startup that has developed a heavy-duty autonomous bulldozer. The system has already been piloted for 7,500 hours, with a perfect safety record. The company raised a $33 million Series B in September, bringing its total up to $48 million.

Tessa Lau is the CEO and founder of Dusty Robotics, a Bay Area-based startup that has developed a robot designed to help automate building layouts at construction sites. The robot is capable of bringing plans to life with extreme accuracy. Dusty raised a $5 million seed round last month.

Toggle CEO Daniel Blank will be rounding out the pan. A new kid on the block, the Brooklyn-based company raised a $3 million seed round in October for robots the fabricate and assemble rebar.

The companies will be joining us on stage at UC Berkeley on March 3 for TC Sessions: Robotics+AI to discuss how robotics and automation will help transform construction sites of the future.

After months of statements, the biggest challenge yet to T-Mobile and Sprint’s proposed merger kicks off today in a Manhattan court. The trial is the result of pushback from a coalition of attorneys general of 13 states and the District of Columbia, who have raised flags over the proposed $26 billion merging of the country’s third- and fourth-largest carriers.

“Today we stand on the side of meaningful competition and affordable options for consumers,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “Our airwaves belong to the public, who are entitled to more, not less. This merger would hurt the most vulnerable people among us– leaving consumers with fewer choices and higher prices. We’re fighting in court with a 14-state strong coalition for then, and for all Americans, and we’re confident the law is on our side.”

The AGs contend that such a merger will decrease competition in the U.S. telecom market, by knocking the number of major carriers down to three. T-Mobile and Sprint, on the other hand, have argued that it will do the opposite, suggesting that the companies’ pooled powers would better equip them to take on Verizon and AT&T in the rush to 5G.

Over the summer, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued an order essentially arguing with the carriers and suggested the deal move forward. “The evidence conclusively demonstrates that this transaction will bring fast 5G wireless service to many more Americans and help close the digital divide in rural areas,” he said in August.

The trial is expected to last three weeks, per The Wall Street Journal, kicking off with today’s opening statements. Sprint Chairman Marcelo Claure and soon-to-be-former T-Mobile CEO John Legere will take the stand to make their case against the AGs.