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A bike messenger carries a DoorDash bag during a delivery in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The City of Chicago filed two sweeping lawsuits against DoorDash and Grubhub for allegedly deceiving customers and using unfair business practices.

The suits echo longstanding claims from restaurant owners that the platforms advertise delivery services for their businesses without their consent and conceal lower prices that restaurants offer directly to customers outside of the platforms.

The city also claims both platforms use a “bait-and-switch” method to attract customers with low delivery fees, only to charge additional ones when they are about to place their order.

In separate statements, both DoorDash and Grubhub called the lawsuits “baseless.”

A DoorDash spokesperson said the company “has stood with the City of Chicago throughout the pandemic, waiving fees for restaurants, providing $500,000 in direct grants, creating strong earning opportunities, and delivering food and other necessities to communities in need.” 

In November, DoorDash stopped adding new restaurants that it doesn’t have agreements with to its app. It also said it will remove restaurants that don’t want to be listed within 48 hours of being notified.

Grubhub similarly says it removes listing for non-partner restaurants when asked. It said only a small percentage of such businesses have requested removal. The company said its contracts require restaurants to offer customers at least as favorable prices on its platform as available elsewhere, contrary to the city’s assertion that it conceals lower prices off the platform.

“Every single allegation is categorically wrong and we will aggressively defend our business practices,” a Grubhub spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to responding in court and are confident we will prevail.”

The city is seeking to end the alleged misconduct by mandating more transparency, civil penalties and restitution for consumers and restaurants hurt by the alleged practices.

The suits include additional claims specific to each company.

The city alleged that Grubhub deceptively shared telephone numbers for customers to connect with restaurants, but would charge the restaurants a commission for calls placed through those numbers, even when they didn’t result in an order. The city also claimed Grubhub made “imposter websites” for restaurants to unexpectedly lure customers to its own platform.

Grubhub has maintained that its creation of sites for restaurants does not violate laws, though it has ended the practice. The company also changed its phone routing system on Aug. 23 so that calls from customers seeking answers from restaurants not about an existing order will be sent directly to those businesses at no cost.

The suit claims Grubhub’s marketing campaigns promoting local restaurants during the pandemic were deceptive, while it allegedly forced restaurants to extend their contracts and cover promotion costs. It also alleged Grubhub violated Chicago’s 15% emergency cap on commissions that delivery platforms could take from restaurants.

Grubhub denied violating Chicago’s emergency commission cap and denied that its pandemic campaign was deceptive. The company said more than $500,000 that it raised in the campaign went to Chicago restaurants.

The city claimed DoorDash misled customers about how their tips for drivers would be used. This issue has been the subject of a separate lawsuit from the attorney general of the District of Columbia. DoorDash has said it changed its tipping method prior to the D.C. attorney general’s suit. It reached a $2.5 million settlement with his office in November over those claims.

Chicago also alleged DoorDash misleadingly labeled a $1.50 fee placed on every order as a “Chicago Fee.” The city claimed this wrongly implied the fee was required by or paid to Chicago rather than DoorDash.

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Oracle, Silver Lake & MGX will be main investors in TikTok U.S., sources say

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Oracle, Silver Lake & MGX will be main investors in TikTok U.S., sources say

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Oracle, Silver Lake & Abu Dhabi’s MGX will be main investors in TikTok’s U.S. business, sources told CNBC’s David Faber on Thursday. 

Those three entities will control roughly 45% of TikTok USA, Faber reported. ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent, will own 19.9%, with the remaining 35% in the hands of ByteDance investors.

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday backing the proposed deal that will keep the social media app running in the U.S. ByteDance has faced an ultimatum under a federal law requiring it to either divest the platform’s American business or be shut down in the U.S. That law passed with bipartisan support from members of Congress who expressed national security concerns about the app and its potent content algorithm.

Trump has been trying to keep the app afloat, repeatedly mentioning how important it was to his victory in November. Billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass is a major ByteDance investor through Susquehanna, and he also owns a stake in the owner of Truth Social, Trump’s social media company.

Backers of ByteDance, including General Atlantic, Susquehanna and Sequoia, are expected to contribute equity in the new TikTok USA, sources told Faber.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order delaying the divestiture deadline until Dec. 16.

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Microsoft cuts off cloud services to Israeli military unit after report of storing Palestinians’ phone calls

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Microsoft cuts off cloud services to Israeli military unit after report of storing Palestinians' phone calls

Microsoft President Brad Smith, left, speaks at a press conference on future visions for the development and application of artificial intelligence in education in North Rhine-Westphalia at the Representation of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in Berlin on June 4, 2025. To his right is Hendrik Wüst (CDU), Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, in front of the sign “From coal to AI.”

Soeren Stache | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Microsoft said Thursday that it has stopped providing certain services to a division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The company did not say which specific services it had stopped providing.

The decision comes after the software company investigated an August report from The Guardian saying the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 had built a system for tracking Palestinians’ phone calls.

“While our review is ongoing, we have found evidence that supports elements of The Guardian’s reporting,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and vice chair, wrote in an email to employees. “This evidence includes information relating to IMOD consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services.”

Microsoft’s decision to stop providing those services follows pressure from employees who have protested Israel’s use of the company’s software as part of its invasion of Gaza. Over the last few weeks, Microsoft has fired five employees who participated in protests at company headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

The move comes a week after a United Nations commission said that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians with its invasion of Gaza.

Microsoft told Israeli defense officials that it had decided to disable cloud-based storage an artificial intelligence subscriptions the agency was using, Smith wrote. He said Microsoft does not look at customer data for the type of review it conducted, and he thanked the British newspaper for its reporting on the development.

“As employees, we all have a shared interest in privacy protection, given the business value it creates by ensuring our customers can rely on our services with rock solid trust,” Smith wrote.

On Thursday The Guardian reported that unnamed intelligence sources had said Unit 8200 was planning to migrate its supply of the phone calls to Amazon Web Services, the market-leading public cloud. AWS did not immediately comment.

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Amazon reaches $2.5 billion settlement with FTC over ‘deceptive’ Prime program

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Amazon reaches .5 billion settlement with FTC over 'deceptive' Prime program

The Amazon Prime logo is displayed on the side of an Amazon delivery truck in Richmond, California, on June 21, 2023.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that the company duped users into paying for Prime memberships, the regulatory agency announced Thursday.

The surprise settlement comes as Amazon and the FTC were just three days into the trial in a Seattle federal court. Opening arguments in the case occurred Tuesday, but the settlement allows Amazon to avoid having a jury at the trial return a verdict with potentially larger damages than the settlement with the FTC.

The lawsuit, filed by the FTC in June 2023 under the Biden administration, claimed that Amazon deceived tens of millions of customers into signing up for its Prime subscription program and sabotaged their attempts to cancel it. Three senior Amazon executives were at risk of being held individually liable if the jury sided with the FTC.

Amazon will pay a $1 billion civil penalty to the FTC and will refund $1.5 billion to an estimated 35 million customers impacted by “unwanted Prime enrollment or deferred cancellation,” the agency said. Under the terms of the settlement, Amazon will give $51 to eligible customers within 90 days.

Amazon admitted no wrongdoing in agreeing to settle, the FTC said.

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The agreement prohibits Amazon from misrepresenting the terms of Prime. It also requires the company to make clear and conspicuous disclosures about the terms of the program during enrollment, and says Amazon must get consumers’ express consent before charging them for a subscription. Amazon also has to provide an easy way for users to cancel their subscription, the agency said.

As part of the settlement, Amazon and two of its executives, Prime boss Jamil Ghani and Neil Lindsay, a senior vice president in the company’s health division who previously held a role in the Prime business, will be prohibited from unlawful conduct.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson called the penalty a “monumental win” for the agency under the Trump administration.

“The Trump-Vance FTC is committed to fighting back when companies try to cheat ordinary Americans out of their hard-earned pay,” Ferguson said in a statement.

Amazon spokesperson Mark Blafkin said in a statement that the company and its executives “have always followed the law and this settlement allows us to move forward and focus on innovating for customers.”

The penalty is one of the largest ever imposed by the FTC. The agency in 2019 hit Facebook, now known as Meta, with a $5 billion fine for violating consumers’ privacy.

Still, the $2.5 billion fine is equivalent to roughly 0.1% of Amazon’s market cap, which now sits at close to $2.4 trillion. Shares of Amazon were up slightly following the announcement.

Launched in 2005, Amazon’s Prime program has grown to become one of the most popular subscription services in the world, with more than 200 million members globally, and it has generated billions of dollars for the company. Membership costs $139 a year and includes perks like free shipping and access to streaming content. Data has shown that Prime members spend more and shop more often than non-Prime members.

Amazon still faces a bigger legal case with the FTC.

In 2023, the regulator accused the company of illegally stifling competition in the e-commerce market. The FTC was joined by attorneys general from 17 states, in alleging Amazon used “monopoly power” to inflate prices, degrade quality for shoppers and unlawfully exclude rivals, thereby undermining competition.

Amazon won partial dismissal of the case last year, but is still slated to go to trial against the FTC in 2027.

Earlier this month, the U.S. district judge overseeing Google’s antitrust case ruled against the most severe consequences that were proposed by the Department of Justice, including the forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser. Google lost the case against the government last year, but was spared of having to divest of any key assets.

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