Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride Home for Monday, December 28th, 2020.

I'm Brian McCullough today.

The Chinese Communist Party is throwing serious cold water on its entire tech sector by continuing to target Jack Ma.

Did Elon Musk once try to sell Tesla to Apple?

Drones are getting digital license plates of a sort.

And a look at the generation of search-engine startups hoping to, you know,

maybe strike at Google while the antitrust iron is hot.

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

So what did we miss? Well over the break the whole Chinese Communist Party versus Jack Ma thing got even more interesting.

China's market regulator suddenly announced an antitrust investigation into Alibaba for alleged monopolistic practices.

Yes, this sort of thing can happen in China too, I guess, because as far as we know this is the first

investigation of its kind in China's internet sector ever quoting the

financial times the market regulator said it was investigating

suspected monopolistic practices, including Alibaba's tactic of forcing

merchants to sell exclusively on its platform, a practice known as pick one of two in China among other issues.

The brief statement from China's state administration of market regulations said the

investigation into Alibaba had been opened recently after complaints.

Alibaba's Hong Kong listed shares fell more than 8% in early trading.

Alibaba said it, quote, will actively cooperate with the regulators on the investigation, end quote, and that its business operations remain normal.

This is China's first antitrust investigation into a Chinese internet company for abusing its market dominance, said Scott Yu, an antitrust expert at

Jean-Loon law firm.

Quote, in a worst-case scenario, Alibaba could be fined up to 10% of its previous years

...