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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice, which enforce antitrust laws in the U.S., have divided oversight over the four companies. Amazon and Facebook under the watch of the FTC, and Apple and Google under the Justice Department.
The U.S. government is preparing to investigate whether Silicon Valley tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google misused their market power, sources told Reuters on Monday.
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The call for a “deeper dive” into big tech companies, as Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn said, has been echoed across the aisle, even U.S. President Donald Trump has requested for closer scrutiny of social media companies and Google, accusing them of suppressing conservative voices online, without presenting any evidence.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R) said that the business model of big tech companies needs to be scrutinized, adding that “it’s got so much power, and so unregulated.” If the investigation is pushed forward it would mark an unprecedented, wide-ranging inquiry involving various state agencies.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice, which enforce antitrust laws in the U.S., have divided oversight over the four companies. Amazon and Facebook under the watch of the FTC, and Apple and Google under the Justice Department.
With this jurisdiction established, the next step is for the two federal agencies to decide if they want to proceed with formal investigations. Yet with just the preliminary announcement markets were shocked, as shares of Facebook Inc fell 7.5 percent on Monday, while Google’s owner Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, and Apple Inc. all dipped in six, 4.6 and one percent respectively.
For too long, antitrust enforcers have sat on their hands as Amazon, Apple, Google & Facebook amassed mountains of private data & market power. We’ve reached a tipping point & the dam is breaking. Big Tech is no longer entitled to our trust—we need to end the cycle of impunity. https://t.co/COTg1W0yAn
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) June 4, 2019
The four Silicon Valley companies have been recently scrutinized over their grasp on the digital market. Amazon has been criticized for holding sway over third-party sellers, while Apple is the subject of a European Union investigation into a complaint made by streaming music provider Spotify Technology SA.
The FTC settled an investigation of Google in 2013 with a reprimand. The company has been fined multiple times by the European Union’s competition regulator, most recently in March for U$1.7 billion in a case focused on illegal practices in search advertising brokering from 2006 to 2016.
Meanwhile, Facebook is facing many security and privacy scandals, worrying many as the tech-company owns the biggest social network, with more than two billion users across the world. It also owns the private messaging platforms WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, each used by more than one billion people.
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has called for the break-up of the company, making an argument against the unchecked power Mark Zuckerberg has with it.
Separately, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opened its own investigation into competition in digital markets, as U.S. legislators have called for federal privacy regulation.
While two U.S. senators introduced a bill on April to ban online social media companies, like Facebook and Twitter, from using practices known as “dark patterns”, which are interfaces - usually pop-ups - designed to deliberately deceive users into giving personal data.
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