DOJ Opens Sweeping Anti-Trust Probe of Big Tech Firms

[Sanguine]

The Department of Justice is opening a sweeping anti-trust review to determine whether the country’s leading technology firms are stifling competition in violation of federal law, it announced Tuesday.

“Without the discipline of meaningful market-based competition, digital platforms may act in ways that are not responsive to consumer demands,” Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Antitrust Division said in a statement announcing the remarkably broad probe. “The Department’s antitrust review will explore these important issues.”

The Antitrust Division will work to determine whether companies such as Facebook, Google, and Apple have “reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers” as they’ve grown dramatically in recent years and begun expanding into various industries by acquiring smaller potential competitors. The Federal Trade Commission is conducting a separate, more limited investigation into potential monopolistic abuses by Facebook and Amazon....

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/doj-opens-sweeping-anti-trust-probe-into-big-tech-firms/

[Sanguine]

This image didn't come from this story, but I liked it.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

These are all successful firms which caused the demise of their principal competitors.

Unlike past cases of busting up of monopolies like AT&T or Standard Oil, this would not be about money, but about influence.