U.S. Justice Department antitrust chief Makan Delrahim says that existent U.S. antitrust laws are “flexible enough” to address harm caused by technology companies, in the face of growing criticism that such laws cannot tackle tech monopolies.
While Republicans and Democrats agree that Big Tech has problems, they often differ on what those problems are — and how to fix them.
A majority of high tech execs act unethically at least some of the time, or at least that is the perception of more than 10,000 people who participated in a survey for Pew Research Center. It is unclear to what extent either recent congressional attacks or the various breaches, data sharing missteps and other issues, have contributed to that perception.
The Justice Department’s antitrust division chief, Makan Delrahim, said Tuesday that its probes of “market-leading online platforms” such as Alphabet’s Google were a “priority” that could result in either “law enforcement or policy options as solutions.”
Following years of federal inaction, the nation’s state attorneys general are initiating sweeping antitrust investigations against Silicon Valley’s largest Big Tech companies, probing whether they undermine rivals and harm consumers. Their latest salvo arrives today, when more than 40 attorneys general are expected to announce their plan to investigate Google, delivering a rare rebuke of the search-and-advertising giant — and its efforts to maintain that dominance — from the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.
FTC Chairman Joe Simons, who is overseeing a tech task force, for the first time said he is prepared to break up major tech companies. He said this could be done by “unwinding” past mergers if the agency finds the companies are harming competition. Antitrust experts have argued for years that major tech companies buy startups to shut down their competition.
Exclusives
National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith said the government should start applying a public interest standard to Google and Facebook and other Big Tech titans. That was in an interview for C-SPAN’s Communicators series.
Tech companies like Google and Facebook have created great wealth for themselves by harvesting and commercializing the private data that users of their services carelessly leave behind. Now, policymakers and researchers are looking for ways to assign a value to the data and share some of the digital wealth with individuals and society.
A Tuesday afternoon panel of the House Judiciary Committee focused on whether it’s time for Congress to rein in these companies, which are among the largest on Earth by several measures. Central to that case is whether their business practices run afoul of century-old laws originally designed to combat railroad and oil monopolies.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust chief suggested Tuesday he’ll take a broad view of how competition is harmed when assessing whether big tech firms should be broken […]
Lines are blurring or becoming more stark among different tech, media and telecom companies. Telecom companies are producing content, while platform companies are exploring new services like internet connections. That means sectors are no longer staying in their lanes, and regulatory scrutiny is shifting.
