Washington: The US government is sharpening its anti-trust scrutiny of Big Tech. In a sign that formal inquiries could be forthcoming, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission last week divvied up anti-trust oversight for Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
While the timing caught some by surprise, the companies have been preparing for this moment for a while, hiring lawyers and lobbyists and publicly making their case. History may be on their side: Corporate breakups are a significant, and rare, undertaking for the US government.
The last major breakup of a monopoly was AT&T in 1982. Microsoft was ordered split up by a federal judge in 2000 after the Justice Department sued the software company in 1998, a decision that was reversed on appeal.In the past few years, there has been a groundswell of calls to at least rein in, if not break up, technology companies that are seen by some as having become too big and powerful in many ways.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren has made perhaps the most detailed case for breaking up and regulating the four companies, but the Massachusetts Democrat is not alone in her aggressive views on the industry. Any formal investigation will take a long time. Government scrutiny of Microsoft lasted years.
As all sides dig in, here’s a look at some of the issues the government could home in on as it builds its case, and some of the ways the companies might argue their way out.
Agencies
