Brent Kendall for The Wall Street Journal:
The Justice Department is opening a broad antitrust review into whether dominant technology firms are unlawfully stifling competition, adding a new Washington threat for companies such as Facebook Inc., Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. The review is geared toward examining the practices of online platforms that dominate internet search, social media and retail services, the department said, confirming the review shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported it…
The Justice Department will examine issues including how the most dominant tech firms have grown in size and might — and expanded their reach into additional businesses. The Justice Department also is interested in how Big Tech has leveraged the powers that come with having very large networks of users, the department said. … There is no defined end-goal yet for the Big Tech review other than to understand whether there are antitrust problems that need addressing, but a broad range of options are on the table, the officials said. The department’s inquiry could eventually lead to more focused investigations of specific company conduct, they said.
MacDailyNews Take: Regarding Apple, the company does not have a monopoly or anything close to a monopoly in any market in which they compete, so the DOJ shouldn’t be wasting time on any Apple antitrust investigations. It’s ridiculous.
Google and Facebook, of course, are different stories. On those companies, investigate away, U.S. DOJ!