The Justice Department’s surprise Big Tech investigation was highly unusual and it could actually turn out to be good news for the tech giants…
Troy Wolverton for Business Insider:
The US Department of Justice’s surprise press release Tuesday of its Big Tech investigation was designed to send a signal to a lot of groups — but tech companies were not really one of them.
The announcement was an unusually public performance by a federal regulator which typically prizes confidentiality in such matters. That’s because it was basically a notice, intended particularly to a key figure in Congress, that the Justice Department will now be spearheading the antitrust investigations into the big tech companies, said David Balto, an antitrust lawyer in Washington D.C. with decades of experience working for and with competition regulators officials there…
Balto says that while the Justice Department may leave some issues to the FTC, Tuesday’s announcement indicates that the DOJ is laying claim to all inquiries involving online platform and marketplace issues — the core of the antitrust charges made against the big tech companies…
The Department of Justice hasn’t filed a major suit under the Sherman Antitrust Act since the Microsoft case two decades ago. And the agency actually has fewer legal options when it comes to policing competition than does the FTC, he said. “I don’t think anybody’s going to lose any more sleep that this is all with the Justice Department,” Balto said. “If anything, they’ll feel more comfortable in their legal position.”
MacDailyNews Take: Regarding Apple, the compnay 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. Any company that controls 92.62% of worldwide search on the Internet, as Google does, controls too much. And Facebook… don’t even get us started. Hopefully, the DOJ sees both of these outfits for what they are and finally proceeds accordingly.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]