On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said he expected Justice Department investigations of Big Tech – Facebook, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, and Apple – to be completed next year.
“We started in earnest in July. It’s been moving very quickly,” Barr told the Wall Street Journal CEO Council. “We’re talking very broadly with people and getting a lot of input from people in the industry and experts and so forth.”
“I’d like to have it completed some time next year. I think it’s important to move quickly on things,” Barr said. “These things have a cost to the marketplace and businesses. I think at some point the government has to fish or cut bait.”
The attorney general, however, also cited his previous work for Verizon Communications, in arguing that big companies provided some benefits to consumers, particularly in telecommunications.
“Big is not bad,” he said. “I think in certain network industries you can be too Balkanized and no one has the scale necessary for the kind of innovation that we’re seeing.”
MacDailyNews Take: We’ll say this until we’re the color of the “Daily” in our logo: Lumping Apple in with the likes of Google and Facebook is preposterous!
Unlike Google or, arguably, Facebook, Apple does not have a monopoly in any market in which it participates. (Neither does Amazon, for that matter.)
The real problems where too much power is concentrated and the potential for abuse of their market power is greatest is clearly Google and Facebook.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]