I guess yesterday's intro line:
There is going to be a reckoning and the data mongers, the tech companies and the centralized repositories will not believe what is going to happen to them.was borderline prescient. Or maybe just borderline.
From Bloomberg, August 13:
The head of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said he's prepared to break up major technology platforms if necessary by undoing their past mergers as his agency investigates whether companies including Facebook Inc are harming competition.If interested see also this month's:
FTC chairman Joe Simons, who is leading a broad review of the technology sector, said in an interview Tuesday that breaking up a company is challenging, but could be the right remedy to rein in dominant companies and restore competition.
"If you have to, you do it," Mr Simons said about breaking up tech companies. "It's not ideal because it's very messy. But if you have to you have to."
Mr Simons is overseeing a tech task force to examine conduct in the industry and could move to unwind mergers if investigators find the deals were anticompetitive. The agency has opened a broad investigation into Facebook, including whether the company acquired startups to thwart competition, according to people familiar with the matter.
Antitrust experts and lawmakers argue that giant tech companies have used a wave of takeovers of startups to shut down competition by buying - and eliminating - emerging rivals.
Facebook bought photo-sharing site Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp, a messaging service, in 2014. The FTC approved both acquisitions at the time. Critics including Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes have called for antitrust enforcers to unwind those deals.
US antitrust officials could move to undo the acquisitions even though they previously won approval, Mr Simons said. The FTC could say "we made a mistake," he said. A breakup would require court approval.
Facebook declined to comment.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he welcomes regulation, but that breaking up the company wouldn't address legislators' privacy and data concerns. In fact, Facebook argues that its size actually enables it to do the things that regulators want to see, such as better policing of content, which would be much harder if Instagram or WhatsApp were separate companies.....MUCH MORE
August 6
Facebook Antitrust: Restraint of Trade (FB)
72 Facebook Acquisitions – The Complete List (2019)!
August 1
"Facebook: FTC Antitrust Probe of Facebook Scrutinizes Its Acquisitions--3rd Update" (FB)
And previously:
July 23
U.S. DOJ Antitrust Division "Reviewing the Practices of Market-Leading Online Platforms" ( FB; GOOG; AMZN; AAPL)
The symbols in the headline are in rank order of probable exposure to old-school antitrust sanctions. Twitter if it were included would appear in the middle.
Facebook and Google have an especially egregious pattern of acquiring, crushing or copying nascent competition, the type of behavior most amenable to classical antitrust analysis. See:
The symbols in the headline are in rank order of probable exposure to old-school antitrust sanctions. Twitter if it were included would appear in the middle.
Facebook and Google have an especially egregious pattern of acquiring, crushing or copying nascent competition, the type of behavior most amenable to classical antitrust analysis. See:
- Have A Start-Up? DON'T Step Into Google and Facebook’s “Kill Zone”: (FB; GOOG)
- "Facebook’s willingness to copy rivals’ apps seen as hurting innovation" (FB).
- Chicago Booth: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″ (GOOG, FB)
- "The DOJ’s antitrust chief just telegraphed exactly how it could go after Google, Apple and other big tech companies" (GOOG; FB; TWTR; AMZN)
- "...How Facebook Squashes Competition From Startups" (FB, AMZN, AAPL, GOOG)
