From Reuters:
The Federal Trade Commission is probing Facebook Inc to check if the social media company’s acquisitions were aimed at snapping up potential rivals before they could become a threat, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.Possibly related:
The company's acquisition practices are the main focus of the probe, as FTC is looking into Facebook buying technology-based startup's to keep them from challenging it, the report here on Thursday said......MORE
July 23
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)
- This appears to be restraint of trade, maybe someone in the Department of Justice will take a look....
