By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-14-20
Federal Trade Commission chairman Joseph Simons is cautioning against a rush to regulate big tech.
That came in virtual remarks at the International Competition Network (ICN) annual conference. ICN is a convocation of global competition authorities. In addition to being FTC chair, Simons is former head of the commission’s antitrust division.
The FTC and Justice are both investigating dominant digital platforms for how they got so big and whether it was by skirting antitrust laws, or alternatively, because the laws have not been able to keep up with the explosive growth of companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter.
Currently, the FTC is studying Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft to “better understand” some of the acquisitions they made that were not subject to pre-merger reviews because their price points at the time were below the trigger for such reviews. » Read More