Congress Gets Ready to Smash Big Tech Monopolies - BIG by Matt Stoller

What makes these platforms unusually dangerous is that they are gatekeepers with surveillance power, and they can thus wield “near-perfect market intelligence” to copy or undermine would-be rivals. For Apple the dominant facility is the App store, for Google it’s the search engine, Maps, adtech, etc, for Facebook it’s social media, and for Amazon it’s the marketplace, AWS, Alexa, Fulfillment, and so forth. They exploit their gatekeeping and surveillance power to extract revenue, fortify their competitive barriers, and subsidize entry into new markets.

Over and over, the report just lays into the Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Division for refusing to enforce monopolization laws and failing to stop mergers, even when they had evidence that such mergers were anti-competitive. The four companies bought more than 500 companies since 1998. However, "for most, if not all, of the acquisitions discussed in this Report,” it says, “the FTC had advance notice of the deals, but did not attempt to block any of them." What were the priorities of the agencies? "Both agencies have targeted their enforcement efforts on relatively small players—including ice skating teachers and organists—raising questions about their enforcement priorities." Ouch.