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On Friday, a panel of the US House of Representatives called for internal emails, detailed financial information and other company registrations from leaders of Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google, expanding the Antitrust investigation of Big Tech.
These letters are for Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Alphabet CEO Larry Page among others on October 14 during the last decade.
Apple's shares fell about 1.8% after the market opened. While Apple was mentioned as a potential target, the House of Representatives letter provided the first concrete evidence of a broad antitrust investigation.
Apple has been criticized for the policies and algorithms of its App Store to support its own products and smother third-party applications.
On Monday, the Texas Attorney General led a group of 50 Attorneys General of US states and territories in an investigation to determine whether Google was abusing its market power in advertising.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that a small number of companies have come to take an inordinate share of online commerce and communications," said the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. , Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, who signed the letters with the Republican Representative of the charts, David Cicilline. , who chairs the Antitrust Subcommittee and ranks Republican Jim Sensenbrenner.
"This information is essential for determining whether anti-competitive behavior is occurring, whether our antitrust enforcement agencies should investigate specific issues, and whether our antitrust laws need to be improved to better promote competition in digital markets." "said Collins in a statement.
Lawmakers look for emails from senior executives on topics such as acquisitions such as the purchase by AbeBooks by AbeBooks, PillPack, Eero, Ring, Zappos and Whole Foods; and Google's acquisition of AdMob, YouTube, Android and DoubleClick.
They're also looking for information on a variety of policies, including Google's decision to automatically sign in to Chrome for any user who signs in to any Google service.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Amazon and Facebook declined to comment. Google referred to a blog post this week saying that its services "create a choice for consumers".
The committee asked company executives for information on market shares, competitors, their largest customers for specific products and documents from other surveys.
He asked Apple for information about the App Store, including the decision to remove some parental control apps and its policy on the ability for iPhone users to set non-Apple apps by default.
The committee is seeking information on Facebook's purchase of Instagram, WhatsApp and Onavo and on its decisions to integrate Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp and to remove applications from its social graph.
The US Department of Justice said in July that it was investigating "whether and how" big tech companies "in search engines, social media and some online retail services "engaged in anti-competitive behavior. Google said it received an official request for documents from the Department of Justice at the end of August.
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