Big Tech is now on the federal government's target list for its anti-competitive tactics, but will anything really change?

The dominant market behavior of four of the largest technology companies now seems to be the responsibility of the US government, but the big question for consumers and investors is whether something will really change this time?

On Monday, a flood of Washington articles followed Friday's news – reported for the first time by the Wall Street Journal – that the Justice Department was preparing for an antitrust investigation into Alphabet Inc.

GOOG, -6.11%

GOOGL, -6,12%

Google. An even broader federal crackdown on Big Tech seems to be announcing, reports citing Monday government investigations on Apple Inc.

AAPL, -1.01%

Facebook Inc.

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and Amazon.com Inc.

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. The day ended with a report that the House Judiciary Committee had launched a bipartite investigation on a small number of "dominant and unregulated platforms".

"I think this shows that the agencies are listening to the political debate from both sides of the aisle," said Michael Carrier, Distinguished Law Professor at Rutgers Law School. "Democrats and Republicans are worried about the need to master major technologies and setting up antitrust."

On Monday, the newspaper announced that after a series of arrangements and negotiations, the Justice Ministry now had the power to launch an antitrust investigation on Google and Apple. Separately, the Federal Trade Commission would now have control of the anticompetitive activities of Facebook and Amazon. But the lawyers also warned that the talks seemed very preliminary and it was too early to draw any conclusions, although the Journal noted that Google and Facebook seemed to be closest to the agencies' top priority.

"It seems that the agencies may have had conversations about what is called" customs clearance ", which happens from time to time," said Maureen Ohlhausen, a partner at Baker Botts in Washington, DC and former Acting President and Commissioner of the FTC. "It is too early to draw a great conclusion from that."

Even so, the media and Wall Street began to speculate, causing a decline in Big Four shares, even as some analysts seemed to be largely unscathed by the threat of an anti-trust investigation by Google and potentially others. , such as Facebook.

An antitrust problem that has been a stumbling block in the past is whether consumers are victims of predatory pricing tactics, because the laws were designed before the creation of free Internet services and platforms. Even then, some now believe that consumers are paying for free Internet services with their data, and at the expense of their privacy, as recent scandals and data breaches have shown.

"In these industries, users trade with their data and attention. You can think of this as the cost of the product, "said Charlotte Slaiman, Public Knowledge's policy advisor, a non-profit organization that helps shape policies on behalf of the public interest. "The fact that products are free does not mean that antitrust laws do not apply, we just need to apply the right economic data."

If these investigations or investigations lead to full-fledged complaints or prosecutions, one of the most serious penalties is a multi-billion dollar fine – the likely outcome if a company is found guilty of anti-competitive behavior. But Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google parent, Alphabet, can easily afford to pay billions of dollars each fine, and continue on their merry way. By the end of April, Alphabet's earnings increase had been overturned by a $ 1.7 billion fine imposed by the European Union, but investors were more concerned about an apparent slowdown in revenue growth.

"We really want to see what anti-competitive harm has occurred," said Carrier of Rutgers, describing what the government will look for in its investigations. He pointed out that in the case of the EU, the complaint argued that Google favored its own comparator platforms by comparison in its search results, which harmed consumers by offering fewer choices.

But the last time the United States looked at Google's business practices in 2013, the The FTC has decided to close the investigation on the bias of Google's search engine because it could be "reasonably justified as an innovation improving Google's product and the experience of its users" , although some modifications made to his algorithms could have competitors. "Google has made other voluntary changes to its business practices with AdWords.