[ad_1]
US Department of Justice antitrust investigation may soon be investigated for research activities and potentially other aspects of society's sprawling empire, report released Friday evening Friday. The Wall Street Journal. The Department of Justice reportedly spent the last few weeks preparing for the probe. Following the publication of WSJThe story of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Bloomberg also confirm the imminence of an antitrust probe.
Citing unnamed sources, the WSJ said the Federal Trade Commission, which works alongside the DOJ to bring federal antitrust cases, will be referred to the Department of Justice in this case. Earlier, the FTC filed lawsuits against the company in 2011 over the installation of tracking cookies in Apple's Safari browser. This case was resolved a year later by a civil conviction of $ 22.5 million, at the time the largest judgment of this kind ever won by the FTC in court. According to WSJ, the FTC then investigated Google in 2013 for extensive antitrust violations, but closed the case without filing a lawsuit against the search giant. At present, the Department of Justice is leading a potentially unprecedented new antitrust badessment of the company.
The sanction of the FTC 2011 is tiny compared to the three antitrust fines imposed on Google by the European Union, which has imposed Google billions of dollars in fines because of its research practices, the software provided with its Android operating system and, more recently, non-competition. contracts that it required customers to sign when using their AdSense product. The Google antitrust bill from the EU now stands at 8.2 billion euros ($ 9.3 billion).
In the United States, Google has remained virtually unscathed, even though it has become, with Facebook, one of the most dominant digital advertising companies on the planet. Google is also dominant in the search engine, web browser, mobile operating system, e-mail and many other product categories, contributing to its ability to collect data and to serve targeted ads. This has led Google to become a prime target for politicians and regulators seeking to control the power of Silicon Valley, the most important being the presidential candidate of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in 2020.
Due to its lack of a traditional social platform, Google has generally avoided breaking a fire for encouraging Russia's interference in the 2016 US elections and for various election engineering interventions, the Organization of the far right and the false information that has affected Facebook and Twitter in recent years. the last three years. But Google has become involved in many other controversies related to the repeated violations of privacy in Gmail and Chrome, the extremism and exploitation of children on YouTube, his work with the Pentagon on a drone project , to his work developing a search engine for the Chinese market, and ethical considerations and oversight of his research on artificial intelligence.
Although none of these issues are in the clear on the competition ground, Big Tech's animosity both to the public and lawmakers about the uncontrolled domination of Silicon Valley and its lack of clear action to tackle difficult problems have created a much more confrontational atmosphere, especially around topics such as privacy, AI, in collaboration with the US government, and. In turn, this seems to have created a break between Washington and the technology sector, once a friendly ally under the Obama administration, which lays the foundation for potentially important regulatory action.
Google has also become a prime target for conservatives who believe, through YouTube and Google Search, that the company stifles its rhetoric and displays a bias towards Republicans and non-liberal views. President Donald Trump, who has accused Google of rigging the results of his research against him and other conservative people, has elevated this position. There is nothing to suggest that the theory that Google is biased against the Conservatives, which has no basis, influences this investigation, but society was forced to answer in Congress for its perceptions of bias.
It is unclear exactly what aspects of Google's activity the DOJ could focus on and whether it intends to echo the investigations of the EU Antitrust Authority. The latter challenged Google's software with its standard Android license, how its search engine rankings might favor its own product listings, and how the company has undermined competition in the digital advertising market. through contractual clauses imposed on customers. But the US is much more lenient in terms of competition in the market than Europe, which is one of the reasons why companies like Google and Facebook have managed to reach such a huge size and influence that regulators have little or no barriers.
Google and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
[ad_2]
Source link
