Have the giants of social networks, search engines and e-commerce become too powerful? Washington officially launched Tuesday an extensive investigation to determine it.
Already blacklisted on issues of privacy and personal data, the giants of Silicon Valley are also increasingly blamed for becoming almost monopolistic, to the detriment of their users.
The Ministry of Justice does not name the companies targeted by its procedure, but seems to target companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter or Amazon, dominant in their respective markets.
Although it sells mainly iPhones and other electronic devices, Apple could also be in the line of fire to the extent that the group manages, with the App Store, an online store.
The authorities want to determine how these companies have become so inevitable in their markets and whether they have resorted to practices “that have reduced competition, prevented innovation or affected consumers”.
American election officials and regulators have been fighting for several months against the giants of tech.
Google, for example, is regularly suspected of favoring, in the search engine results, its own services to the detriment of its rivals.
The Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives has already launched a survey in June on “competition in the digital market”, stating that “a small number of dominant and unregulated platforms” had “extraordinary power in trade, communication and online information “. The agency in charge of consumer protection (FTC) also conducts investigations.
– Fears of Internet users –
The authorities said in a statement to “take into account the widespread fears of consumers, businesses and entrepreneurs” who “have raised concerns about research services, social networks and online trading platforms.”
“Without the discipline of meaningful competition, digital platforms can employ ways that do not meet the demands of consumers,” commented Makan Delrahim, Antitrust Officer at the US Department of Justice, in the paper.
The American authorities are not the only ones to blame their practices to the behemoths of the internet.
Accusing them of violating the rules of competition, the European Commission has already imposed three heavy fines on Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and announced last week the opening of a “thorough investigation” on Amazon, that she suspects using the data from independent retailers using her site to her advantage.
US regulators have the power not only to impose salvaged fines for non-compliance with competition rules, but also to order “structural” remedies to ensure greater competition in the marketplace, including splits.
However, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives says such a penalty seems unlikely.
“This titanic fight between Washington and tech giants makes more noise than bad” for the sector and “will probably result in some modifications of the economic model rather than forced dissolutions of activities”, he said. commented in a note.
“I do not think that the United States is seriously inclined to dismember these companies, because they are even more afraid that Chinese companies will become even bigger,” said Patrick Moorhead, founder of the Moor Insights & Strategy firm. .
Apple and Twitter did not want to comment.
Google, for its part, referred to the hearing of its director of economic policies before Congress last week, Adam Cohen. He was assured that the search engine had “helped lower prices and increased choice for consumers and traders in the United States and around the world.”
In any case, the companies concerned will be able to answer these accusations on the occasion of the publication of their quarterly results, Wednesday for Facebook and Thursday for Amazon and Alphabet.
