State attorneys general are formally launching separate antitrust probes into Facebook and Alphabet’s Google unit starting next week, putting added pressure on tech giants already under federal scrutiny.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said that her office was organizing a bipartisan, multi-state probe into social media company Facebook focusing on how its industry dominance harms competition, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Joining in the Facebook investigation so far are the attorneys general of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia.
The announcement comes days before dozens of states, including Louisiana, and led by Texas are expected to launch a separate antitrust investigation targeting Google and its advertising practices, CNN Business reports, in another probe that adds pressure on Silicon Valley’s biggest platforms.
The wave of state-led investigations underscores widespread concerns among policymakers that Silicon Valley’s biggest players may be harming competition. The House Judiciary Committee has launched a “top-to-bottom” antitrust probe of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is conducting an antitrust review of the nation’s biggest tech companies.
A number of states recently met with Justice Department antitrust chief Makan Delrahim to discuss Big Tech following the Justice Department’s announcement of its review.
At that meeting, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry criticized Google for its dominance in online advertising, saying that the company has the power to make it inefficient and inconvenient for advertisers to use any other platform.
“Google gets to pick winners and losers because the system is rigged in their favor,” Landry said. “Continuing down this road will kill online publishing, or Google will control who stays and who goes.”
The action by the attorneys general, which has been anticipated for weeks, could possibly be expanded to other companies beyond Google and Facebook, some of the people said.
Read the Wall Street Journal Story about the Facebook probe here, and CNN’s coverage of the Google probe here.
