Is Big Tech Getting Too Big for Its Britches? |
Chinese regulators recently initiated an investigation into monopolistic conduct by Alibaba, and then threatened to penalize Tencent for misreporting acquisitions and investments for antitrust reviews.
Big Tech is on the hot seat in both the U.S. and China. Chinese regulators recently initiated an investigation into monopolistic conduct by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. They then threatened to penalize Tencent Holdings Ltd. for misreporting acquisitions and investments for antitrust reviews. They instructed Ant Group Co. Ltd. and Tencent’s WeChat Pay to focus on digital payments and called off Ant Group’s much ballyhooed IPO. They finalized rules for curbing monopolistic practices across the internet.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice opened investigations into violations of antitrust law by Apple Inc. (More recently the European Commission did the same.) The House Judiciary Committee issued a report on competition in digital markets, alleging market-power abuses by e-commerce giant Amazon Inc. Facebook Inc. is accused of using its dominance of social media to suppress competitors and of employing its position in digital advertising to manipulate the market. The Justice Department has investigated Google over issues raised by its dominance of search.
As they become large relative to the economies they inhabit, it’s inevitable that these companies should attract official scrutiny. As they branch into new activities, taking advantage of information harvested from their platforms, they come to matter for all aspects of life. They matter too much for governments to allow them to simply do as they please. Continue to read the full article here
– This article originally appeared on Caixin Global.
