FTC widens probe, demands tech giants’ acquisition info

WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that it had ordered Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google’s parent company Alphabet and Microsoft to turn over information about past acquisitions, broadening its review of the power of big tech companies.

The FTC said it requested information about hundreds of smaller deals made by the five tech companies over the past decade that weren’t required to be reported to regulators by law and could provide insights into antitrust abuses. Facebook, Google and others have scooped up dozens of smaller tech firms over the years, many of them for less than $100 million.

“If during this study we see transactions that were problematic, all our options are on the table and it is conceivable we can initiate enforcement action with those deals,” Joseph J. Simons, the FTC chairman, said in a call with reporters. He added that the orders for information were separate from the FTC’s ongoing antitrust investigations into big tech companies, but could inform the inquiries.

The actions escalate the scrutiny in Washington of the nation’s largest technology companies. The Justice Department, Congress and state attorneys generals are also examining Apple, Amazon and others to probe whether they acted in an anticompetitive manner in many different areas. Lawmakers have united around the issue, in a rare show of bipartisanship.

In examining the smaller deals, the FTC signaled it was looking specifically into a tech industry practice, known as “killer acquisitions,” that smaller rivals have said was used to choke off competition. Under that strategy, the large tech companies purchase a nascent competitor to protect their dominance and prevent the smaller company from growing into a bigger threat.

The FTC has previously made similar demands for information from the pharmaceutical and retail industries to explore how companies in those sectors used pricing and ad strategies, for example, to harm consumers. But the request for information about past tech mergers was the first by the agency for Silicon Valley giants.

Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment. The companies could file motions to quash the FTC’s requests.