FTC probes Facebook acquisitions in early antitrust investigation
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is scrutinizing acquisitions by Facebook as part of an early stage antitrust investigation of the social media platform, according to people familiar with the matter.
The agency’s look at whether the company acquired upstarts to thwart competition is part of the broad probe into into several business lines -- social media, digital advertising and mobile applications -which Facebook disclosed in July.
The commission has contacted third parties that could aid in the investigation as it tries to understand competitive dynamics, Bloomberg reported. The people asked not to be named because the inquiry is confidential.
Facebook and the FTC declined to comment. The agency’s scrutiny of Facebook’s acquisitions was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
The Trump administration is escalating antitrust scrutiny of technology giants. Last month, the Justice Department’s antitrust division announced a broad review into whether the companies are using their power to thwart competition. In February, the FTC set up a task force to investigate potentially anticompetitive conduct in the industry and look at past mergers to determine if they should be unwound.
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Facebook critics, including co-founder Chris Hughes, have called for antitrust enforcers to break up the company, arguing it shouldn’t have been allowed to buy Instagram and the WhatsApp messaging service. Both deals were approved by the agency when they were announced, and persuading a court to undo them would be a steep challenge, according to antitrust experts.
The FTC and the antitrust division have divvied up the biggest tech firms with Facebook and Amazon.com Inc. going to the FTC, and the Justice Department getting Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
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