Big Corps Stifling Competition?

History of Antitrust

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden Administration’s Justice Dept is taking a tough stance on antitrust by filing lawsuits to halt M&A activities. For example, recently it sued to prevent JetBlue & American Airlines from entering into a partnership.

But the story is much bigger than that — as big as Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, which were all the focus of a 16-month-long congressional antitrust investigation that ended back in 2020, leaving us with a 449-page report.

Also, in 2020 the Dept. of Justice sued Google for its alleged monopoly in online search and related advertising. And this year the DOJ filed a second suit against Google, alleging that it has engaged in anticompetitive practices in digital-ad brokering.

In addition, currently the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, which is a separate and independent entity from the DOJ, is preparing an antitrust suit against Amazon. The FTC is looking into whether Amazon favors its own products over competitors’ and how Amazon treats outside sellers on its platform.

As for Facebook, in the closing days of February, the FTC announced that it is dropping its efforts to block Meta’s acquisition of the company “Within Unlimited”, a virtual-reality startup. This happened after a U.S. District…