DOJ to Open Sweeping Antitrust Review of Big Tech Monopolies

The U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday it is opening a broad antitrust review of big tech companies, that are reportedly separate from probes that already underway.

While the DOJ didn't disclose specific company names, it is launching the review based on "new Washington threats" from Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The agency will examine practices of online platforms that dominate internet search, social media and retail services, the DOJ said in a statement Tuesday.

It's the biggest move by Attorney General William Barr, whose growing interest in the tech sector could deepen regulatory pressure on the companies.

Make Google’s search index public

This idea was recently proposed by Dr. Robert Epstein, a psychologist and search engine expert who last week told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Google actively interfered in the 2016 election, shifting millions of votes towards Hillary Clinton. Writing in Bloomberg Businessweek, Epstein suggests that Google’s vast index of webpages should be made available to other search engines, which would save them the costly and time-consuming process of “crawling” the web to be able to produce search results. This would still leave Google’s advantage in terms of user data and personalized search results intact, but it would significantly lower the hurdle for newer search engines to enter the market.

“The alternative is frightening,” writes Epstein. “If Google retains its monopoly on search, or even if a government steps in and makes Google a public utility, the obscene power to decide what information humanity can see and how that information should be ordered will remain in the hands of a single authority.”