As the world has moved more and MORE of itself on line?
The Wild West, anything goes, and no rules concept is not gonna last….
The big tech companies are increasingly moving to consolidate their control over area’s they operate in…..
The little guys and consumers have been crying fowl….
Europe has begun hard looks at tech giants….
America now joints that effort…
Google and Amazon have thrived as American regulators largely kept their distance. That may be changing.
Politicians on the right and left are decrying the tech companies’ enormous power. President Trump and other Republicans have taken swipes at Amazon over taxes and at Google over search results they say are biased. Democrats have focused on whether the companies stifle competition.
And now, the two federal agencies that handle antitrust matters have split up oversight of the two companies, with the Justice Department taking Google and the Federal Trade Commission taking Amazon, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
The decisions do not mean that the agencies have opened official federal investigations, the people said. But by staking claims over the two tech giants, the agencies are signaling the potential for greater scrutiny.
Regulators have struggled to keep pace with the growth of technology companies in recent years. With huge profits and work forces, the companies have come to dominate large swaths of the economy. Amazon is the de facto force in online retailing. Google is the starting point for many people searching online.
While tech giants are awash in cash, data and ambition, they are also increasingly mired in controversy. A wide range of concerns have recently dogged Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple, including their influence on consumer privacy, labor conditions and public discourse…