THE Federal Trade Commission, the agency responsible for data privacy and antitrust enforcement, had a staid 2017. Amazon’s $13.7bn acquisition of Whole Foods grocery chain sailed past it after a short review. No acquisitions made by Google or Facebook were examined, despite mounting concerns that tech giants are able to buy up new firms before they ripen into true competition. The FTC was short-staffed for most of the year: thanks to presidential foot dragging and partisan spats, just two out of five commissioners were in place. As The Economist went to press, the Senate was due to confirm five new commissioners at once, the first time that has happened.
The interrogation of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, may have proved tepid, but it saw lawmakers grappling with big questions for the first time: what exactly Facebook (and, by extension, its tech firm brethren) is, and what, if anything, should be done about the power it holds? The FTC’s new chairman, Joseph Simons, an...Continue reading
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