Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2019-06-17)

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Bloomberg Businessweek June 17, 2019

● Delrahim andSimonsuse

their antitrust experienceto

keep Big Tech inline

The

Trustbusters

Their Yalta moment tookplace,appropriately

enough, at an invitation-onlymeetingoftheworld’s

top antitrust enforcers inmid-May.Asattendeesat

the conference in Cartagena,Colombia,debated

competition policy in adigitaleconomy,Makan

Delrahim,chiefoftheU.S.DepartmentofJustice’s

antitrustdivision,andJoeSimons,chairmanofthe

FederalTradeCommission,dividedthefourlargest

U.S. tech companies betweenthem.

After eight months of emailsanddiscussionand

decades of laissez-faire policy,theywerereadyto

put Amazon, Apple, Facebook,andGoogleunder

the microscope, accordingtoa personfamiliar

with the matter. That decision,echoingtheway

Allied leaders carved uppostwarEasternEurope,

introduced what couldbea neweraofantitrust

enforcement. Tech’s BigFourmaynotbesovereign

nations, but their almost$3trillion in market value

exceeds many countries’ gross domestic product,

and their power to determine what people read,

watch, and buy is immense.

It’s now up to Simons and Delrahim to figure out

whether, and how, to bring the companies in line.

Simons, a longtime FTC hand, kept responsibility

for Facebook Inc., the subject of an ongoing con-

sumer privacy probe at the FTC, and also took on

Amazon.com Inc. He agreed to hand Delrahim over-

sight of Alphabet Inc.’s Google. The FTC had inves-

tigated Google but closed the case in 2013 without

taking any action. Delrahim also took jurisdiction

over Apple Inc. A spokeswoman for Simons declined

to comment for this story. A DOJ spokesman says the

two agencies “continue to discuss their respective

jurisdictions, as they always do.”

It’snoaccidentthatthetwo,whoaren’tclose

butoccasionallymeetfordinner,aretheTrump

administration’sgeneralsinthenewantimonopoly

push. They were both foot soldiers in the last epic

U.S. antitrust battle, Justice’s late-1990s case against

Microsoft Corp., then the dominant company in the

tech industry. Simons may even owe his job as FTC

chairman to his behind-the-scenes Microsoft role.