Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Hearing on Big Tech and Antitrust Concerns

The Senate Antitrust Subcommittee heard from various parties on whether Big Tech companies have been allowed to become serial innovation killers, buying up tech start-up competitors before those competitors are large enough to raise red flags with regulators. A Federal Trade Commission witness said the agency was definitely retrospectively reviewing such "killer acqs" (acquisitions), and could break up or shake up already-merged companies if that is the appropriate structural remedy. 

Subcommittee Chairman Mike Lee (R-UT) said that over-enforcement is not a "cost-free" proposition. He conceded that some mergers may be for anticompetitive reasons, but because they can't see the future, it is difficult to predict in advance which deals should be blocked--Instagram, for example, versus some similar effort that does not gain traction. Sen Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Bruce Hoffman, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition, agreed that some of the tech issues they were discussing sounded and looked like the kinds of anticompetititive practices in the Microsoft antitrust case. Sen Blumenthal pointed out he was a key player in that Microsoft investigation. One of the Microsoft remedies was interoperability, and not just internet browsers.