Senate Finance Committee Chair urges FTC to investigate Google’s digital advertising

US Senator Orrin Hatch (R-PA), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission stating his concerns with Google’s digital advertising practices and citing several antitrust complaints.

Google has faced several antitrust fines in recent years. Earlier this year, the European Union fined Google $5.1 billion for abusing its power in the smartphone market by making deals with mobile phone manufacturers that favored Google’s services over its competitors’. Last year, the EU fined Google $2.7 billion in a different antitrust case. Regulator say the search giant was giving preferential treatment to its own online shopping service to the detriment of its rivals’ services, restricting consumer choice.

Hatch’s letter is a tiny step in the right direction, but US lawmakers must do more to reign in the power of big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, which some experts are calling the new monopolies.

Links:

Republican senator asks FTC to examine Google ads (Reuters, Aug. 30, 2018)

European Union fines Google $5.1 billion in another antitrust case (Speed Matters, July 18, 2018)

Is data the new oil – and is it time to break-up the new monopolies? (Speed Matters, May 12, 2018)