FTC Gets Jurisdiction for Possible Facebook Antitrust Probe

The Federal Trade Commission will lead any antitrust investigation into Facebook under an arrangement that gives the Justice Department chief oversight of Alphabet's Google, as the US government gears up for scrutiny of the country’s major tech companies over competition concerns. The Justice Department and FTC now have established that each is responsible for antitrust issues for two of the Big Four tech companies: the Justice Department has authority over Google and Apple, while the FTC has oversight of Facebook and Amazon. It was unclear whether the allocations of Apple and Amazon were related to the same agreement that divided Google and Facebook between the agencies. But Google and Facebook appear to be closest to being in the agencies’ investigative crosshairs. It isn’t known whether the FTC has near-term plans to launch a formal antitrust investigation of Facebook, while it was recently reported the DOJ is gearing up for an antitrust probe of Google.