WASHINGTON – Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google engaged in anticompetitive, monopoly-style tactics to evolve into four of the world’s most powerful corporate behemoths, according to congressional investigators who called in a wide-ranging report released Tuesday for sweeping changes to federal laws so that government regulators can bring Silicon Valley back in check.
The roughly 450-page document, capping a roughly 16-month investigation by the House’s top antitrust committee, found that the four tech giants relied on dubious, harmful means to solidify their dominance in Web search, smartphones, social networking and shopping – and in the process evaded the very federal regulators whose primary task is to ensure that companies do not grow into such unmatched corporate titans.
Congressional investigators faulted Facebook for gobbling up potential competitors with impunity, and they concluded Google improperly scraped rivals’ websites and forced its technology on others to reach its pole position in search and advertising.
