Name: Are Google and Facebook heading for break-up? | Tech Wash
Uploaded: 2020-03-20T08:50:37.000Z
Duration: 1 min 44 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

For Facebook and Google, the threat of breakup

has become a lot more real over the last couple of weeks.

First up, we had to Letitia James, the state attorney

AGs in an investigation into whether Facebook

has been exploiting its market dominance.

Then Google said it was under investigation

by the Department of Justice for similar concerns.

And then we had Ken Paxton, the Texas State AG,

saying he was leading a group of 50 state and territorial

AGs also looking into potential anti-competitive practises

So what does all this mean, and how seriously

should these companies take these investigations?

Well, the first thing to say is that we're

a long way from any potential breakup of either company.

It took nine years, for example, for officials from the Federal

and eventually reaching a settlement with them in 2001.

However, that doesn't mean that these companies shouldn't

they often take on the momentum of their own.

And it is particularly worth watching what

These state AGs are seeking to prove a vital legal point.

harmed by Facebook and Google's dominant market positions,

not by raising prices, because, of course,

but in a variety of other ways, such as increasing advertising

fees or by exploiting customers by rating their data.

If these AGs are successful in arguing this legal point,

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Are Google and Facebook heading for break-up? | Tech Wash

potential

eventually

process

vital