FTC commissioner outlines concerns regarding Google, other tech giants

FTC commissioner: Beware of Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft [Politico]

According to J. Thomas Rosch, commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, entrepreneurial garage inventors need to beware.  Rosch spoke Wednesday about his concerns regarding four large tech companies - Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. 

Rosch’s concern is that these four companies could make it extremely difficult for upstart companies to enter the Internet advertising market. The FTC has concerns that those four companies have become so big that they could manipulate the market in their favor.

Rosch pointed to Google’s search methods, Facebook’s huge friend population, Apple’s app store, and Microsoft’s alliance with Facebook as signifying a highly concentrated advertising market. 

He also pointed to a proposed FTC proposal regarding advertising that could actually work against ensuring upstarts have the ability to truly compete. For instance, the FTC has proposed requiring browsers to install a “Do Not Track” tool to prevent tracking advertisements. Rosch’s opinion is that the big players will be able to find ways to work around this type of regulation while smaller players will be the most impacted.

Rosch's remarks came on the same day that the FTC ordered Google to submit to regular privacy audits for the next 20 years. That action awaits a full commission vote.

Comments

[Nate Hiatt]

I'm sure the Republicans will squash any attempt by the FTC to look into these 4... smaller govt, less regulations, blah blah blah. Where was the concern over smaller start up companies when they were allowing the NBC-Comcast merger. I read somewhere that 5 cables companies make up 80% of the cable internet households in the U.S. and Comcast is the largest. Net Neutrality was neutered to a worthless point and they're STILL fighting to pull it's funding. Meanwhile following the Comcast-NBC disgusting merger we get ANOTHER anti-consumer merger with T-Mobile and AT&T and guess what? ANOTHER unlimited data provider bites the dust in the deal. Slowly, but surely, we're moving to a tiered internet where pay to play will be the norm and innovation and consumer choice will be squashed.