The US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will launch a wide-ranging investigation into e-commerce, online search and social media companies, to determine if they "reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers". Some of the companies being probed by the DOJ, like Amazon, were initially believed to fall under the purview of the FTC alone, lending heightened seriousness to the review. In the wake of Google's announcement that it would be launching its own version of Android, Google has been under fire from both sides of the political aisle. The DOJ said it would "seek redress" if laws were violated. Facebook was recently fined $5bn by the FTC, and enabled greater oversight of its privacy policies as part of the settlement.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will launch a wide-ranging investigation into e-commerce, online search and social media companies, to determine if they "reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers". In the wake of Google's announcement that it would be launching its own version of Android, Google has been under fire from both sides of the political aisle. The DOJ said it would "seek redress" if laws were violated. Facebook was recently fined $5bn by the FTC, and enabled greater oversight of its privacy policies as part of the settlement.