> subtle signaling by the current administration to fall in line

Everyone who's been lobbying for one of these investigations has been lobbying for the other three. A couple key folks at the DoJ started prioritizing tech antitrust, in part due to some other time-consuming matters having recently been sunset. (Previously, it was being pursued as a civil matter though the regulators. Big legal teams have an easier time squashing those compared.)

No need for a political conspiracy. (In any case, these investigations take a long time to get going. None of these efforts were started in even the last months.)

Under another administration (either Democratic or Republican) it might be reasonable to accept this explanation. The problem with this administration is that "assume this decision is being made by career employees acting with no political self-interest" has not proven to be a good betting position.

In fact, Occam’s Razor would suggest that any action taken by this administration should be assumed to be politically motivated, barring evidence to the contrary. Especially since the current administration has always been very vocally hostile to any sort of regulatory or antitrust action.

The house judiciary committee is democrat-controlled, so at the very least it's a bipartisan investigation(s). Both parties have spoken out on antitrust (if only for separate, self-interested purposes).

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/03/tech/tech-antitrust-house-pro...

>The Democratic-led investigation comes as the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are taking their first steps toward a potential probe of their own into Google, according to three people familiar with the matter. Regulators have negotiated to divide oversight of the tech industry between the two agencies in recent weeks, these people said. The two agencies have also reportedly split up oversight of Amazon, Apple and Facebook.

I try very hard to give some grace to the "Trump bad in everything" that I hear so much. However, his moronic tweets aside, I see nothing more than normal politicking, and right-of-center governance. The biggest flaw I see is the inability to admit and correct policy problems, which is absolutely not unique to President Trump.

Privatized child cages for the explicit reason of brutalizing those applying for asylum are normal right of center governance? Calling an investigation which found numerous cases of foreign involvement a coup?

I think you might be suffering from severe change blindness.

Nonsense, everything is normal. Look;

>"I believe that if people stoped[sic] using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway. It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act. When the World watches @CNN, it gets a false picture of USA. Sad!"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2019

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11354990026261544...

Trump just does it on Twitter.

https://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/obama-says...

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/business/media/12fox.html...

https://www.thenation.com/article/bushs-war-press/

I know, that is why I said that everything is normal.

I am in complete agreement that all of those examples make Donald Trump appear quite normal.

This is because Donald Trump is an ordinary president in a very normal way.

Really? The trade war with China and the upsetting of decades old alliances with other NATO countries and South Korea is normal...?

Keep those blinders up

> Under another administration (either Democratic or Republican) it might be reasonable to accept this explanation

The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by a Manhattan Democrat, is also investigating.

I have to say I'm surprised by the anger on this forum in response to these investigations. Yes, a lot of us butter our bread from big tech. And yes, there are other antitrust targets in the country. (There are always other targets.) But for years, comments about the lawlessness and recklessness of these companies have been raised. When I--and others--raised the possibility of a response, through regulators, the courts and the legislature, the possibility was met with derision.

Now that we have progress on the investigations, there is a mixture of (a) allegations of partisanship, (b) whataboutism and (c) a general tone of hostility around the motivations of those pursuing these investigations.

> Yes, a lot of us butter our bread from big tech. And yes, there are other antitrust targets in the country.

I would argue the opposite for people in our industry. If Google, Apple, and/or Amazon have truly been acting in anti-competitive fashion, it's likely they have stifled natural competition, which would probably drive up wages (See the Apple/Google Poaching scandal). It's also likely more of us would be starting small businesses without company run walled gardens preventing us from doing so.

Agreed, but again, the fact that these all happen in the same time frame is weird. I guess each of the investigations will tie up a lot of resources, but all 4 at the same time seem pretty taxing to an already busy admin.

Also, noone here has been suggesting a conspiracy.

It does seem a bit convenient, but on the other hand if you put a positive spin on it, in the ideal world you would want investigations of the big n tech companies to happen at the same time and not play "favorites" by doing one first and letting the others benefit.

Whether or not they violate existing statute, they all seem to be abusing their power in various ways. (Google and Facebook with personal information, ad handling, and interoperability, Apple with walled garden and no-competition apps, et al.)

Agreed that in general, there is a danger of playing "favorites" by doing one first and letting the others benefit. Hasn't stopped DoJ etc in the past though.

Also, I'm not saying it's a bad development for consumers if the investigations and legal actions actually come to pass (not sure how much is "considered" vs "definitely planned" vs "initiated and staffed").

This seems right. I know people in the venture and tech community that have been receiving inquiries for close to a year on whether big tech is too big. Of course, the venture community has a biased "expert opinion" given its in their best interest to weaken incumbents and open up lanes for new startups versus conveying what is the best course for the consumer.

"I've been taking companies to Washington where they've complained about Google for a long time and there were politicians blocking it once, but the blockers aren't there anymore," Reback said. "I don't know if it's the Trump administration that triggered it exactly but it could have been what broke the dam." - Gary Reback, http://www.carrferrell.com/attorneys/gary-reback

"The last time that technology companies faced this kind of scrutiny was Google's antitrust investigation, or the now twenty-one year old lawsuit brought by the Justice Department and multiple states against Microsoft.

But times have changed since Google had its hearing before a much friendlier audience of regulators under President Barack Obama.

These days, Republican and Democratic lawmakers are both making the case that big technology companies hold too much power in American political and economic life.

Issues around personal privacy, economic consolidation, misinformation and free speech are on the minds of both Republican and Democratic lawmakers." - Techcrunch

If no investigation has been announced and no case has been filed, is there a document hold?

If not, these "threats" may be signalling these companies to find and destroy incriminating evidence, and giving them the time to do it.

> "the 3 threatened investigations (Google by DoJ, Facebook by FTC, now Apple bu DoJ)"

Maybe four, Amazon too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/02/amazon-...

Well, AWS has been pretty egregious in their behavior toward the open source community.

if by current administration you are implying trump and republican party then I have to remind you that its actually the house democrats who announced it,

I think you are confusing the executive branch (Justice Dept, etc.) with the legislative branch (e.g., House Judiciary.)

This article is about the former, though the latter has also announced investigations.

If the two parties could take a breath and not automatically reject ideas from each other they might find that there is some common ground here.

Could you list some instances where the Democrats have automatically rejected ideas from the Republicans? And then perhaps contrast that with the corresponding list from the other side?

From my viewpoint in UKOGBANI, the Democrats just plain don't do this whilst the Republicans (and particularly McConnell) wilfully delight in blocking -anything- they can.

totally ignoring the fact the EU has been on them already. In general it isn't the Administration you need to fear you need to fear Congress using it as leverage to restrict speech, who can speak and what they can say, and finally laws on how law enforcement will have rights to obtain secure communications in support of it.

don't get caught up in the fake news, foreign influence of elections, and other malarkey. This is just cover to prevent any political speech outside of what the two political parties approve of getting any outlet. Remember that politicians have near unlimited means to get their message out and loathe the idea they cannot control others from not doing the same.

> don't get caught up in the fake news, foreign influence of elections, and other malarkey

I wonder why most mentions of "fake news" I hear are from people reading fake news.

If you honestly don't believe in foreign influence of elections you need to reassess your world model and belief structure. It's not just (myriad) US intelligence agencies confirming it, but other countries. If your conspiracy hinges on that much coordination, you should probably apply Occam's razor.

Whether this issue is the driving force in these probes or not is still debatable, of course.

As far as I can tell, this administration's only tactic is to announce an imminent attack on some country or company, then announce a meeting with them, then prematurely announce a "deal" followed with flattery through Trump's twitter feed.

The attacked entity denies there was any deal at first, then just shuts up, and the attack drops out of the news cycle.

It's always confusing with this administration whether some actions fall under one of 1) "Trump wants it" 2) it's a fairly normal shift in focus that probably would have occurred under most R administrations or 3) it's just someone at the given agency doing their job as best as possible.

I mean, there are ample reasons to have a good hard look at some of these companies, but with all the blatant corruption and stupidity from Trump and company, it makes you wonder.