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Tech giants quietly buy up dozens of companies a year. The Biden administration is finally noticing.
Technology
Tech giants quietly buy up dozens of companies a year. The Biden administration is finally noticing.
Most acquisitions go unreported and unannounced, making it harder to tell how companies like Google and Apple are shaping markets
By Gerrit De Vynck and Cat Zakrzewski
Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT
A soaring number of mergers and acquisitions, many of them never publicly announced, is overwhelming antitrust regulators, a major problem for the Biden administration’s hopes of intensifying scrutiny of corporate power centers like Silicon Valley.
Already this year, companies across all industries have sought to buy or merge with others worth at least $92 million almost 3,000 times — roughly 40 percent more than before the pandemic in 2019 — according to federal data. Regulators at the Federal Trade Commission, charged with upholding competition laws alongside the Justice Department, are warning they are unable to adequately review this magnitude of activity.
Regulators and antitrust advocates are particularly worried about acquisitions by Silicon Valley giants. While big acquisitions, like Amazon’s plans to purchase MGM, are the subject of press scrutiny and regulatory attention, hundreds of other purchases fly under the radar because of financial market guidelines and antitrust laws, which only require companies to disclose their largest deals. As they seek to take on tech titans’ power, regulators are increasingly paying attention to how tech companies gobble up smaller potential competitors before they have a chance to develop enough to provide consumers with serious alternatives.
{snip}
Chris Alcantara and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
By Gerrit De Vynck
Gerrit De Vynck is a tech reporter for The Washington Post. He writes about Google and the algorithms that increasingly shape society. De Vynck also helps lead The Post's coverage of ransomware and misinformation. He previously covered tech for seven years at Bloomberg News. Twitter https://twitter.com/GerritD
By Cat Zakrzewski
Cat Zakrzewski is a technology policy reporter, tracking Washington's efforts to regulate Silicon Valley companies. Her reporting covers antitrust, privacy and the debate over regulating social media companies. Twitter https://twitter.com/Cat_Zakrzewski
Tech giants quietly buy up dozens of companies a year. The Biden administration is finally noticing.
Most acquisitions go unreported and unannounced, making it harder to tell how companies like Google and Apple are shaping markets
By Gerrit De Vynck and Cat Zakrzewski
Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT
A soaring number of mergers and acquisitions, many of them never publicly announced, is overwhelming antitrust regulators, a major problem for the Biden administration’s hopes of intensifying scrutiny of corporate power centers like Silicon Valley.
Already this year, companies across all industries have sought to buy or merge with others worth at least $92 million almost 3,000 times — roughly 40 percent more than before the pandemic in 2019 — according to federal data. Regulators at the Federal Trade Commission, charged with upholding competition laws alongside the Justice Department, are warning they are unable to adequately review this magnitude of activity.
Regulators and antitrust advocates are particularly worried about acquisitions by Silicon Valley giants. While big acquisitions, like Amazon’s plans to purchase MGM, are the subject of press scrutiny and regulatory attention, hundreds of other purchases fly under the radar because of financial market guidelines and antitrust laws, which only require companies to disclose their largest deals. As they seek to take on tech titans’ power, regulators are increasingly paying attention to how tech companies gobble up smaller potential competitors before they have a chance to develop enough to provide consumers with serious alternatives.
{snip}
Chris Alcantara and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
By Gerrit De Vynck
Gerrit De Vynck is a tech reporter for The Washington Post. He writes about Google and the algorithms that increasingly shape society. De Vynck also helps lead The Post's coverage of ransomware and misinformation. He previously covered tech for seven years at Bloomberg News. Twitter https://twitter.com/GerritD
By Cat Zakrzewski
Cat Zakrzewski is a technology policy reporter, tracking Washington's efforts to regulate Silicon Valley companies. Her reporting covers antitrust, privacy and the debate over regulating social media companies. Twitter https://twitter.com/Cat_Zakrzewski
