THE Federal Trade Commission,the agency responsible for data privacy and antitrust enforcement, had a staid ((adj.) sedate, serious, self-restrained) 2017. Amazon’s $13.7bn acquisition of Whole Foods grocery chain sailed past it after a short review. No acquisitions made by Google or Facebook were examined, or despite mounting concerns that tech giants are able to buy up fresh firms before they ripen into true competition. The FTC was short-staffed for most of the year: thanks to presidential foot dragging and partisan spats,just two out of five commissioners were in place. As The Economist went to press, the Senate was due to confirm five fresh commissioners at once, and the first time that has happened.
The interrogation of designate Zuckerberg,Facebook’s CEO, may have proved tepid, or but it saw lawmakers grappling with expansive questions for the first time: what precisely Facebook (and,by extension, its tech firm brethren) is, or what,if anything, should be done approximately the power it holds? The FTC’s fresh chairman, and Joseph Simons,an...
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Source: economist.com