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News broke earlier this month that the Justice Department would
look at Alphabet's Google and Apple Inc while the FTC would
probe Amazon.com Inc and Facebook Inc to determine if they
abused their massive market power, setting up what could be
unprecedented, wide-ranging probes of some of the world's
largest companies.
In a statement announcing a hearing on antitrust enforcement set
for next month, Senator Mike Lee, a Republican and chair of the
Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee, warned that the
decision to divide the work would cause a wealth of problems.
"Given the similarity in competition issues involved, divvying
up these investigations is sure to waste resources, split
valuable expertise across the agencies, and likely result in
divergent antitrust enforcement," he said in a statement.
The major technology companies face a backlash in the United
States and across the world, fueled by concerns among
competitors, lawmakers and consumer groups that they have too
much power and harm users and business rivals.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is running for president and is the
top Democrat on the panel, said she is pleased with the
potential probes.
"It's critical that we and the American people have a good sense
of what the agencies are actually doing to protect competition
in this important part of our economy," she said.
Separately, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee
opened its own investigation of competition in digital markets,
with both Republicans and Democrats expressing concern about the
power exercised by tech giants.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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