The Federal Trade Commission of the United States announced on Tuesday it will review past acquisitions made by five big technology companies - Apple Inc., Facebook.Inc., Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. - in order to determine if there had been antitrust violations under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act.
The watchdog issued Special Orders to the technology giants, asking for information about the transactions.
"The orders will help the FTC deepen its understanding of large technology firms’ acquisition activity, including how these firms report their transactions to the federal antitrust agencies, and whether large tech companies are making potentially anticompetitive acquisitions of nascent or potential competitors that fall below HSR filing thresholds and therefore do not need to be reported to the antitrust agencies," the announcement from the FTC said.
