The executive order includes several measures specifically targeting big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon, people with knowledge of its contents said. The order will tell the federal agencies that approve mergers that they should scrutinize the tech industry’s practices more closely. The order is Mr. Biden’s latest acknowledgment of concerns that the tech giants have obtained outsize market power, becoming gatekeepers to commerce, communications and culture. A growing group of lawmakers, academics and rival companies say government regulators failed to check the growth of the companies for more than a decade. To address the companies’ market power, they say, policymakers need to aggressively enforce antitrust laws and possibly rewrite them to better capture Silicon Valley’s business models.

Source: New York Times July 09, 2021 09:00 UTC