Key antitrust lawmaker frustrated with Google’s deal with Fitbit

Authors: Diane Bartz and Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lawmakers pressed top U.S. antitrust regulators on Wednesday over investigations into tech giants including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet-owned Apple, with the chairman of a House subcommittee expressing frustration over the company’s continued takeovers. .

During a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, Makan Delrahim, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said his investigators were focused on understanding how personalized advertising transactions worked. Facebook and Google, in particular, derive revenue from advertising.

“By understanding these competitive dynamics, we can understand how market leaders have monopoly power, how they exercise it, and whether the source of that power is merit-based competition or whether the source of that power is exclusion,” Delrahim said.

The Justice Department and the commission are investigating all four companies, while the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook and Amazon. Groups of dozens of attorneys general are also investigating Google and Facebook.

Delrahim said the department is working with states on investigations. “We continue to cooperate with state AGs on both matters that have been made public,” Delrahim said.

Rep. David Cicilline, chairman of the subcommittee, noted that Google has continued to make acquisitions despite a number of antitrust investigations, pointing in particular to its planned purchases of Looker and Fitbit. Last week, the acquisition of Looker, a privately held big data analytics company, was approved.

“The hubris of the executive team in pursuing an acquisition of this size,” he said, referring to the $2.1 billion bid for Fitbit, “in the midst of federal and state antitrust investigations is astounding.”

Google’s interest in Fitbit Inc, a U.S. maker of wearables, comes as it observes a slice of the crowded market for fitness trackers and smart watches.

Watchdog groups including Public Citizen and the Center for Digital Democracy, among others, urged the FTC on Wednesday to block the deal.

“Google knows more about us than any other company and should not be allowed to add another method to track our every move,” they wrote in the letter.

Republicans on the committee generally urged caution in examining America’s most successful companies, and Rep. Doug Collins warned against penalizing success.

“Companies that offer new innovations, better solutions and more consumer benefits at lower prices often go big – to the benefit of society. Proposals to divide large companies solely on the basis of their size risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” he said. .

(Reporting by Diane Bartz and Nandita Bose; Editing by Tom Brown)