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US: Top antitrust officials admit to infighting on big tech probe

By  |  September 17, 2019

The top US antitrust regulators admitted on Tuesday they had wasted time arguing over who would investigate which tech company as they take on major probes of firms like Alphabet’s Google for using their market power unfairly.

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    The Justice Department’s antitrust division chief, Makan Delrahim, acknowledged instances where officials’ time “is wasted on those kinds of squabbles.”

    The hearing was a tough one for Delrahim and Joe Simons, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, who were criticized by lawmakers at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel for overlapping on the probes, and for other matters.

    Reuters and others reported in June that the agencies had divided up the companies, with Justice taking Google and Apple , while the FTC looked at Facebook and Amazon.

    The Justice Department later said it was opening a probe of online platforms. This led some industry observers to question whether the two investigations would overlap.

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