Tech Giants’ Stocks Sink Amid Regulatory Probes

Shares in some tech giant companies fell on Monday (June 3) after news of potential oversight and antitrust investigations into the companies, according to a report by CNBC.

Shares in Facebook were down 8 percent after a Wall Street Journal story revealed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will have jurisdiction to examine the social media company over competition concerns. Facebook lost $33 billion out of its market cap and settled at $472 billion.

Amazon was in a similar spot, as stocks in that company dropped 4 percent after The Washington Post reported that both the FTC and the Department of Justice (DOJ) came to an agreement about oversight of tech. Amazon lost around $35 billion off its market cap, which brought that number down to $839 billion.

Google’s parent company Alphabet was also caught in regulatory crosshairs. It was reported that the Justice Department is also preparing an investigation into antitrust concerns within the company. Alphabet stock lost around $47 billion from its own market cap, which dragged it down to $721 billion.

Facebook was already being investigated by the FTC for privacy and data handling concerns, and is expected to see a fine of around $5 billion.

Even with the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandals, which helped to calibrate attention on tech giants’ handling of user data, there hasn’t been any real regulatory agreement into oversight of these companies until now.

Some politicians, like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, have been calling for the breakup of tech giants.

The new agreement between the DOJ and the FTC increases the potential for serious change. The FTC will lead the way on Amazon and the DOJ will have jurisdiction on Google, even though the FTC had already closed a previous investigation into the company with no actions taken. Now, the DOJ will take a wider look into the company and its potential monopolistic data actions to determine whether any measures should be taken.