Australia Prepares Second Probe Into Facebook, Google

The failure of a landmark anti-monopoly case against Facebook by the US Federal Trade Commission will not stop global regulators from waging an aggressive campaign against the social media giant over the next two years, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman Rod Sims said.

Following last week’s court decision in Washington, which pushed Facebook’s market value above US$1 trillion, Mr Sims said Facebook and Google’s power was as big a problem as the millionaire Rockefeller family’s control of the global oil refining market a century ago, which was ultimately ruled an illegal monopoly by the US Supreme Court.

He said the ACCC was gathering evidence of market power abuses by the American companies and planned to use two current inquiries to launch a new assault on them in conjunction with counterparts in Europe, Britain, the US, and Canada.

“In the next six to 18 months, a lot will change in terms of how those abuses are dealt with,” Mr Sims said in an interview. “There is an extraordinary amount of market power: self preferencing, markets that aren’t transparent, very high charges and rent extraction.”

Want more news? Subscribe to CPI’s free daily newsletter for more headlines and updates on antitrust developments around the world.