Congress wants internal records from Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google
As antitrust investigations heat up, Congress is requesting piles of records from Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google.
That includes internal communications between execs concerning major projects, like Facebooks acquisition of WhatsApp and Apple's App Store search algorithm. The House Judiciary Committee also asked for lists of competitors by product, emails, financial statements, and more.
In the letters sent to each company (linked above), committee members wrote that their investigation is focused on "competition problems in digital markets," whether big firms are "engaging in anti-competitive" behavior, and whether current laws "are adequate to address these issues."
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The committee has listed Oct. 14 as the deadline for all four companies.
The Washington Post (which is owned by Amazon swole daddy Jeff Bezos) notes that these letters "are not official legal demands." In other words, it's the committee's way of asking these tech behemoths nicely to cooperate. If they don't, though, the committee does have the power to force the release of records and hold hearings.
It's more heat on the tech giants, some of which are already mired in newly announced antitrust investigations from U.S. states. On Sept. 6, a group of states led by New York Attorney General Letitia James launched a bipartisan investigation into Facebook.
Even more formidable, a group of 50 attorneys general representing 48 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. launched a similar bipartisan antirust case against Google on Sept. 9. Only California and Alabama have not signed on.
Kent Walker, Google's SVP of Global Affairs, wrote of the request in a blog post, "We have always worked constructively with regulators and we will continue to do so."
We've also reached out to Apple, Amazon, and Facebook for comment on the new requests.
UPDATE: Sept. 13, 2019, 12:57 p.m. EDT Updated with Google statement
Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
