FTC boss Khan shrugs off Microsoft, Meta defeats: 'Losing two is okay'

Two high-profile defeats in court do not a failed strategy make, or so says FTC boss Lina Khan.  Speaking at the Economic Club of New York yesterday, Khan said that, while it's true the US regulator failed to halt a couple of major mergers this year (Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard, and Meta's acquisition of VR …

[DS999]

Better to try and fail

Than to just accept that our monopolies have become too big to police, thanks to a combination of years of appointments of corporate friendly judges beholden to billionaires and legislators who don't care unless they feel like monopoly X is upsetting their political apple cart.

[ThatOne]

Monopoly

> "that a hands-off approach to antitrust competition policies would lead to great efficiencies"

Said the monopolist lobby... Of course they didn't specify for whom those "great efficiencies" were to be expected. Certainly not for healthy competition.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Re: Monopoly

Every time they say "this will increase efficiencies, better customer service blah blah blah" what they really mean is "greater profits, more layoffs, more stock options, higher share price".

In ALL cases.

[Dave@Home]

These defeats are causing a real problem though

They lead to a diminshment of any soft power that the FTC might have, and brings in a perception that they are solely looking to stop mergers 'just because' and not out of real concern.

The ruling in the injunction case for the Activision merger specifically said that they'd had 180 days to look at evidence and hadn't found a single thing that showed illegal behaviour - that in turn gives a strong pointer that the main investigation will end up a nothingburger as well.

It really looks as though the US is pretty much going to have to rely on the EU to reign in the excesses of big tech companies, as they simply aren't able to lay a glove on them.