13 Ways the Government Went After Google, Facebook and Other Tech Giants This Year

Lawmakers and federal and state officials have repeatedly gone after America’s tech giants in 2020, accusing them in lawsuits and lengthy reports of having too much power — with too little oversight and too few safeguards — over people’s lives and personal information.

The backlash over Big Tech is one of the few areas where Democrats and Republicans are increasingly in agreement. Some lawsuits against specific companies are joint efforts by officials in red and blue states; others are federal inquiries examining companies together. The growing scrutiny of the companies could ultimately result in them being broken up and in new laws that alter the balance of power in corporate America.

“It doesn’t take a web search to understand that unchecked corporate power shouldn’t have disproportionate control over our data and information,” Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, said Thursday in announcing a suit against Google.

This is what the companies are facing.

Google has been under fire for the near stranglehold it has in internet search and whether it uses that power to the detriment of others. Government officials are focused on whether its huge digital ad business has been creating harm for certain groups of people.

On Thursday, more than 30 states, including New York, filed a lawsuit accusing the company of illegally arranging its search results to push out smaller rivals. The action came one day after 10 other states accused Google of abusing its dominance in advertising and overcharging publishers, and two months after the Justice Department sued the company over anticompetition issues.

The world’s largest social network has attracted government attention on a number of fronts, including its policies related to users’ privacy, how it moderates content, and whether certain advertising tools enable discrimination.

Facebook owns several of the world’s largest messaging and social sharing apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram, making its market power even more formidable.

This month, the U.S. government and more than 40 states sued Facebook for illegally crushing competitors and demanded the company undo its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.

Concerns about the retail behemoth have focused largely on how it treats so-called third-party sellers on its popular retail site. Given that Amazon controls the marketplace, some lawmakers have said, the company’s own products have an unfair advantage over those from the third-party sellers.

Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat whose district includes Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, has routinely questioned Amazon’s power. Amazon has “access to data that far exceeds the sellers on your platforms with whom you compete,” she said as she grilled Jeff Bezos, the company’s chief executive, at a hearing this summer.

He responded that he was “very proud of what we have done for third-party sellers on this platform.”

The principal concerns about Apple have centered on whether it is unfairly wielding the power of its App Store to hurt competitors.

In a scathing report by Congress earlier this year that recommended breaking up the tech giants, lawmakers accused Apple — along with Amazon, Facebook and Google — of serving as “gatekeepers” that made third-party businesses like app developers beholden to the companies’ demands. The word monopoly appeared in the report nearly 120 times.