Barron's: DOJ goes after Big Tech even though "none of the companies have traditional monopoly positions"

The Justice Department announced late Tuesday that it has opened a review of “the practices of market-leading online platforms.” The agency didn’t name specific companies, but the wording suggests that it will look into Google parent Alphabet for search, Facebook for social media, and Amazon.com for e-commerce.

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[P]roving consumer harm is a tough task when Facebook’s and Google’s services are mostly free, and Amazon’s e-commerce platform has arguably lowered prices and increased convenience through faster delivery.

In fact, none of the companies have traditional monopoly positions in various markets. EMarketer estimates that Amazon represented 37% of U.S. e-commerce sales in 2018 and 3.5% of total retail sales. The firm also said Google accounted for 50% of U.S. digital-ad spending that year, while Facebook had 22%. Apple’s iPhone had 45% of the U.S. smartphone market, according to eMarketer’s latest data.

~ Tae Kim, "Why Investors Shouldn’t Overreact to the DOJ’s Antitrust Review of Big Tech," Barron's, July 27, 2019