Enlarge / Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on Jan. 21, 2021. (credit: Stefani Reynolds - pool | Getty Images )

With a new session of Congress underway and a new administration in the White House, Big Tech is once again in lawmakers' crosshairs. Not only are major firms such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google under investigation for allegedly breaking existing antitrust law, but a newly proposed bill in the Senate would make it harder for these and other firms to become so troublingly large in the first place.

The bill ( PDF ), called the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act (CALERA for short, which is still awkward) would become the largest overhaul to US antitrust regulation in at least 45 years if it became law.

"While the United States once had some of the most effective antitrust laws in the world, our economy today faces a massive competition problem," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) when she introduced the bill on Thursday. "We can no longer sweep this issue under the rug and hope our existing laws are adequate," Klobuchar added, calling the bill "the first step to overhauling and modernizing our laws" to protect competition in the current era.

Enlarge / Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are the three largest parts of Facebook's extremely sprawling empire... for now. (credit: Rafael Henrique | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images )

The Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of 47 states attorneys general today filed a pair of long-awaited antitrust suits against Facebook, alleging that the company abused its power in the marketplace to neutralize competitors through acquisitions and prevent anyone else from presenting a more privacy-friendly alternative to consumers.

"By using its vast troves of data and money, Facebook has quashed or hindered what the company perceived as potential threats," New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the states' effort, said. "In an effort to maintain its market dominance, Facebook has employed a strategy to impede competing services."

When James initially announced the probe in September 2019, her office was joined by the attorneys general of eight other states; by October of last year, another 38 had signed on, bringing the total to 47 states and territories participating in the investigation.

Enlarge / All Facebook, no matter which way you look. (credit: Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images )

After well over a year spent investigating Facebook, state and federal regulators are more than ready to start launching a slate of cases against Facebook, new reports say—that is, as soon as the agencies can agree on how they actually want to do it.

New suits against Facebook should come before the end of January, The Wall Street Journal writes. Both the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of attorneys general for 47 states and territories are expected to take some kind of action.

The state and the federal probes are basically looking into two overall buckets of potentially anticompetitive behavior. The first has to do with Facebook's effects on other businesses that could or do compete with it. That's the investigation that delves into mergers and acquisitions, both large and small , as well as Facebook's behavior toward companies that refuse a buyout .

After years of building political pressure for antitrust scrutiny of major tech companies, this month Congress and the US government delivered. The House Antitrust Subcommittee released a report accusing Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook of monopolistic behavior. The Department of Justice filed a complaint against Google alleging the company prevents consumers from sampling other search engines.

The new fervor for tech antitrust has so far overlooked an equally obvious target: US broadband providers. “If you want to talk about a history of using gatekeeper power to harm competitors, there are few better examples,” says Gigi Sohn, a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy.

Enlarge / Microsoft sign at the entrance of their Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View, California. (credit: Nicolas McComber | Getty Images )

Microsoft this week adopted a whole slew of "fairness principles" for its Windows app store. The list of principles does look like a decent set of guidelines for both consumers and developers—but it also looks a whole lot like Microsoft is taking the metaphorical ball, throwing it at Apple's face, and daring their iCompetitor to make the next move.

The principles, which Microsoft listed in a corporate blog post , essentially promise that Windows will keep on doing what it already does with regard to app distribution, interoperability, payment systems, and everything else.

The first item, for example, promises that developers may choose whether to distribute Windows programs through the Microsoft Store or through their own competing app storefronts. This has always been the case, and it's why Steam, the Epic Games store, and every other Windows software distribution method exist. Windows also promises not to block an app from Windows "based on a developer's choice of which payment system to use" for processing in-app purchases which, again, is why and how both Web-based and app-based digital software storefronts for Windows exist.

Enlarge / The United States Capitol Building, the seat of Congress, on the National Mall in Washington, DC. (credit: Omar Chatriwala | Getty Images )

Last June, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law began an in-depth investigation into four major firms—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The subcommittee wanted to answer one key question: did Big Tech get big playing by the rules, or do it cheat to stay at the top? After 16 months of hearings, research, and analysis, the panel's findings are out... and the results look really bad for every company involved.

The tech sector does indeed suffer from abuses of "monopoly power," the subcommittee concluded in the mammoth 450-page report ( PDF ) published late yesterday afternoon.

"As they exist today, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook each possess significant market power over large swaths of our economy. In recent years, each company has expanded and exploited their power of the marketplace in anticompetitive ways," Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and antitrust subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said in a joint statement. "Our investigation leaves no doubt that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation, and safeguards our democracy."