US: Google, Facebook, Amazon may be “antitrust situation” says Trump

According to an interview last week with Bloomberg News, US President Donald Trump is stepping up his criticism of technology firms. Trump says they are favoring liberal points of view and said they may be in a “very antitrust situation.” But Trump repeatedly said he can’t comment publicly on whether they should be broken up.

“I won’t comment on the breaking up, of whether it’s that or Amazon or Facebook,” Trump said in an Oval Office interview. “As you know, many people think it is a very antitrust situation, the three of them. But I just, I won’t comment on that.”

Trump’s latest attack on the technology companies began Tuesday, August 29, when he claimed—without providing evidence—that Google’s news search function favored liberal over conservative outlets, tweeting that “This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!” Later, in a meeting in the Oval Office, he told reporters that Alphabet’s Google, Facebook, and Twitter “are treading on very, very troubled territory.”

On Wednesday, he tweeted a video, with the hashtag “#StopTheBias,” which purported to show that Google promoted President Barack Obama’s annual State of the Union address on its homepage, but did not give a boost to Trump’s.

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah on Thursday asked US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons to re-examine Google’s conduct in search and digital advertising, saying reports of potentially anticompetitive conduct are “disquieting.”

Full Content: Bloomberg