(JustPatriots.com)- Leaked documents show how the Federal Trade Commission under the Obama administration effectively gave Google its online monopoly after the social media, search, and online marketing giant helped Obama get re-elected in 2012.
A report from Politico describes how leaked documents show that the FTC had the opportunity to take down Google, but didn’t. Instead of stopping the search engine website’s expansion and becoming a monopolistic, overseeing giant that distorts market access and changes how people access information, the FTC chose to end its investigation early in the year after Obama was re-elected.
Politico revealed leaked documents about the 2012 investigation showing that, despite a multitude of pieces of evidence of Google distorting markets and posing a threat to competition, all five commissions of the FTC ended the investigation by believing speculative claims from advising economists.
And, according to the records obtained by Politico, the commissioners made the shocking decision after bowing to pressure from the Obama administration, which was in turn under pressure from Google assisting in President Obama’s re-election campaign.
Politico describes how the decision from the antitrust regulators to drop the investigation “still rankles the company’s rivals, who have watched the search giant continue to amass power over smartphones, data-hoovering devices and wide swaths of the internet, unimpeded by laws meant to deter monopolies.”
It’s precisely what President Donald Trump spoke about for four years, but something Democrats insisted wasn’t a problem…because the Google monopolies benefit their party and their business connections.
“But 312 pages of confidential internal memos obtained by POLITICO reveal what the FTC’s lawyers and economics experts were thinking — including assumptions that were contradictory at the time and many that turned out to be incorrect about the internet’s future, Google’s efforts to dominate it and the harm its rivals said they were suffering from the company’s actions,” Politico revealed.
The long report showed memos to commissioners from economists who speculated that Microsoft, Mozilla, and Amazon would all offer competition to Google in the smartphone market – speculation that ultimately turned out to be wrong. Even BlackBerry, the former smartphone giant, was unable to compete against Google.
Politico described how the economists massively underestimated Google’s market share, and that the decision to let Google off the hook “reflected an era when the Obama administration had a close relationship with Silicon Valley and Americans held largely positive views toward the emerging tech giants.”
Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback told Politico that we “wouldn’t be in the situation we are today with any of these big companies if the FTC had done something then.”
“If they had stopped that in its tracks, the world would be a different place,” he added.
It was a sentiment that other veterans from the same industry agreed with. The entire report is an incredible read and reveals just how much influence President Obama still has on our political and digital landscape even now, over four years since he left office.
