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- In a blog post on Friday, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren detailed her plans to break up big tech companies - starting with Google, Facebook, and Amazon - to increase competition within the industry.
- For Google, Warren said she would "unwind anti-competitive mergers" by decoupling the tech giant from its acquisitions of Waze, Nest, DoubleClick.
- "We must ensure that today's tech giants do not crowd out potential competitors, smother the next generation of great tech companies, and wield so much power that they can undermine our democracy," Warren wrote.
- Warren mentioned similar breakups for Facebook (with plans to force a spin out WhatsApp and Instagram) and for Amazon (to spin out Whole Foods and Zappos).
Google's grasp on the internet has come under fire by presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.
In a blog post on Friday, Warren detailed her plans to break up big tech companies - starting with Google, Facebook, and Amazon - to increase competition within the industry.
For Google, Warren said she would "unwind anti-competitive mergers" by decoupling the tech giant from its acquisitions of Waze, Nest, DoubleClick.
Warren mentioned similar breakups for Facebook (with plans to force a spin out WhatsApp and Instagram) and for Amazon (to spin out Whole Foods and Zappos).
Warren also said the power of Google's marketplace was a major concern and something she would curb. The presidential hopeful pointed to reports of Google allegedly demoting content from competing search engines and promoting its restaurant reviews over Yelp's in its search results.
"We must ensure that today's tech giants do not crowd out potential competitors, smother the next generation of great tech companies, and wield so much power that they can undermine our democracy," she wrote.
Warren did acknowledge some good that has come from Google's technology. "Aren't we all glad that now we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with Bing?" she said, jabbing Microsoft's search engine.
But still, Warren attributes much of Google's rise to the antitrust case brought against Microsoft in the 1990s.
"The story demonstrates why promoting competition is so important: it allows new, groundbreaking companies to grow and thrive - which pushes everyone in the marketplace to offer better products and services," Warren said.
In 2007, Google acquired the online ad company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion to help bolster its ad technology and harness important relationship with buyers in the industry. Six years later, it acquired Waze in 2013 for $966 million, but has yet to integrate the product into its core Google Maps product.
Google acquired Nest for $3.2 billion in 2015, and by 2018, it was absorbed into Google's hardware division, which oversees products like Google Home and Pixel. In February, a major privacy advocacy group called on the FTC to force Google to divest in its Nest business after the company failed to let consumers know about a hidden microphone in one of its security devices.
Google did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
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