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A new plan to target America's largest tech companies would roll back Amazon's 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods.
- Elizabeth Warren's proposed plan to break up American tech giants would roll back Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, along with some other massive tech deals.
- "Unwinding these mergers will promote healthy competition in the market - which will put pressure on big tech companies to be more responsive to user concerns, including about privacy," Warren said Friday.
- Amazon acquired the grocery chain in 2017 for $13.7 billion.
A new plan to target America's largest tech companies would roll back Amazon's 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced on Friday a regulatory plan that would break up some of the most massive tech companies in the US, ranging from Facebook to Google to Amazon.
The plan would force the rollback of Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, along with some other massive tech industry deals.
"Today's big tech companies have too much power - too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy," Warren wrote in a blog post published on Friday. "They've bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation."
In the post, Warren says that tech giants have used mergers to maintain dominance and cut down on competition. Her administration would "appoint regulators committed to reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers."
In addition to Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, Warren highlights Amazon's acquisition of Zappos, Facebook's acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, and Google's acquisitions of Waze, Next, and DoubleClick as "anti-competitive mergers."
"Unwinding these mergers will promote healthy competition in the market - which will put pressure on big tech companies to be more responsive to user concerns, including about privacy," Warren writes.
Since Amazon acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, the grocery chain has undergone some major changes. Amazon is also exploring other channels to enter the grocery market, with The Wall Street Journal reporting last week that the company is planning to launch a new brand of grocery stores.
