After last month’s presidential election, Lina Khan, the Democratic chair of the Federal Trade Commission, went into turbo mode.
She officially started a sweeping investigation into Microsoft’s potential antitrust violations, sending the company hundreds of pages of questions on its businesses. The F.T.C. settled two privacy cases last week with data brokers for selling sensitive user data without permission.
Ms. Khan’s staff has also rushed to finish an antitrust review of deals between artificial intelligence start-ups and the biggest tech companies, according to three people familiar with the agency’s activities, aiming to publish the findings before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office.
Ms. Khan’s actions are part of a larger sprint-to-the-finish regulatory blitz as the Biden administration caps an intense four years of scrutiny of the tech industry. Regulators in recent weeks have opened investigations, created rules and pushed some of the toughest stances on antitrust as they seek to curb the power of the biggest tech companies.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced late last month that it would begin to regulate e-payment services by companies like Google and Apple, creating the first regulatory oversight of the apps. The Justice Department asked for a federal judge to break up Google over its monopoly in search. And the Commerce Department is racing to grant more than $80 billion to chip manufacturers and companies bringing broadband to American homes.
Regulators say the activity is intended to tie up loose ends on cases the incoming Trump administration may not continue. Last-minute victories would also burnish what they view as a Democratic legacy of putting Silicon Valley on its heels.
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