Facebook says it was informed by the FTC in June that it has opened an antitrust investigation into the company
Context & Ripple Effects
This confirmation closes the loop on reporting from weeks earlier that the FTC had secured rights to begin a potential antitrust probe of Facebook as part of an arrangement that let the DOJ take the lead on Google — see the division-of-labor deal between the two agencies. Facebook itself disclosing the June notice signals the inquiry is formal rather than exploratory.
What follows in the related coverage shows how quickly that formality hardened: within months the FTC was weighing an injunction over how Facebook integrates its apps and their interoperability, and by late 2020 state and federal investigators were preparing to file antitrust charges, with the FTC favoring keeping the case in-house.
First-order effects
- Facebook moves from informal scrutiny to a formally opened federal antitrust investigation, putting its past acquisitions and current product integration decisions squarely inside an active enforcement docket.
- The FTC commits investigative resources to Facebook specifically, separate from the Google file it ceded to the DOJ, establishing two parallel federal tracks against major platforms.
Second-order effects
- State attorneys general layer on top of the federal probe — investigators were later expected to file antitrust charges against Facebook as soon as November 2020 — multiplying legal fronts the company must defend at once.
- Overseas regulators read the same playbook: EU antitrust authorities moved toward investigating Facebook's Kustomer acquisition after its initial review, extending the pressure from domestic conduct to future dealmaking.
Third-order effects
- If the arc from opened investigation to considered lawsuit holds, large-platform acquisitions stop being routine approvals and become contested proceedings requiring remedies or divestitures up front.
- The FTC-and-states pairing becomes a template for antitrust enforcement against dominant tech firms, with agencies negotiating jurisdiction splits — FTC here, DOJ elsewhere — rather than duplicating probes.
The trend: Antitrust enforcement against big tech is shifting from preliminary inquiries into sustained, multi-agency litigation targeting both platform integration and future mergers.