House Antitrust Panel Seeks Documents From 4 Big Tech Firms

In response to the committee’s requests, representatives of the companies mainly pointed to their previous statements: They have consistently said that they would cooperate with the federal and state investigations, and would seek to demonstrate that they operate in dynamic, highly competitive markets.

In a statement, Representative David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island, who leads the subcommittee on antitrust, which is conducting the House investigation, called the document requests “an important milestone” in the fact-gathering stage.

Mr. Cicilline also emphasized the effort’s bipartisan nature. The letters to chief executives are signed by Mr. Cicilline, and Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and also the ranking Republican members of the Judiciary Committee and the antitrust subcommittee, Doug Collins of Georgia and James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin.

The formal requests for information begin with cover letters to the chief executives, saying the investigators are examining competition in online markets and “whether dominant firms are engaging in anticompetitive conduct.” The letters are accompanied by detailed lists of the requested documents and communications.

It is unclear how much of the investigative work will become public as inquiries progress. At later stages, when investigators are trying to lay the groundwork for a suit, they won’t want to show their hand to a potential corporate defendant.

Such work — collecting more documents, taking depositions, assembling evidence and building the narrative of corporate misbehavior — is best done in secrecy. Major antitrust investigations typically last many months or years.

Sometimes, companies themselves make disclosures about an investigation. Google, for example, said last Friday that its parent company, Alphabet, had received a mandatory request for information from the Justice Department about previous antitrust investigations.