Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has received a mandatory request for information from the Justice Department concerning the company’s previous antitrust investigations, the tech giant said Friday.
The compulsory request was received on August 30, the company said in a notice to investors, which also acknowledged a looming antitrust investigation by dozens of state attorneys general.
“We continue to cooperate with the DOJ, federal and state regulators in the United States, and other regulators around the world,” the company said in its filing.
The disclosure marks the first public acknowledgment by Google and its parent that they are directly involved with the Justice Department’s wide-ranging review of the biggest players in Silicon Valley, which was announced in July.
The filing did not specify what previous investigations the DOJ was seeking information on.
Pressure has been mounting on Big Tech for months after the Federal Trade Commission established a task force designed to review the industry’s past mergers, and negotiated with the DOJ to divide up oversight of companies, including Google.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
Also on Friday, a group of nine attorneys general — from eight states and the District of Columbia — said they are launching an antitrust probe of Facebook. The probe is expected to cover Facebook’s handling of user data, mergers and acquisitions and its dominance in the advertising market.
