It was an eventful—and decidedly negative—summer for Silicon Valley. In August the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved Amazon’s $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods, not only sending shockwaves through the grocery business but adding to growing anxieties about Amazon’s dominance of the larger retail industry.
Around the same time, New America, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, was engulfed in controversy after an overly public parting of ways with one of its Fellows, Barry Lynn, who had been a leading advocate for expanded antitrust enforcement against tech platforms such as Google, one of New America’s funders. Whether or not Google played a direct role in Lynn’s dismissal, the incident nevertheless raised questions about the political influence of leading Silicon Valley firms.