Opaque sales, no specific business figures: The Google mother Alphabet, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are to disclose internal documents.
It's about emails from the top managers of the companies. In addition, MEPs want to see documents on all government investigations against companies both in the US and abroad.
Against the tech companies are running several investigations because of possible competition investigations. Also requested are documents that companies had submitted during the past ten years in the competition review of acquisition plans, the committee said. The Judiciary Committee also wants to see concrete figures for individual products and services. Here, companies are often very cautious in presenting their results.
Acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in view
This could steer the focus of the investigation on Facebook: The takeovers of the photo platform Instagram 2012 and the chat service WhatsApp 2014 are particularly frequently criticized. Among other things, the Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren calls for the two services of Facebook to split again.
For example, Facebook never disclosed how much revenue Instagram makes, and for Apple, the iPhone revenue, not the numbers, is its app store.