Venture capitalist Peter Thiel is in charge of the search for officials to be the nation's new competition regulators, according to BuzzFeed News' Will Alden and Hamza Shaban. They cited an earlier report from Global Competition Report in addition to their own sources. They echo two names that have emerged as consensus contenders to chair the FTC:
Joshua Wright, a former commissioner who has been involved with Trump's transition and is close to Google. BuzzFeed News reports that his selection is "unlikely."
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, who previously said the FTC should consider reopening a probe into the search giant.
The key question: Will the new permanent FTC chair and the top antitrust official at the Justice Department agree with President Trump, who has called for aggressive antitrust enforcement in some cases?
And then there's this: Thiel actually doesn't have a big problem with a company dominating the competition. "All happy companies are different: Each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem," he wrote in 2014. "All failed companies are the same: They failed to escape competition."
