The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said today it’s planning to review some past acquisitions made by big technology firms, including Google LLC parent Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

The FTC has issued requests to the companies, saying it’s seeking “information and documents on the terms, scope, structure, and purpose” of smaller and often unreported acquisitions they made between Jan. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2019. The focus will be exclusively on the firms’ quieter acquisitions, not large deals that were heavily scrutinized at the time, such as Facebook’s $16 billion acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014.

“Digital technology companies are a big part of the economy and our daily lives,” Republican FTC Chair Joe Simons said in a statement. “This initiative will enable the Commission to take a closer look at acquisitions in this important sector, and also to evaluate whether the federal agencies are getting adequate notice of transactions that might harm competition. This will help us continue to keep tech markets open and competitive, for the benefit of consumers.”

The FTC’s review comes at a time when the federal government is stepping up its scrutiny of big tech firms. Back in July, the Justice Department announced it was opening a broad antitrust probe into the industry’s biggest players, targeting Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. And in June, House Democrats began a separate investigation into tech giants that’s also looking into whether companies are engaged in anti-competitive conduct.

The FTC itself is carrying out its own investigation into whether Amazon’s cloud computing business Amazon Web Services Inc. has violated antitrust laws. In recent months, it has also slapped heavy fines on both Facebook and Google following investigations into those companies’ privacy practices.

The FTC said in a press release that it intends to use the data and documents in receives from the companies to “examine trends” in their merger strategies and structures, in order to analyze how small firms perform after they’ve been acquired by larger entities.

In a press conference, Simons said the FTC wants to determine how large an acquisition must be to prompt a company to report it to the commission. He added that if the FTC discovers any anti-competitive merger activity in the past, it could take action against the companies concerned, and possibly even undo those acquisitions — though many may not exist in a form that could be separated.

Simons has said in the past that he’d consider breaking apart giant tech firms by undoing mergers if it’s determined they’re harming competition across the tech industry by being too dominant.

Although the FTC’s review of the big tech firms’ smaller acquisitions might seem confrontational, it’s actually a beneficial move for the industry as a whole, said Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller.

“The world is moving faster and so are the ways to acquire intellectual property and talented individuals,” he said. “The FTC as the supervising body in the U.S. needs to adopt and adapt to the pace, so learning how these actions have panned out and what is necessary for future approvals is a good move. Typically government agencies do not do that, so let us hope that by the end of the process the FTC is wiser and more up to date with business realities and necessities.”

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