It is appropriate, if perhaps a little anticlimactic, that when Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai meet on Wednesday for a highly anticipated audience in Congress, it will be by video chat.
Silicon Valley technology has changed the world, allowing people around the world to stay connected even during an unprecedented pandemic. But the success of Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google’s parent company Alphabet, and the four men who lead those companies, has sparked another unprecedented phenomenon: the incredible amount of control that Silicon Valley has over what the world sees, read, buy and do online.
How much control? Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with a user base roughly equal to the world’s two most populous countries combined. Amazon controls 38% of online sales in the US (Walmart, its closest competitor, barely reached 6%) and has data on other retailers using the giant platform. Apple’s App Store is a powerful gateway for software developers to find an audience with the company’s huge iPhone and iPad customer base. And Google processes around 90% of all web searches worldwide.
The hearing, delayed by two days to accommodate a memorial for the late Representative John Lewis, marks the first time that lawmakers will have the opportunity to storm the CEOs of those four powerful companies at the same time. Officially, the topic is antitrust, the culmination of a more than a year-long investigation into Big Tech’s market dominance by a House Judiciary subcommittee led by Rep. David Cicilline (pictured above), a Democrat. from Rhode Island. At the time, the subcommittee has collected more than 1.3 million documents from tech giants, competitors, and antitrust agencies for research.
However, politicians are known to stray from the script, and the audience is expected to become an opportunity for everyone, touching on topics as varied as electoral security, political bias and relations with China.
Government officials have been struggling with the power of tech companies for decades. In 1984 AT&T was divided into eight separate companies. Microsoft, the original bad guy in the tech industry, was accused of having a monopoly on PC software in the 1990s, a landmark case that turned into a deal in 2001. The European Union also forced Microsoft to open its operating system to competitors and repeatedly fined it. But a calculation of the entire industry that the audience represents is unknown territory.
The hearing is a rare public questioning of Big Tech’s top leaders at a crucial moment. The US presidential election is looming, the country is struggling with social unrest for racial injustice, and the world is facing deadly contagion. Meanwhile, Americans use technology services and devices to search for information online, purchase supplies, and download and stream entertainment while taking refuge on the spot.
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Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google will be called by Congress
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“They all control the dominant platforms,” said Hal Singer, principal investigator at the George Washington Institute for Public Policy, referring to the companies. “This is a good opportunity to bring them all together and see if any patterns emerge.”
Separate battles
Each of the four companies faces its own antitrust battle. All of them are reportedly targeted by surveys of the Justice Department or a coalition of state attorneys general. Google and Facebook have confirmed several investigations, while Amazon and Apple have not publicly acknowledged them.
With Facebook, which was originally slated to report second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, but moved them to Thursday, regulators are studying the acquisitions of company competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp. For Amazon, Congress has focused primarily on the company’s private label business, which sells Amazon clothing, food and consumer goods brands such as batteries and diapers. Apple has seen scrutiny over the cut it takes from software developers in its app store. For Google, regulators are mainly focused on the dominance of the search giant in digital advertising.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook testified two years ago.
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At Wednesday’s hearing, all of those disparate threads will cross over as a very weird and nerdy cross episode. Republicans have also asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to join the audience, in the wake of a massive security breach earlier this month. Dorsey is not on the witness list.
To the intrigue is added Bezos’ rookie status. Zuckerberg, Pichai and Cook have testified before. (Zuckerberg, the youngest of the group, has the most experience witnessing on Capitol Hill. In 2018, he answered questions for two sessions, for nearly 10 hours over two days, after the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. He also testified last year about Facebook planned Libra cryptocurrency).
Despite his growing profile and wealth, Bezos has never faced Congress. Last Monday fortune of the richest person in the world grew by $ 13 billion in a single day, taking his total net worth to nearly $ 190 billion.
Bezos can have an uncomfortable day. President Donald Trump has taken personal photos of the Amazon boss, apparently from coverage by The Washington Post, which Bezos owns separately from Amazon. Republicans allied with the president are likely to pick up the baton and run with it. But there are also legitimate questions about Amazon’s size and business practices.
A virtual affair
All high-profile hearings in Congress are partly political theater, full of pageantry and spectacle. When Zuckerberg testified before Congress two years ago, an activist group installed 100 cardboard cutouts of the Facebook CEO in the Capitol garden, imploring him to “Fix Fakebook.” Protesters dressed as bunnies and superheroes chanted slogans like “Zuckerberg, you’re absurd!” After sitting down for his first audience, photographers snapped photos of him for almost a minute before the process could continue.
Google’s Sundar Pichai was on the bench in 2018.
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On Wednesday, the circus will not follow the young magnate. The event will take place virtually, an adaptation to House rules due to the coronavirus pandemic. That means the audience will lack the drama that comes with in-person visits to DC Cutting exchanges, as Rep. Katie Porter’s Zuckerberg puncture of her hairstyle is unlikely last year. Quick sync is hard to perfect with Zoom.
Some observers have criticized the format of the forum. Having all four CEOs appear at the same time means that each gets a fraction of the time on the bench. Attention would be more focused if each witnessed individually.
The audience can be more spectacle than substance. The real developments will come later. A landmark case against Google is expected to be filed this summer. Facebook awaits the results of several investigations, including one from the Federal Trade Commission. Therefore, the audience is unlikely to change the rules of the game, even if it will give CEOs the opportunity to defend their companies in public.
People who attend the hearing should lower their expectations, says David Balto, a former attorney for the Justice Department’s antitrust division, whose clients include tech companies. He claims that there is only so much that lawmakers can achieve in these settings, and Congress should focus on trying to get public commitment from companies to reform their competition practices. That would mean, for example, getting Zuckerberg to commit against big acquisitions that “consolidate” the industry, like buying Instagram.
“The audience is tremendously significant,” said Balto. But “prepare for disappointment,” he adds, if you’re looking for big changes.
CNET’s Ben Fox Rubin, Queenie Wong, and Ian Sherr contributed to this report.
