On Wednesday, the CEOs of the four companies, a group that includes two of the world’s richest men, will appear before the antitrust panel of the House Judiciary Committee to respond to allegations that the companies are too dominant or they have hurt competition, each on its own. shapes. In a pandemic-driven twist, CEOs will appear together on a panel via video conference. (Initially scheduled for Monday, the hearing was postponed in light of Representative John Lewis’ funeral.)
It will be the first such antitrust hearing since Gates’ visit to the Capitol in 1998. And some policy experts anticipate that the story could be repeated, as Big Tech’s largest is facing a series of antitrust investigations by state officials and federal, as well as the European Union.
“The more members of the Judiciary Committee beat any one of these companies, the more pressure it puts on antitrust officers to move aggressively with their investigations,” said Gene Kimmelman, a former Justice Department antitrust official and senior advisor to Public Knowledge. , a consumer advocacy group.
The committee’s top advisers say they are determined to keep the hearing focused on substance, gathering evidence of Big Tech’s enormous power that could lay the groundwork for action, including the new legislation. But with tech giants playing defense on many fronts, particularly in a high-risk political season, the potential is high for a dramatic showdown, albeit one possibly tempered by its unusual logistics.
Why is Silicon Valley under fire?
Unlike the Microsoft case, which focused on how the company was using Windows to gain an unfair advantage in web browsers and other types of software, the companies that took over on Wednesday face a much wider range of complaints. It is a reflection of how dramatically the technology industry has expanded to fill virtually every corner of our lives, going beyond computing to include food, health monitoring, transportation, and other everyday activities.
CEO testimony will now unfold that record in a very visible way, marking what a committee assistant described as the “final leg” in the investigation.
Each of the companies has rejected antitrust claims, with some tension the competition they face, often referring to each other, or the growing economic power of Chinese companies, or carefully pointing out that many of their services are free to consumers or available at very low cost. (For decades, a key concern of antitrust law has been the effect of corporate behavior on consumer prices. More recently, some experts have questioned whether the courts have focused too much on the effects of prices, particularly in an era of powerful data-driven advertising.)
The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story.
In a sense, hearings can be seen as the culmination of years of increasing scrutiny and criticism of the technology industry’s impact on privacy, civil speech, hate speech, and elections. But those issues may have less to do with specific antitrust claims than the perception that platforms have simply become essential services. Still, even though those issues are less directly related to competition, many analysts widely expect them to come up in the audience.
How tech companies can defend themselves
The four CEOs will vigorously argue, like Gates, that their companies have allowed countless other businesses to form and prosper. And lawmakers will play their part, seeking to poke holes in executive logic and catch them unprepared.
Hansson argued that the overall impression the audience will make is a sense of momentum, which could pave the way for an antitrust suit from the Justice Department, which is investigating Google, or state attorneys general, who have separate ongoing investigations into Google. and Facebook. .
“I think the event itself is more important than what any individual executive is going to say,” said Hansson. “What is so wild is that we have essentially spent 25 years without any material antitrust applications in technology since the Microsoft case. Suddenly, we are sitting at an antitrust enforcement buffet.”
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