CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google will testify before Congress on Wednesday in what will be a crucial hearing for the future of the antitrust law and Big Tech’s relationship with Washington.
It will be the first time that Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey (Jeff) Preston BezosHillicon Valley: Google Extends Remote Work Policy Until July 2021 | Intel community returns Russia’s final report to Senate committee after declassification | Study Reveals Election Officials Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks House of Representatives Hearing with High-Profile Executives Rescheduled for Wednesday Hillicon Valley: Senior Intelligence Official Warns Russia, Iran and China Aiming for Election | Trump says he “often” regrets his tweets | John Lewis Postponed Technology CEO Hearing for Services MORETim Cook Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot ZuckerbergHillicon Valley: Google Extended Remote Work Policy Until July 2021 | Intel community returns Russia’s final report to Senate committee after declassification | Study Reveals Election Officials Are Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks Google Extended Remote Work Policy Until July 2021 House Hearing on High-Profile Tech Executives Rescheduled for Wednesday MORE and Sundar Pichai appear for questioning together and appears when the Congressional panel organizing the hearing enters the final leg of its investigation into competition in the digital marketplace.
For Democrats in the Chamber Antitrust Subcommittee of the Judiciary, chaired by Rep. David Cicilline
David Nicola CicillineHillicon Valley: Google Extended Remote Work Policy Until July 2021 | Intel community returns Russia’s final report to Senate committee after declassification | Study Reveals Election Officials Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks House of Representatives Hearing with High-Profile Executives Rescheduled for Wednesday Democrats Expect Showdown to Resonate with Key Block: Women MORE (DR.I.), Wednesday’s testimony will be one of the last major components of that comprehensive process, which started in June 2019 and included hundreds of hours of calls, meetings and briefings, as well as the review of 1.3 million documents. A release date for the report has not been announced.
A few Republicans on the subcommittee have signaled they will use the audience to criticize the nation’s top tech CEOs in content moderation, pursuing persistent but unsubstantiated allegations that social media platforms discriminate against conservatives.
Bezos is the only CEO to appear before Congress for the first time on Wednesday, and his inaugural hearing is likely to be combative given that committee members have already threatened Amazon with a referral for perjury.
You will likely face questions about Amazon’s dual role as operator of an online marketplace and seller of goods in that market.
A bipartisan group of members of the House Judiciary Committee has wanted Bezos to testify since the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the company used information from other sellers on the platform to make decisions regarding its private label business, which includes more than 243,000 products.
The article directly contradicted the testimony of Amazon associate attorney general Nate Sutton last year, who told the committee that “we did not use any data from the seller to compete with them.”
The main antitrust regulator in the European Union announced last year that it was investigating Amazon for its dual role.
Smaller sellers say Amazon also imposes warehouse and shipping fees that make “virtually impossible to maintain a profitable business in the Amazon market,” according to Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Sufficiency.
Matt Stoller, director of research for the antitrust organization of the American Economic Liberties Project, told The Hill that he hopes Wednesday’s hearing will give lawmakers an opportunity to pressure Bezos on Amazon Prime, which critics say the company is losing to move. other markets
To the other CEOs who testified, Cicilline has indicated that her interrogation about Cook will focus on Apple’s app store and allegations that the company is burying apps that could displace its own products.
“Because of Apple’s market power, it is charging exorbitant rents, highway robbery, basically intimidating people to pay 30 percent or denying access to its market,” the Rhode Island legislator said on a podcast with The Verge last month.
“It is crushing small developers who simply cannot survive on those kinds of payments. If there was real competition in this market, this would not happen. “
The European Commission has launched a formal investigation into the App Store into the mandatory use of Apple’s proprietary in-app purchasing system to distribute paid content, representing a 30 percent cut.
Apple anticipated its response to Cicilline’s likely line of questions last week, promoting a study it commissioned by the Review Group that says the App Store’s rates and practices are largely in line with other digital markets.
Application developer Blix, which claims that Apple has suppressed it in search functions, has recommended that Cicilline press Cook in the company’s search algorithm.
For Facebook, the company’s Instagram acquisitions in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 will likely appear largely in Wednesday’s testimony.
The company claims that concerns about the dominance of social media due to those purchases are exaggerated, emphasizing that the two platforms were not that big before being bought by Facebook and that it has yet to compete with applications like TikTok. Zuckerberg is likely to point out that his company’s Instagram and WhatsApp purchase was approved by federal regulators at the time.
Another concern is how Facebook treats the data collected by its different applications. Germany’s highest court ruled last month that the social media giant illegally combined the data it collected about users on the different platforms it owns.
Critics have also argued that the vast treasure trove of data collected from Facebook users puts them in a dominant position, making it easy to put aside competitors who can’t tailor their products to users in the same hyperspecific way as Facebook. .
The biggest competition concerns with Google are tied to its dominance in the search and ad technology market.
The company has been accused of self-referencing in search results, burying vertical search competitors further down the page. The European Commission fined Google $ 2.7 billion in 2017 for boosting its own purchasing results on competing services.
Google has strengthened its position in the advertising technology space in recent years with acquisitions of companies like DoubleClick and AdMob that give it dominance in almost every step of the online advertising chain.
Out of competition and competition issues will inevitably arise in the audience, especially given the attention that will be paid to the audience due to its high profile participants.
Rep. Jim Jordan
James (Jim) Daniel Jordan Hill Morning Report – Submitted by Facebook – Dems to GOP: Where’s your COVID-19 bill? Bolton defends Cheney amid standoff with House Conservatives, Gaetz says Cheney should be removed or resign as Republican leader MORE Ohio, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, publicly lobbied Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to testify at the hearing even though the company does not have the same competition concerns as those already involved because of “its role in content moderation on your platform. ” A clear reference to allegations of anti-conservative bias. The heads of the entire committee: Jordan and the Rep. Jerrold nadler
Jerrold (Jerry) Lewis NadlerHillicon Valley: Google Extended Remote Work Policy Until July 2021 | Intel community returns Russia’s final report to Senate committee after declassification | Study Reveals Election Officials Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks House of Representatives Hearing with High-Profile Executives Rescheduled for Wednesday Trump Threatens to Duplicate Portland in Other Major Cities MORE (DN.Y.): you will be allowed to participate in the subcommittee hearing.
Stoller warned that Republicans who focus on the anti-conservative bias would play into the hands of tech companies.
“Actually, that’s what tech CEOs want, they want to have a discussion about whether they’re looking for conservative content or not,” he told The Hill. “They are trying to make it into a clown show.”
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives internet companies immunity from lawsuits for content posted on their sites by third parties and allows them to make “good faith” efforts to moderate content, is also likely to arise given the administration’s efforts to amend or scrap it entirely, according to Arun Sundararajan, an expert in regulating big technologies at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Democrats on the subcommittee have dismissed concerns about the audience’s diversion over political fights.
“This is in the antitrust subcommittee for that exact reason: we want this hearing to focus on competition issues as part of a yearlong investigation,” a senior assistant to the committee told reporters last week. “Opening it to the full committee would have opened up a whole range of topics to cover, while our subcommittee has been very involved in this topic.”
Wednesday’s hearing is likely to be a significant time for big-tech antitrust investigations, whether they come from Congress or other regulatory bodies like the Justice Department or state attorneys general.
“The Chamber ended up being the forum where you have these four boys sitting together for the first time and arguing,” said Sundararajan. “And so, while Congress may not be the eventual body defending any particular change, it certainly is a good catalyst.”
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