Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before a House Financial Services Committee in 2019.
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Wednesday should be a historic day. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, the CEOs of Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Alphabet, owned by Google, are scheduled to sit before the Judicial Subcommittee of the Chamber of Defense of Competition. The hearing, which was originally scheduled for Monday, has been rescheduled for Eastern noon, as Axios first reported on Saturday morning.
A scheduling conflict was to blame for the delay. The late John Lewis, a Democratic representative and civil rights leader who died last week of pancreatic cancer, will remain in the state at the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, it was announced Thursday.
Months in the making, the antitrust hearing aims for four of the most powerful CEOs in technology to defend the allegations of monopolistic behavior. The four tech giants have come under scrutiny over the past year by lawmakers and regulators, who not so long ago looked at Silicon Valley in a much more positive light. Now officials are expressing concern about the increasing dominance of these companies in the market, which could be crushing competition.
“Since last June, the subcommittee has been investigating the dominance of a small number of digital platforms and the adequacy of existing antitrust laws and their enforcement,” said Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler and chairman of the antitrust subcommittee, David Cicilline, in a joint statement Saturday. “Given the central role these corporations play in the lives of the American people, it is critical that their CEOs be forthcoming. As we have said from the beginning, your testimony is essential for us to complete this investigation.”
During a committee hearing in JanuarySmaller tech companies complained about the unfair business practices of tech giants. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence told lawmakers that Google tried to restrict his company’s innovations and wanted information on Sonos’ future product plans. Sonos sued google, alleging that the company stole its wireless speaker technology. David Barnett, CEO of PopSockets, criticized Amazon for ignoring the counterfeiting issues it had raised for months, intimidating it into lowering its prices.
“There is such a dominant power with these companies that really, even as a company of our size, you feel like you have no choice,” Spence said.
The process of putting the four CEOs in front of the committee was not without drama. Cicilline in May threatened summons Bezos to appear at the antitrust hearing after sending a open letter to Bezos asking for your testimony. Bezos agreed to appear in June.
The audience will be broadcast live here.
CNET’s Richard Nieva and Michelle Meyers contributed to this report.
