Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before a House Financial Services Committee in 2019.
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Monday was a historic day. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, the CEOs of Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google-owned Alphabet, were scheduled to sit before the Judicial Subcommittee of the Chamber of Defense of Competition. However, the hearing is now officially postponed, according to the committee. Late Thursday, a source familiar with the matter said the hearing was very likely to be delayed.
A programming conflict is to blame. 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.
The gathering of tech giants was scheduled for noon. A new date for the hearing has not yet been confirmed, the source said. Axios previously reported that the hearing would likely be delayed.
The House is slated to be in recess throughout August, making it unclear whether the hearing could be delayed until after Labor Day.
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.
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. Representative David Cicilline, who heads the House subcommittee, in May threatened to 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.
CNET’s Richard Nieva contributed to this report.
