Two global power centers are set to clash Wednesday as the CEOs of tech giants Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook testify before House lawmakers on allegations their companies are harming consumers by unfairly stifling the competition.
The hearing marks the first time the four tech moguls — whose companies are roughly worth a combined $5 trillion — have jointly testified before Congress, and its the first congressional outing ever for Amazons Jeff Bezos, the worlds richest person. The session also arrives as scrutiny of the behemoths is surging across the globe, including an expected Justice Department antitrust case against Google and the recent launch of two European probes of potential anti-competitive behavior by Apple.
But whether Wednesdays showdown lives up to its historic billing may depend on a host of factors: The lawmakers could veer far from the antitrust script, into Democrats concerns about online hate speech or GOP accusations of anti-conservative bias. Some Republicans have already accused Democrats of harboring “preconceived conclusions” in favor of breaking up the tech giants, adding to the dangers of a partisan food fight breaking out.
Even the format of the questioning — four elite CEOs, all appearing by videoconference because of the coronavirus pandemic — could make it harder for the members to land a glove on the companies varied issues, ranging from Googles and Facebooks command of digital ad revenue to Apples control of its App Store and questions about whether Amazon misled Congress.
Heres what to expect as Bezos, Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, Apples Tim Cook and Googles Sundar Pichai testify before the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee — and the potential surprises that may await:
For Bezos: Did Amazon lie to Congress last year?
Jeff Bezos | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
House lawmakers are expected to grill Bezos about whether a company lawyer misled the Judiciary Committee last summer by testifying that Amazon doesnt use the data it collects from third-party vendors to launch competing products on its platform.
The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported that Amazon employees did in fact use the sellers data to inform the companys own products. The revelation prompted Judiciary leaders to raise the specter of referring Amazon to prosecutors for perjury charges, while Amazon disputed the accuracy of the Journals account and said it did not offer “intentionally misleading” testimony. Amazon also promised to conduct an internal investigation but hasnt offered any public updates on its progress.
Now that Bezos is appearing before them, some lawmakers say they plan to push him to account for the discrepancy.
“I do have concerns about testimony that was given to me under oath that I will be following up on from the last hearing,” said subcommittee member Pramila Jayapal, who questioned Amazon associate general counsel Nate Sutton about the practice at a hearing last July.
Meanwhile, the Journal last week raised similar questions about Amazons treatment of tech startups that had sought investments from the companys venture capital fund.
For Zuckerberg: Facebooks thirst for growth
Mark Zuckerberg | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Facebooks past acquisitions of former rivals WhatsApp and Instagram have drawn significant attention on Capitol Hill in recent years. Representative David Cicilline told POLITICO last year that “there ought to have been more review” of the deals, which had won approval from regulators during the Obama administration. Others, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, have called for regulators to break up Facebook and have singled out those mergers as targets for rolling back.
The committee has also demanded answers from Facebook on whether it devotes resources to identifying and tracking promising startups. Lawmakers have expressed concern that Facebook and the other giants are uniquely positioned to duplicate, acquire or otherwise drive out up-and-coming rivals.
The companys massive trove of user data is also set to draw scrutiny. Representative Joe Neguse, vice chair of the antitrust subcommittee, said he hopes to press the company about whether the massive amounts of personal information it collects from more than 2 billion users makes it too difficult for competitors to keep up.
“Theres a real fear that no other competitor could ever successfully launch a social media platform because it could never match Facebooks troves of data, which, given their record, its a serious threat to users,” he told POLITICO.
For Pichai: Googles dominance of digital ads and search
Sundar Pichai | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Google is the worlds No. 1 player in the $162.3 billion market for online display ads, in part because it runs the most dominant search engine. Now its facing rising scrutiny from state and federal regulators on both issues, which could become the subject of the DOJs expected antitrust suit.
Critics of the company have long accused it of favoring its own services in search, to the detriment of its competitors and consumers looking for maps, videos or other services that Google also provides. Cicilline has separately voiced concern that the companys ability to hoover up online ad revenue has harmed smaller businesses, including news outlets. (Google and Facebook together account for a majority of the online ad revenue in the U.S.)
The committee has also accused the company of being less than forthright in its past testimony, including on questions such as what percentage of searches on the companys engine lead to website referrals not on Google.
Google has separately been a frequent target of Republican allegations of anti-conservative bias on its video-sharing platform YouTube, a topic that is expected to come up again at Mondays hearing. Google and other major tech platforms deny those charges. Democrats, meanwhile, have taken issue with the companys handling of hate speech and misinformation on YouTube.
For Cook: Apples App Store under the microscope
Tim Cook | Tom Brenner/Getty Images
Apple, which to date hasnt drawn the same level of congressional scrutiny as the other companies testifying, is now facing a fresh investigation in Europe over whether its popular App Store violates the EUs competition rules. Competitors, publishers and app-makers have taken issue with Apples 30 percent cut of app sales and subscriptions in the App Store.
State and federal regulators in the U.S. have also begun taking initial steps toward an antitrust investigation into those practices, POLITICO reported last month.
And key lawmakers have torn into Apple for its handling of the App Store.
“Because of the market power that Apple has, it is charging exorbitant rents — highway robbery, basically — bullying people to pay 30 percent or denying access to their market,” Cicilline told The Verge in June. “Its crushing small developers who simply cant survive with those kinds of payments. If there were real competition in this marketplace, this wouldnt happen.”
For the House members: Can they avoid a free-for-all?
Democratic lawmakers, committee aides and advocacy groups say they expect the hearing to stay on track more than other past high-profile hearings with Big Tech CEOs have done.
When Zuckerberg testified before Congress for the first time in 2018 at the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, for example, he fielded questions on everything from misinformation to competition, hate speech, privacy and allegations of anti-conservative bias on social media.
This time, Wednesdays hearing is not a one-off event — its the subcommittees sixth hearing as part of its more-than-yearlong investigation into Silicon Valleys antitrust problems. That means lawmakers have had an unusual amount of preparation, said Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit that advocates against market concentration.
More recent disputes have emerged between Democrats and Republicans on how to handle Wednesdays hearing.
“The subcommittee members have been deeply involved in this investigation and many of them have a fine-grained understanding of the business models of these corporations,” said Mitchell, a prominent Big Tech cRead More – Source
Two global power centers are set to clash Wednesday as the CEOs of tech giants Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook testify before House lawmakers on allegations their companies are harming consumers by unfairly stifling the competition.
The hearing marks the first time the four tech moguls — whose companies are roughly worth a combined $5 trillion — have jointly testified before Congress, and its the first congressional outing ever for Amazons Jeff Bezos, the worlds richest person. The session also arrives as scrutiny of the behemoths is surging across the globe, including an expected Justice Department antitrust case against Google and the recent launch of two European probes of potential anti-competitive behavior by Apple.
But whether Wednesdays showdown lives up to its historic billing may depend on a host of factors: The lawmakers could veer far from the antitrust script, into Democrats concerns about online hate speech or GOP accusations of anti-conservative bias. Some Republicans have already accused Democrats of harboring “preconceived conclusions” in favor of breaking up the tech giants, adding to the dangers of a partisan food fight breaking out.
Even the format of the questioning — four elite CEOs, all appearing by videoconference because of the coronavirus pandemic — could make it harder for the members to land a glove on the companies varied issues, ranging from Googles and Facebooks command of digital ad revenue to Apples control of its App Store and questions about whether Amazon misled Congress.
Heres what to expect as Bezos, Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, Apples Tim Cook and Googles Sundar Pichai testify before the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee — and the potential surprises that may await:
For Bezos: Did Amazon lie to Congress last year?
Jeff Bezos | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
House lawmakers are expected to grill Bezos about whether a company lawyer misled the Judiciary Committee last summer by testifying that Amazon doesnt use the data it collects from third-party vendors to launch competing products on its platform.
The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported that Amazon employees did in fact use the sellers data to inform the companys own products. The revelation prompted Judiciary leaders to raise the specter of referring Amazon to prosecutors for perjury charges, while Amazon disputed the accuracy of the Journals account and said it did not offer “intentionally misleading” testimony. Amazon also promised to conduct an internal investigation but hasnt offered any public updates on its progress.
Now that Bezos is appearing before them, some lawmakers say they plan to push him to account for the discrepancy.
“I do have concerns about testimony that was given to me under oath that I will be following up on from the last hearing,” said subcommittee member Pramila Jayapal, who questioned Amazon associate general counsel Nate Sutton about the practice at a hearing last July.
Meanwhile, the Journal last week raised similar questions about Amazons treatment of tech startups that had sought investments from the companys venture capital fund.
For Zuckerberg: Facebooks thirst for growth
Mark Zuckerberg | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Facebooks past acquisitions of former rivals WhatsApp and Instagram have drawn significant attention on Capitol Hill in recent years. Representative David Cicilline told POLITICO last year that “there ought to have been more review” of the deals, which had won approval from regulators during the Obama administration. Others, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, have called for regulators to break up Facebook and have singled out those mergers as targets for rolling back.
The committee has also demanded answers from Facebook on whether it devotes resources to identifying and tracking promising startups. Lawmakers have expressed concern that Facebook and the other giants are uniquely positioned to duplicate, acquire or otherwise drive out up-and-coming rivals.
The companys massive trove of user data is also set to draw scrutiny. Representative Joe Neguse, vice chair of the antitrust subcommittee, said he hopes to press the company about whether the massive amounts of personal information it collects from more than 2 billion users makes it too difficult for competitors to keep up.
“Theres a real fear that no other competitor could ever successfully launch a social media platform because it could never match Facebooks troves of data, which, given their record, its a serious threat to users,” he told POLITICO.
For Pichai: Googles dominance of digital ads and search
Sundar Pichai | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Google is the worlds No. 1 player in the $162.3 billion market for online display ads, in part because it runs the most dominant search engine. Now its facing rising scrutiny from state and federal regulators on both issues, which could become the subject of the DOJs expected antitrust suit.
Critics of the company have long accused it of favoring its own services in search, to the detriment of its competitors and consumers looking for maps, videos or other services that Google also provides. Cicilline has separately voiced concern that the companys ability to hoover up online ad revenue has harmed smaller businesses, including news outlets. (Google and Facebook together account for a majority of the online ad revenue in the U.S.)
The committee has also accused the company of being less than forthright in its past testimony, including on questions such as what percentage of searches on the companys engine lead to website referrals not on Google.
Google has separately been a frequent target of Republican allegations of anti-conservative bias on its video-sharing platform YouTube, a topic that is expected to come up again at Mondays hearing. Google and other major tech platforms deny those charges. Democrats, meanwhile, have taken issue with the companys handling of hate speech and misinformation on YouTube.
For Cook: Apples App Store under the microscope
Tim Cook | Tom Brenner/Getty Images
Apple, which to date hasnt drawn the same level of congressional scrutiny as the other companies testifying, is now facing a fresh investigation in Europe over whether its popular App Store violates the EUs competition rules. Competitors, publishers and app-makers have taken issue with Apples 30 percent cut of app sales and subscriptions in the App Store.
State and federal regulators in the U.S. have also begun taking initial steps toward an antitrust investigation into those practices, POLITICO reported last month.
And key lawmakers have torn into Apple for its handling of the App Store.
“Because of the market power that Apple has, it is charging exorbitant rents — highway robbery, basically — bullying people to pay 30 percent or denying access to their market,” Cicilline told The Verge in June. “Its crushing small developers who simply cant survive with those kinds of payments. If there were real competition in this marketplace, this wouldnt happen.”
For the House members: Can they avoid a free-for-all?
Democratic lawmakers, committee aides and advocacy groups say they expect the hearing to stay on track more than other past high-profile hearings with Big Tech CEOs have done.
When Zuckerberg testified before Congress for the first time in 2018 at the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, for example, he fielded questions on everything from misinformation to competition, hate speech, privacy and allegations of anti-conservative bias on social media.
This time, Wednesdays hearing is not a one-off event — its the subcommittees sixth hearing as part of its more-than-yearlong investigation into Silicon Valleys antitrust problems. That means lawmakers have had an unusual amount of preparation, said Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit that advocates against market concentration.
More recent disputes have emerged between Democrats and Republicans on how to handle Wednesdays hearing.
“The subcommittee members have been deeply involved in this investigation and many of them have a fine-grained understanding of the business models of these corporations,” said Mitchell, a prominent Big Tech cRead More – Source
