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What Giant companies Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple have in common
Last Wednesday, lawmakers quarreled with the chief executives of the tech industry 's four most influential players: Amazon, Apple, Twitter , and Google. While each corporation is under antitrust investigation for a number of reasons, the committee used this week's hearing to point out parallels between the four companies and to make the case for future regulatory change.
Since last June, senators have been involved in a wide-ranging antitrust inquiry into the technology market, investigating whether some of the industry's most famous brands have gotten so large due to potentially stifling competition.
Lawmakers have heard hundreds of hours of testimonies and provided over 1 million documents during their investigation, a procedure that has made it impossible for CEOs like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos to escape awkward lines of questioning.
Throughout this review and under the leadership of Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), the committee has found troubling patterns of conduct that all four companies display. It involves how each corporation regulates production, tracks competition and exploits their influence over technologies to improve their dominance.
In his opening remarks, Cicilline, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee of the Antitrust Subcommittee, said, While these four companies vary in significant and substantive respects, we have found similar themes and problems with competition in the course of our investigation.
Technology tech companies involved in the dissemination of information and goods are central to the committee's investigation. Both Apple and Amazon have enormous control over who's going to set up applications and sell goods. Rep. Val Butler Demings questioned Apple CEO Tim Cook about its App Store guidelines, reflecting on Apple's decision to ban third-party parental control applications that used mobile device management ( MDM) technologies.
Apple has its own parental management program.
Google caught fire from Cicilline to keep a watchful eye on the competitors in quest. Cicilline quoted e-mails collected during an investigation involving Google workers worried over how rival firms were becoming more influential. Specifically for Yelp, Google reportedly threatened to erase its ratings if the company did not feed them on its own goods. This monitoring strategy also applies to the other three businesses. For eg, Facebook has apparently held track on other growing tech firms, making attempts to clone or potentially buy them, as in the case of Instagram.
Through achieving supremacy in their respective markets, corporations may find it more difficult for rival businesses and goods to gain momentum. Amazon was the prime example of this conduct of the Commission. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) called out Amazon 's willingness to "systematically ban" retailers from offering items in different categories, referencing interviews with a retailer who claimed he had been prohibited from selling similar types of books.
I don't think that's what's going on regularly, Bezos replied. As a result, third-party sellers are doing exceptionally well on Amazon.
The Committee expects to release a report outlining its conclusions at the end of the month. Congress won't do anything to smash up Big Tech, so it will draft laws to regulate it. Twitter and Google are both under monopoly scrutiny from law enforcement officials. Agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are the only agencies with the power to penalize software over anti-competitive conduct.
