As the U.S. passed 150,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic and with millions of Americans facing eviction from their homes and an imminent drop in their unemployment benefits, Congress turned its attention to a very different subject. Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are facing anti-trust violations. The subcommittee grilled 4 tech giant CEOs for more than 5 hours.
The House of
Antitrust Subcommittee blamed Tech giants are using unfair business practices to
raise out competition. The complaints against the tech giants are varied but
the overarching criticisms are that they have used their dominant position to
quash rivals and overcharge the people and businesses reliant on their
services. The committee felt acquisition of Instagram by Facebook as “anti-competitive
acquisition”.
Subcommittee called the behavior of Google in threatening Yelp to remove from search listings as “economically catastrophic” for other companies. US Congress Committee called them as monarchs. The House of Antitrust Subcommittee suspects that China is stealing the data from these companies. The big 4 crushed their rivals by using their power. Apple questioned over the use of slave labour in China. Amazon was accused of breaching privacy laws. Microsoft faced similar anti-trust trials in 1990’s. Four CEOs said they are not powerful and big as lawmakers think.
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