The morning after: Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon grilled by Congress

The bosses of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google were grilled at the landmark hearing in Washington with intense questioning from lawmakers. The subcommittee is reported to have collected 1.3 million documents as part of its year-long investigation into the dominance of the masters of our online universe. David Cicilline, chairman of the subcommittee, was in a combative mood, accusing the giants of stifling competition and threatening an antitrust crackdown.

For Mark Zuckerberg, the focus of the questioning was on the way Facebook acquires and copies features of its competition to wipe them out. Jerry Nadler, the representative for New York, said that this type of anticompetitive acquisition is what the antitrust laws were designed to prevent, and should never have happened in the first place. "It should never have been permitted to happen. It cannot happen again," he told Congress.

For Tim Cook and Apple, most of the questioning surrounded its App Store practices. Lucy McBath, a Democrat from Georgia, raised allegations Apple had removed competitors’ apps from its App Store. Cook denied the allegation, which was the line all of the big tech bosses took throughout the day's hearing. "If Apple wasn’t attempting to harm competitors in order to help its own app, why did Phil Schiller, who runs the App Store, promote the Screen Time app to customers who complained about the removal of rival parental control apps?" asked McBath.

"Has Facebook ever threatened to clone the products of another company while also attempting to acquire that company?" Watch Rep. Pramila Jayapal grill Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook's history of emulating competing products. https://t.co/Nsaog2gcCI pic.twitter.com/XUsKP8JGeR

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 29, 2020

For Alphabet, Google, and Sundar Pichai, it was the company's advertising policies that were under the microscope. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat, asked Google it could be anything other than a monopoly when it controls 90 percent of the global online search market.

• Google will now auto-delete your activity data by default

There was a lot of shirking, ducking, and diving from the well-known faces of the world's biggest online brands. When questioned, Jeff Bezos of Amazon claimed more than once to not to know Amazon's data collection policies. Dania Rajendra, director of Athena, a non-profit group of activists against Amazon’s centralized power, said that Bezos seemed to be unaware of the widespread harms that Amazon inflicts.

Local journalism is necessary for our democracy and we must protect it. That's why I'm concerned about how Google has total control of the ad market as the owner of the market, the ad buyer, AND the ad seller. That's not only a conflict of interest, it's harmful to our democracy. pic.twitter.com/prHWSX6c4y

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) July 30, 2020

Zuckerberg, who must be getting used to appearing in front of Congress to shuffle uncomfortably in a chair, initially claimed to not know anything about the controversial Facebook Research app that pays users for their data. He later amended his statement on record to acknowledge the study.

Perhaps the strongest words of the day though came from Cicilline, the Democratic representative for Rhode Island, who said in his closing statement: "These companies, as they exist today, have monopoly power. Some need to be broken up, all need to be properly regulated and held accountable. This must end."

"We have a policy against using seller-specific data to aid our private label business, but I can't guarantee you that that policy has never been violated," Jeff Bezos tells Dem. Rep Jayapal when asked about using seller data to make business decisions. https://t.co/rIw3QVj5oB pic.twitter.com/jhmSpj3mji

— ABC News Live (@ABCNewsLive) July 29, 2020

We will have to wait and see what kind of antitrust legislation comes out of these hearings, but the tide does seem to be shifting somewhat on the biggest tech giants. Watch this space.

Source: The Guardian