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posted by Fnord666 on Friday July 31 2020, @11:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the medium-rare dept.

Big Tech CEOs grilled by Congress: Key moments from the historic antitrust meeting:

For five hours on Wednesday, the four Big Tech CEOs of the world's most powerful companies faced a grilling from US lawmakers in Washington, in an unprecedented hearing over alleged anti-competitive practices at their companies.

The hearing was the first time that Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google's parent Alphabet appeared together before Congress.

The Big Tech CEOs, appearing via video link, all faced moments in the spotlight from the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, with Pichai and Zuckerberg receiving the most attention. It was sixth and final hearing into competition in the digital market by the committee, and a culmination of more than 1.3 million documents and hundreds of hours of interviews and testimonies.

There are long-standing concerns that the four companies, worth a combined $4.85tn, have become too dominant for rivals to compete on the same level.

Antitrust regulators fear that a lack of competition will lead to higher prices for consumers. However, when digital platforms offer services for free – as Facebook and Google do – it is difficult for lawmakers to prove that consumers are worse off.

Another charge is that a lack of competition stifles innovation, which in theory could lead to subpar products and services for consumers. But given the four tech giants are known for being at the cutting edge of innovation, this is again difficult to prove.

As such, Congress is considering new antitrust laws that are appropriate for the digital age, which could prevent so much power being concentrated in so few companies.

Here are some of the key topics the Big Tech CEOs were grilled on.

Here's a couple YouTube streams of the hearing from Reuters (6½h) & C-SPAN3 (5½hr).


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 31 2020, @01:08PM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 31 2020, @01:08PM (#1029262) Journal

    Had to read your first sentence a couple times. Just to be clear, UPS has been around since my grandparents were children. https://www.pressroom.ups.com/pressroom/about/HistoryStackList.page?countrylang=US-English [ups.com]

    Overnight delivery to consumers is relatively new for UPS and all the rest, but UPS is 113 years old.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 31 2020, @01:33PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday July 31 2020, @01:33PM (#1029269)

    Yes, UPS has been around, but in 1995 if you wanted to get a 20lb bag of dogfood delivered via UPS the available supply channels would have had you paying triple for it as compared to the local grocery store.

    Pets.com tried to innovate that - failed miserably.

    Amazon.com has worked it out - like WalMart - it's all about getting the product to the people at a price they are willing to pay. (Notice the clear lack of "lowest price possible..." that's a deeply anti-business concept, often touted in advertising - but advertising is the art of legal lying anyway...)

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday July 31 2020, @02:04PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Friday July 31 2020, @02:04PM (#1029285)

    And mail order is even older.

    However, you didn't used to be able to buy stuff from a dozen different suppliers at once through one shopping cart, and have the stuff packaged and delivered substantially cheaper than going to the store to buy it yourself.

    Amazon's storefront is nothing special, However, they have actually innovated pretty heavily in warehouse management. I mean mobile robotic shelves that bring their contents to packing station and automatically rearrange themselves based on frequency of access to minimize average travel time? That's a *huge* logistical innovation that drastically reduces the amount of time and labor required to assemble an order for shipping.