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).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @07:40PM
The last time I checked, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dutch Ministry of the Interior, European Commission, Finnish Interior Ministry, Norwegian Ministry of Justice, Public Safety Canada, Swedish Ministry of Justice, UK Home Office, US State Department, and MI6 [catbox.moe] could be considered "the government".
As could the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia [catbox.moe].
"But at least it's not the government!" everyone keeps saying, while the government arrests anyone who tries to build up an alternative service which is not under government control. [breakermag.com] (This guy once hired a whore who said she was 19 but was underage. The government somehow learned of that, crossed international lines to arrest him for that, and smeared him as a pedophile in the press to justify such drastic action for a non-crime with no mens rea. The real reason for arresting him is that he made a competitor to Patreon.)