Big Tech faced tough questions Tuesday as federal lawmakers focused on issues of potentially anticompetitive behavior by technology giants and expressed bipartisan skepticism over Facebook’s plan for a new digital currency.
Companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon have long enjoyed nearly unbridled growth and a mythic stature as once-scrappy startups -- born in garages and a dorm room and a road trip across the United States -- that grew up to dominate their rivals. But as they’ve grown more powerful, critics have also grown louder, questioning whether the companies stifle competition and innovation, and if their influence poses a danger to society.
An afternoon panel of the House Judiciary Committee focused on whether it’s time for Congress to rein in these companies, which are among the largest on Earth by several measures. Central to that case is whether their business practices run afoul of century-old laws originally designed to combat railroad and oil monopolies.
A panel of four mid-level executives from the companies countered that their firms continue to innovate, that they face vigorous competition on all fronts — including from one another — and, perhaps most of all, that they were not monopolists in any way, shape or form. Sutton said the company doesn’t use third-party sellers’ data to “directly compete” with them. Cicilline, affecting disbelief, twice reminded Sutton that he was under oath. “Amazon is a trillion-dollar company that runs an online platform with real-time data,” he said., a law professor at Columbia University who has advocated for more expansive antitrust enforcement, noted concerns about a fall in the number of startups being formed, and wondered aloud whether the U.S.
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