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Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google deserve to be grilled at the House antitrust hearing

Time to get to the bottom of a host of antitrust issues facing all four tech giants.
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google deserve to be grilled at the House antitrust hearing

A little accountability sure would be nice right about now.

Wednesday's congressional hearing, which will see the CEOs of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google, remotely testify in front of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, may offer a chance at just that. Ostensibly focused on the companies' respective market dominance and anti-competitive practices, the hearing will give frustrated members of Congress the chance to berate some of the most powerful men in the world. And, if we're lucky, it will help get to the bottom of a host of antitrust issues facing all four tech giants.

Of course, with participating members including Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz — who, on Monday, filed a criminal referral against Mark Zuckerberg — the hearing may end up being one long, tired screed about the myth of social media bias against conservatives.

If the subcommittee's more level-headed members manage to keep the hearing more or less on topic, here's what you should keep an eye out for — and why Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Tim Cook all have a lot to answer for.

Amazon

The main issue confronting CEO Jeff Bezos will be Amazon's alleged use of data gleaned from companies who use his commerce platform to create and sell competing products. Notably, Amazon has long denied that it does this — a claim disputed by past and present sellers (and past Amazon employees).

In January of this year, PopSockets CEO and inventor David Barnett addressed the same congressional subcommittee set to grill Bezos on Wednesday and recounted what he described as some of Amazon's predatory practices.

"Multiple times we discovered that Amazon itself had sourced counterfeit product and was selling it alongside our own product," Barnett explained. He added that his business dealings with Amazon essentially boiled down to "bullying with a smile."

It's not just PopSockets that has received such treatment from Amazon. In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon used seller data — some of it proprietary — to inform production and pricing decisions for numerous Amazon-branded products including car-trunk organizers and office chair seat cushions.

"We knew we shouldn't," one former Amazon employee told the Journal, "but at the same time, we are making Amazon branded products, and we want them to sell."

In June, we learned that California and Washington state officials are reportedly investigating Amazon for its anti-competitive practices.

Facebook

The social media giant that famously inflated video view metrics for over a year by as much as 900 percent and, in the process, directly contributed to the loss of thousands of jobs, is currently embroiled in an ongoing antitrust investigation. It makes sense, then, that Mark Zuckerberg will be one of the four CEOs dialing into the Wednesday hearing.

The current investigation into Facebook, spearheaded by the Federal Trade Commission, is reportedly entirely separate from another FTC investigation that resulted in the levying of a $5 billion fine against Facebook in 2019. That latter investigation determined that Facebook violated a 2011 settlement with the FTC regarding user data. While the exact details of the ongoing investigation haven't been disclosed, the New York Times reports that it likely centers on Facebook's use of acquisitions to squash competitors.

Think Facebook's 2014 purchase of WhatsApp for $16 billion, or its 2012 acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion.

This will certainly be the focus of many questions at Wednesday's hearing.

Mark Zuckerberg in 2018, possibly thinking about one day surfing on an electric hydrofoil in Hawaii.

Mark Zuckerberg in 2018, possibly thinking about one day surfing on an electric hydrofoil in Hawaii.

Image: Tom Williams / getty

Then there's the issue of Facebook's digital advertising dominance. In late 2019, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority released an interim report claiming that "[Facebook and Google] are both now so large and have such extensive access to data that potential rivals can no longer compete on equal terms."

The report noted that Facebook captured close to "50 percent of the ?5 billion display advertising market" in the UK.

"Weak competition in digital advertising can increase the prices of goods and services across the economy and undermine the ability of newspapers and others to produce valuable content, to the detriment of broader society," continued the report.

The idea that Facebook is a "detriment to broader society" is one that will likely be hammered home on Wednesday.

Apple

Through the App Store, Apple controls its ecosystem, determining what apps can and cannot thrive on hardware products like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. This control has already garnered Apple at least one overseas investigation — launched last month — by the European Union. Now, on Wednesday, members of Congress will grill Apple CEO Tim Cook on whether his control of the App Store gives Apple an unfair advantage over third-party app developers.

At the very least, the App Store gives Apple a huge source of income. The company takes anywhere from a 15-percent to 30-percent cut on most App Store sales. Companies like Spotify allege that, by being forced to use Apple's payment system (and pay the corresponding fees), its own product becomes more expensive than Apple's competing Music app.

"If we choose not to use Apple’s payment system," wrote Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in a March 2019 blog post, "forgoing the charge, Apple then applies a series of technical and experience-limiting restrictions on Spotify."

More recently, Apple has reportedly demanded a 30-percent cut from ClassPass as the coronavirus pandemic forced it to move its lessons online.

Google

Once arguably the most efficient way to find information on the internet, Google search has become a bloated tool that, critics argue, largely favors its own services. In addition, Google's control over the Android mobile operating system allegedly allowed it to push its own products at the expense of competitors'.

In 2018, the European Commission fined Google 4.34 billion for violating antitrust rules. Specifically, it found that "[since] 2011, Google has imposed illegal restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators to cement its dominant position in general internet search."

SEE ALSO: Big Tech CEOs will face 'anti-conservative bias' claims at hearing. They're BS—and dangerous.

This modus operandi has lasted through today, according to an investigation by The Markup. Published Tuesday, the report quantifies just how aggressive Google's self-promoting has become.

According to the report, "Google devoted 41 percent of the first page of search results on mobile devices to its own properties and what it calls 'direct answers,' which are populated with information copied from other sources, sometimes without their knowledge or consent."

Google CEO Sundar Pichai clearly has his work cut out for him.


You can watch the hearing live on July 29, starting at 9 a.m. PT below.

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