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Britain eyes new rules to deal with power of tech giants – San Francisco Chronicle


LONDON — Britain needs tough new rules to help counter the dominance of big tech giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon, a review of competition in the digital market concludes.

Wednesday’s 150-page report adds to an intensifying worldwide debate over the need for stricter regulation of Silicon Valley technology giants amid concern about their influence on the broader economy and their control of data. In the U.S., Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has proposed breaking up the biggest tech companies, slamming them for having too much market and political power.

The British report was released the same day that Swedish music-streaming service Spotify filed an antitrust complaint against Apple, accusing it of stifling competition through its control over the iPhone’s operating system and App Store.

The British government’s review was led by Harvard University professor Jason Furman, who was a chief economic adviser to President Barack Obama. The report found that global tech giants don’t face enough competition and said that existing rules are outdated and need to be beefed up.

“The digital sector has created substantial benefits but these have come at the cost of increasing dominance of a few companies, which is limiting competition and consumer choice and innovation,” Furman said.

Britain’s House of Lords recently called for a new digital regulatory authority to provide overall oversight.

EU authorities also have faced down big tech companies. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has slapped whopping fines on Google and ordered Apple to pay billions in back taxes. EU, German and Austrian authorities are looking separately into complaints of unfair practices against Amazon.

British Financial Secretary Philip Hammond said the recommendations must be approved by Parliament to take effect.

Recommendations include setting up a digital markets unit that would give people more control over their data, letting them move or share personal information if they switch to a new digital service.

The report’s authors said “data mobility” would result in new digital services while creating new business opportunities to manage the data.

The report also recommends getting big companies to share key data with startups, while safeguarding personal information, to help foster innovation and new business ideas; drawing up a code of conduct to lay out acceptable behavior for tech companies in their relationships with users; and rewriting rules so authorities can better stop digital mergers that could “damage future competition, innovation and consumer choice.”

Hammond said he asked Britain’s competition authority to authorize a study of the country’s digital ad market, which is dominated by Facebook and Google. According to the report, publishers complain that because the digital advertising supply chain is opaque, it’s hard for them to get a fair return on ads that go with their content.

Kelvin Chan is an Associated Press writer.



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