startups

US lawmakers consider how to rein in Big Tech | Business | Journal Gazette – Fort Wayne Journal Gazette


Big Tech faced tough questions this week as federal lawmakers focused on issues of potentially anticompetitive behavior and expressed bipartisan skepticism over Facebook’s plan for a digital currency.

Companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon have long enjoyed nearly unbridled growth and a mythic stature as once-scrappy startups 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.

Democrats and Republicans had grievances to air, even if there wasn’t much consensus on what to do about them.

A Tuesday 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 to combat railroad and oil monopolies.

For some legislators those laws are in need of updates or at least more stringent enforcement. Ultimately such action could lead to breaking up big online platforms, blocking future acquisitions or imposing other limits on their actions.

Subcommittee chairman David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, charged that technology giants had enjoyed “de facto immunity” thanks to current antitrust doctrine, which typically equates anticompetitive behavior with higher prices for consumers. That allowed them to expand without restraint and to gobble up potential competitors, he argued, creating a “startup kill zone” that prevents smaller companies from challenging incumbents.

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.



READ SOURCE

Leave a Reply

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.