US Congress Launches Bills Limiting the Influence of Large Tech Companies
The US House Judiciary Committee has approved preliminary draft laws aimed at limiting the dominant market position of leading technology companies. Although no company is mentioned in the text of the bill, experts are sure that it is primarily directed against such giants as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple.
A bill called the ACCESS Act (Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching) was passed late last night by the House Judiciary Committee by 25 votes to 19. The main goal of the bill is to “promote competition, reduce barriers to entry and reducing the cost of changing services for users and businesses. “
The main provisions of the bill are the requirement to ensure “interchangeability of platforms in order to make it easier for users to switch from one service to another, including the transfer of relevant user data.”
It is also proposed to prohibit or significantly restrict the absorption by technology companies of their direct competitors, which leads to a reduction in competition and an increase in monopoly.
Another draft law passed through the legal committee yesterday is called the Ending Platform Monopolies Act. Within its framework, it is proposed to give regulators, namely the Federal Trade Commission, the right to sue companies for the purpose of their forced separation or separation of part of the operations, especially against companies that offer their goods or services on platforms that they also operate.
Although the bills do not mention the names of any companies, American observers are confident that the main target will be the big four high-tech corporations – Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook.
A year ago, a Congressional hearing was held in which companies were accused of monopoly and market dominance. The head of Google Sundar Pichai, co-founder and head of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, head of Apple Tim Cook, founder and head of Amazon Jeff Bezos answered the questions of the congressmen. In October, a report was presented to Congress following a yearlong investigation into Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook.
The report, titled Investigating Competition in Digital Markets, is 450 pages long. Work on it began about a year ago, requiring seven Congressional hearings, an analysis of 1.3 million pages of documents and correspondence, testimonies from 38 antitrust experts, and interviews with 240 market participants, former company employees and others. As a way out of this situation, the authors of the report proposed forcibly separating part of the operations from these companies and introducing restrictions on the takeover of other companies for them.
Now, as part of standard procedure, bills will be brought before the entire House of Representatives, where serious battles are expected, especially given the serious lobbying efforts on the part of companies.
Google has previously called on lawmakers to postpone work on the bill and begin a wide public discussion. “American consumers and small businesses will be shocked that these bills will disrupt the work of their favorite services,” said Google Vice President Mark Isakovitz. “This will significantly undermine American technology leadership and harm small business communications with their consumers.”
However, according to The Wall Street Journal, the administration of President Biden is very serious about working on the bill. “The president is inspired by the work of congressmen to address the challenges posed by large technology platforms,” an unnamed White House source quoted the newspaper. “We hope that the legislative process will move forward with the wishes of both parties, and we are determined to continue this work together with the Congress “.
Evgeny Khvostik
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