March 29, 2024

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Big Tech CEOs questioned over antitrust concerns

The big four tech CEOs whose companies dominate our daily lives came to Washington via teleconference Tuesday to testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust concerns to make their cases for why Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google shouldn’t be broken up. 

Their formal statements stressed their humble beginnings, devotion from consumers and how they help entrepreneurs run their small and medium-size businesses.

But when it came time for questions, representatives from both political parties greeted Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos with hostile questions and a format that begged for yes or no answers.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg testifies via teleconference to Congress
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testifies via teleconference to Congress

In addition to examining how the companies approached competitors, many of the questions fell along party lines, often focusing primarily on a couple of themes: poor treatment of third-party sellers on Amazon from Democrats, and the silencing of conservative voices on Google and Facebook from Republicans.

“Big Tech is out to get conservatives,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Lawmakers had several five-minute slots to ask heated questions to the CEOs, often with yes or no answers, to transactions going back several years, and when the execs punted and said they needed more information, they told the officials they’d get back to them, which became a meme of its own on Twitter.

Officials also accused Google of stealing restaurant reviews from Yelp and turning its back on the United States when it dropped out of the bidding for a government contract. They accused Facebook of censoring conservative thought; Google of putting profitable search results in place of more relevant ones; and Apple of not playing straight with app developers.

“We treat every developer the same, with open and transparent rules,” Cook said.

Pichai demurred on the accusation from Yelp, whose CEO, Jeremy Stoppleman, has been arguing for years that Google is a monopoly.

Zuckerberg defended his often-stated view that Facebook takes a free-market approach to political thought on the social network.

Rival Twitter has gotten more involved, and this week, gave President Donald Trump’s son – Donald Trump Jr. – a 12-hour timeout for promoting an unproven cure for COVID-19.

“We have distinguished ourselves as one of the companies that defends free expression the most,” Zuckerberg said. “We don’t want to be arbiters of truth.”

He added that Facebook prohibits content that leads to the risk of harm.

“Someone stating there is a proven cure for COVID would get taken down,” versus someone talking trials of drugs or personal experiences., he said.

Zuckerberg defended the social network’s zeal to take down fake accounts, saying they remove “billions” of fake accounts every year. Having them up “hurts our business,” he said.

“People spend less time on the service when they are there,” Zuckerberg said.

On the big question of monopolistic power, and whether the big 4 tech companies should be broken up, Zuckerberg disagreed with a representative’s contention that Facebook was a monopoly.

“We face a lot of competitors in every part of what we do,” he said. 

Jordan, an outspoken conservative, asked Pichai to guarantee that Google won’t use its technology to work on behalf of presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

“Can you assure you will not tailor your features to help a candidate win?” Jordan asked.

Said Pichai: “We won’t do any work one way versus the other. It’s against our core values.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google CEOs grilled on antitrust concerns

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