US Congress grills Big Tech CEOs, but lands few blows

WASHINGTON: Congressional lawmakers finally got a chance to grill the CEOs of big tech over their dominance and allegations of monopolistic practices that stifle competition.

But it’s not clear how much they advanced their goal of bringing some of the world’s largest companies to heel.

Invective flew on Wednesday as US legislators questioned Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google and Tim Cook of Apple at a hearing of the House judiciary subcommittee on antitrust. For the last year, that panel has probed the business practices of the Silicon Valley giants with an eye to determining if they need to be regulated more heavily, or even broken up.

In nearly five hours, there were few startling revelations or striking confrontations. While the executives faced hostile questioning and frequent interruptions from lawmakers of both parties, little seemed to land more than glancing blows.

The CEOs testified via video to lawmakers, at times appearing together on the committee room display as tiny individual figures in a mostly empty array of squares. Most committee members were seated, masks on, in the hearing room in Washington.

The execs provided lots of data purporting to show how much competition they face and just how valuable their innovation and essential services are to consumers. But they sometimes struggled to answer pointed questions about their business practices. They confronted concerns about alleged political bias, their effect on US democracy and their role in China. AP