House panel calls for sweeping antitrust reforms for Big Tech

WASHINGTON — Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google engaged in anti-competitive, monopoly-style tactics to evolve into four of the world’s most powerful corporate behemoths, say congressional investigators who called for sweeping changes to federal laws so government regulators can bring Silicon Valley back in check.

A roughly 450-page report released Tuesday caps a15-month investigation by the House’s top antitrust committee, led by Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I.

It details how the four tech giants solidified their dominance in search, smartphones, social networking and shopping — and in the process evaded the federal regulators whose primary task it is to ensure that companies don’t grow into such corporate titans.

Facebook gobbled up potential competitors with impunity, and Google scraped rivals’ websites and forced its technology on others to solidify its pole position in search and advertising, according to the committee’s findings, which labels both companies as monopolies.

Amazon and Apple, meanwhile, exerted “monopoly power” to protect and grow their own corporate footprints.

As operators of two major online marketplaces — a world-leading shopping site for Amazon, and a powerful App Store for Apple — the two tech giants for years set rules that essentially put smaller, competing sellers and developers at a disadvantage, the report found.

The congressional report stopped short of calling for any of those four companies to be broken up. Instead, investigators endorsed a wide array of potential legislative changes that would encourage the government to battle bigness in the industry and prevent future problematic mergers.

Any such changes would require approval from Congress and affect not only Silicon Valley but the entire economy, essentially turning the House’s report into a broader assault against corporate consolidation.

The findings come as federal officials actively investigate Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google for potential violations of antitrust rules; a government complaint against Google is expected to be filed in a matter of days.

“To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons,” the panel found. “Although these firms have delivered clear benefits to society, the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google has come at a price.”

“These firms typically run the marketplace while also competing in it,” investigators continue, enabling tech giants “to write one set of rules for others, while they play by another, or to engage in a form of their own private quasi regulation that is unaccountable to anyone but themselves.”

Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.