TECH ‘TAKEDOWN’
Five bipartisan antitrust bills take aim at giants
Congressional lawmakers are targeting tech giants over antitrust concerns — and the proposed legislation could force them to overhaul or even break up their business empires.
The package of five antitrust bills introduced by a bipartisan group in Congress on Friday — aimed at Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google’s parent Alphabet — would make it harder for the biggest tech platforms to complete mergers and keep them from owning businesses that create conflicts of interest.
Two of the new bills could be particularly tricky for Amazon and Apple, as they both run marketplaces that include their own products or apps that compete with outside sellers that rely on their services.
The “Ending Platform Monopolies Act,” sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash), and the “The American Innovation and Choice Online Act” sponsored by House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), could potentially break up the tech behemoths by cracking down on conflicts of interest between their different business lines.
The Ending Platform Monopolies Act is being floated as a tech-world equivalent to the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking.
Rep. Cicilline’s bill would reduce the ability of big tech companies to use their platforms to promote their own goods ahead of those of competitors — a rule that could slam Apple and Google’s Android software over their app-store policies, and Amazon over its massive third-party marketplace.
“Unregulated tech monopolies have too much power over our economy,” said Cicilline. “They are in a unique position to pick winners and losers, destroy small businesses, raise prices on consumers and put folks out of work. Our agenda will level the playing field.”
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), the top Republican on the antitrust panel, said the legislation “breaks up Big Tech’s monopoly power to control what Americans see and say online, and fosters an online market that encourages innovation.”
The other three bills are aimed at curbing mergers. “The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act” led by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) would ban major online players from buying competitive threats, while “The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act” led by Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) would give enforcement agencies power and resources by requiring higher fees for mergers valued at $1 billion and more.
“The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching Act” led by Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) is meant to increase competition by forcing companies to give consumers the ability to switch data between platforms.
The Judiciary Committee will need to vote on the bills before they make their way to the House for approval and then the Senate.
The bipartisan support for the package is bad news for the tech titans, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. Reports that the bills were coming had already spurred pushback.
“Adopting the European regulatory model would make it harder for American tech companies to innovate and compete both here and globally,” Geoffrey Manne, president and founder of the International Center for Law & Economics, told CNBC, which added that the group has received funding from Google in the past.
In a Medium post this week, Adam Kovacevich, chief executive of Chamber of Progress — an advocacy group backed by the tech giants — argued the proposals would cost consumers “conveniences” such as Amazon Prime free shipping and cross-posting between Facebook and Instagram.
The antitrust reforms follow a 16-month-long investigation by the House Judiciary subcommittee on anticompetitive issues into the four tech giants that was completed last year. The investigation found Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google hold monopoly power and that antitrust laws should be revised to better deal with today’s digital media landscape.