The House Judiciary Committee releases a tech antitrust report
The Antitrust Committee of the US House of Representatives recently released a 449-page report, which directly pointed out that Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook are the oil tycoons of the new era.
In its report, the Anti-Monopoly Committee proposed that the US Congress forcefully split these monopoly giants, forcing them to not enter adjacent industries or form monopolies in specific industries.
In the report, the committee investigated in detail the business models of these technology giants. The impact of the technology giants has penetrated into our lives and controlled our personal data.
At the same time, these giants use their monopoly advantage to impose fees on developers. For example, Apple users cannot choose other app stores to download apps.
The report concluded from multiple hearings, interviews, and more than 1.3 million documents. The committee also recommended large-scale changes to antitrust laws.
The Anti-Monopoly Committee’s recommendations focus on promoting fair competition in the digital market while strengthening the law on mergers and monopoly and strengthening anti-monopoly supervision.
The committee hopes that the U.S. Congress will prohibit the dominance of these companies’ own platforms from entering adjacent areas, and encourage regulators to default the merger of dominating platforms as anticompetitive behavior.
The committee also believes that leading companies should also make their services compatible with competitors, allowing consumers to freely transfer their data to any competitor platform.
The committee also stated that the problem precedents in the antitrust law cases need to be overturned, and the mandatory arbitration clause and legal restrictions on class actions should also be removed.
Although Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook perform differently in different areas, studying their business practices can reveal that these giants have common problems.
First of all, these platforms act as gatekeepers to key distribution channels. For example, Google controls the search engine market and controls the way people understand content through Google search.
By controlling market access, these giants can choose winners and losers in the entire economy. The giants not only have huge power but also abuse power and so on.
These giants use their power to charge high fees, impose compelling contract terms, and extract valuable data from the people and companies that rely on them.
Secondly, each platform uses its gatekeeper status to maintain market power and conduct detailed investigations of other companies by controlling the fundamental implementation of the digital age.
It is then used to identify potential competitors and ultimately buy out, copy, or cut off their competitive threats, thereby continuing to consolidate the giant’s monopoly position in the field.
Finally, these companies abuse their role as intermediaries, consolidate and expand their market position, and strengthen their position through self-recommendation and predatory pricing.
Via: theverge