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U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#5
> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete

Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents.

How is Apple allowed to disallow any other web browsers on their mobile devices? We already went through this with Microsoft in the past but suddenly it's different?

How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace? They should have been forced to divide their business long time ago. Of course they are gonna use metrics from competitors that only they have access to, in order to make their own product line get better.

Why is Google allowed to rank their own products in front of more general results? Try searching for "Earth" on Google and see what the top hit is. Is that really a fair ranking? We don't even know, because no one knows how their algorithm is working, but one thing is clear, Google products consistently rank higher than anything else in the search engine.

The list goes on. I'm happy that it's being suggested, I'm just worried how it took so long to get here.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#6
"A year after initiating the investigation, we received testimony from the Chief Executive Officers of the investigated companies: Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai. For nearly six hours, we pressed for answers about their business practices, including about evidence concerning the extent to which they have exploited, entrenched, and expanded their power over digital markets in anticompetitive and abusive ways. Their answers were often evasive and non-responsive, raising fresh questions about whether they believe they are beyond the reach of democratic oversight.

Although these four corporations differ in important ways, studying their business practices has revealed common problems. First, each platform now serves as a gatekeeper over a key channel of distribution. By controlling access to markets, these giants can pick winners and losers throughout our economy. They not only wield tremendous power, but they also abuse it by charging exorbitant fees, imposing oppressive contract terms, and extracting valuable data from the people and businesses that rely on them. Second, each platform uses its gatekeeper position to maintain its market power.

By controlling the infrastructure of the digital age, they have surveilled other businesses to identify potential rivals, and have ultimately bought out, copied, or cut off their competitive threats. And, finally, these firms have abused their role as intermediaries to further entrench and expand their dominance. Whether through self-preferencing, predatory pricing, or exclusionary conduct, the dominant platforms have exploited their power in order to become even more dominant."

Well they're not wrong...

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#7
post #3

And Microsoft is not in this list. Who would have predicted that?

Probably Reuters editors who made it so, Microsoft is mentioned plenty in the report itself (https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20210414/111451/HMKP...), I'm getting 74 hits when searching for "Microsoft".

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#9
post #3

And Microsoft is not in this list. Who would have predicted that?

Probably Reuters editors who made it so, Microsoft is mentioned plenty in the report itself ( https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20210414/111451/HMKP... ), I'm getting 74 hits when searching for "Microsoft".

Thanks for checking.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#10
A lot of this just looks like punishing success to me. Or rather success combined with a lack of political involvement aka donation.

If it cares about monopolies go look at comcast or Disney or big chunks of agriculture or Boeing etc. If the house really cares about privacy, it should look at the patriot act. If it cares about workers, go look at Walmart.

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