The US House of Representatives has called for the break-up of Big Tech platforms, in a report capping off a 16-month inquiry into anti-competitive practices by Amazon (US:AMZN), Facebook (US:FB), Apple (US:AAPL) and Google parent Alphabet (US:GOOGL).
The new report suggests that Congress should force the separation of some of the companies’ online platforms from their other businesses, so that they cannot leverage their dominance in one market to stifle competition in another.
The Democrat-led House said that the power of the online platforms has “diminished consumer choice, eroded innovation and entrepreneurship in the US economy, weakened the vibrance of the free and diverse press, and undermined Americans’ privacy”. According to the committee’s research, 85 per cent of Americans are concerned about the data online platforms store about them, while 79 per cent say that Big Tech mergers and acquisitions undermine competition and consumer choice.
Amazon, the second-largest of the four companies under investigation with a market value of $1.5tn, said in a statement that “large companies are not dominant by definition, and the presumption that success can only be the result of anti-competitive behavior is simply wrong.” But the company’s history of alleged anti-competitive practices, including the monitoring of third-party data, has in part formed the basis for calls for new antitrust legislation following a legal paper published by Lina Khan in 2017.
Although the committee’s report is damning, most do not expect that new laws or reforms will be pushed through this year - especially as Washington faces arguably more pressing issues: a rapidly approaching election, on top of the spread of coronavirus (from which the incumbent President is still recovering).
But Big Tech’s anti-competitive behaviours are attracting more and more heat. If change is not brought about by regulators, it could well be led by companies that sit in Big Tech’s supply chain. Just a few weeks ago, music streaming service Spotify (US:SPOT) and Fortnite developer Epic Games formed the ‘Coalition for App Fairness’ in response to Apple’s controversial App Store practices.
