This is a great first. On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook will be heard at the same time by the US Congressional Judicial Commission. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, this spectacular convocation of four of Silicon Valley's biggest bosses will take place by video conference. The questions will revolve around the suspicions of abuse of a dominant position by these giants of the digital economy.
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The 15 members of the judicial committee have been investigating the subject for a year now. They amassed over a million documents and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews. The convening of the big tech bosses is the high point, and will feed a report that could call for a reform of “antitrust” laws in the United States. The latter only condemn actions that cause direct harm to consumers' wallets.
The Gafa pose another challenge. Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are titans with cumulative valuations approaching $ 5,000 billion. Their activities have extended far beyond their core business. They are often in a dominant position in their markets. And they have not always been able to protect the personal data of their users. "All of this poses serious problems, and it is clear that these companies are not going to self-regulate," Democratic MP David Cicillin, chairman of the judicial committee , told the Washington Post . "It is the responsibility of Congress to take up this issue." In early August, the same MP told the New York Times : “The more I learned during this survey, the more it became clear that the power of these platforms is terrifying, with an impact on innovation and the start-up sector. up. " In view of the time constraints, a possible reform of the “antitrust” laws should come to the next Congress, which will be elected in November.
According to the American press, each of these big bosses has been preparing for this hearing for weeks. Mark Zuckerberg should unroll a well-established argument, according to which weakening the American Facebook would do the business of the Chinese tech giants, which are not regulated by Beijing. Silicon Valley lobbyists are trying to soften the content of the debates and demonstrate that their clients are not engaging in anti-competitive practices.
The hearing should last half a day. For a short time, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are different companies, which are accused of very different practices.According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the four companies spent more than $ 60 million in lobbying in Washington in 2019, an amount that is expected to grow in 2020. Members' questions will set the tone for the audience, which could very well become a walk in the park if the interventions are not very incisive. It is not impossible that the hearing turns towards a theme dear to the Republican camp: the supposed pro-democratic bias of Silicon Valley, which would try to stifle the voices of Donald Trump's supporters on social networks in order to promote the election of Joe Biden.
Other ongoing investigations
The hearing should last half a day. For a short time, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are different companies, which are accused of very different practices. Is Facebook looking to stifle the competition by copying their features or buying out these companies before they are a threat? Does Amazon use data from sellers in its marketplace to copy their successful products and sell them under its own brand? Does Apple benefit its own services on the AppStore? Does Google direct Android phone users to its browser, search engine and services in the results displayed by the latter? It does not say that MPs will have time to explore all these subjects.
But the responses of the big tech bosses will be listened to with attention by other American bodies, which have been carrying out their own investigations for over a year. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has already fined Facebook $ 5 billion in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, continues to investigate the social network's anti-competitive practices. They should not be completed before 2021. The Ministry of Justice should file a formal complaint against Google during the summer. Last September, 49 US states launched their own investigations into its supposed monopoly in the online advertising industry. The pressure on the Gafa is not about to abate.