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"A year after initiating the investigation, we received testimony from the Chief Executive Officers of the investigated companies: Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zu
by dbetteridge 6y ago
"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...
- lotsofpulp 6y ago> 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. Is this accurate? I would think control of the infrastructure is with companies like Comcast/ATT/Verizon/Verisign/ and others who you can’t bypass by typing in different characters into the URL bar. Would it be more accurate to write the big tech companies have control of the network of users?
- indigochill 6y agoComcast and friends are essentially utility companies. If the internet is "a bunch of tubes", they keep the tubes clear. They don't get involved at the content layer. Comcast may be a crappy provider in many ways, but they've never made the news for politically-motivated network traffic filtering. FAANG on the other hand all get their hands dirty in deciding what content people get to see and what not, which would largely be a non-issue if there was mainstream competition, but there isn't, so rather than change their behavior and support/make/demand alternatives, consumers (including politicians) want Big Brother to step in, somehow forgetting that rarely solves anything and will simply consolidate more power with those who already have it.
- shockeychap 6y agoAgree. Big Brother is just as corrupt and just adds another element to the smoke and mirrors presentation.
- ma2rten 6y agoWhere did you copy that from? I don't see the report linked anywhere. EDIT: I found the link further down the thread https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20210414/111451/HMKP-117-JU00-20210414-SD001.pdf https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20210414/111451/HMKP...
- dbetteridge 6y agoYeah sorry had intended to reply on that comment. Oh well!
- TheRealDunkirk 6y agoPG tried to say that "tech" was focused on building better mousetraps, but that's hogwash. THIS is precisely the play that all VC's are after now: find a channel, throw billions at it, run everyone else out of the space, and monopolize it. When people talk glowingly about "unicorns," this is what they're really saying: monopolies.
- Karrot_Kream 6y agoThis is well known. The thesis of Peter Thiel's Zero to One was precisely about how a tech company's ultimate goal should be about creating a monopoly. An op-ed by Thiel in the WSJ talk about exactly this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536 https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...