An old wooden row boat on the Amazon River looks very natural and at home but note the discarded plastic mug, even here. Photo by Nareeta Martin on Unsplash [Download]
House: Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google have monopoly power, should be split
Last June, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law began an in-depth investigation into four major firmsAmazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.
The subcommittee wanted to answer one key question: did Big Tech get big playing by the rules, or does it cheat to stay at the top?
Antitrust law is instead concerned with what you did to become dominant and what you do with the outsized power that comes from being the biggest. If you have a 90 percent market share but it all came from natural growth and you deal fairly with other companies and with consumers, antitrust regulators are probably going to leave you alone.But if nascent startups can demonstrate you used your bulk to knock them out before they could become real competition, or if competitors can show you unfairly leveraged different parts of your business to squeeze them out?
After conducting seven hearings, reviewing more than 1.3 million internal documents, conducting more than 240 interviews, and reviewing submissions from 38 antitrust experts, the committee found evidence that all four companies have acted anticompetitively and are continuing to do so today.
Between its first-party sales and its third-party marketplace, Amazon controls roughly 50 percent of the US e-commerce market and a much higher percentage in certain sectors, such as e-books.
Amazon leverages its power on both sellers and manufacturers to break agreements, push for unfairly favorable terms in negotiations, and lock would-be competitors into its ecosystem, the report concluded.
In other words, Amazon is their storefront, and Amazon uses that leverage to twist metaphorical arms whenever it likes.
Together with Google, Facebook is one half of a duopoly that controls online advertising to the detriment of competition, the committee concluded.
We use cookies and analyse traffic to this site. By continuing to use this site, closing this banner, or clicking "I Agree", you agree to the use of cookies. Read our privacy poplicy for more information.