After years of calling Big Tech too big, Democratic lawmakers are calling for Congress to rein in Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple by breaking them up, limiting future mergers and blocking self-dealing that could hurt competitors.
Those proposals are in a 450-page report issued Tuesday by a House antitrust panel, which undertook a 15-month investigation into the companies’ market dominance.
The report found that Google holds a monopoly in search and that Facebook has monopoly power in social networking.
But it merely said that Amazon and Apple have “significant and durable market power” in, respectively, the U.S. online retail market and mobile operating systems and app stores.
ANOTHER REPORTThough the report was “bipartisan,” Republicans issued their own thoughts Tuesday in a report titled “A Third Way to Take on Big Tech.” Authored by Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, it called for “targeted” enforcement of existing antitrust laws rather than “onerous and burdensome regulation that kills industry innovation.” It's not hard to guess which option Big Tech would get behind if forced to choose.