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Jerrold Nadler, DN.Y., Chair of the Judiciary Committee of the House, leads his task force to approve the guidelines for the investigative hearings of President Donald Trump at Capitol Hill, Washington on Thursday, September 12. 2019. (AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) – Lawmakers on Friday investigated Big Tech's market dominance, asking Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple to provide a wide range of documents, marking a step forward in the bipartisan corporate survey of Congress.
Letters were sent to the four companies by the House Judiciary Committee and Antitrust Subcommittee, who conducted an in-depth investigation of corporations and their impact on competition and consumers. Legislators are looking for a wide range of detailed documents on the extensive activities of corporations, including internal communications of key executives.
This decision comes as the control of large technology companies intensifies and expands both within the federal government and the United States and abroad. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are conducting business competition investigations, and the attorneys general of the two largest political parties have opened antitrust investigations on Google and Facebook. The Google survey attracted the participation of 50 states and territories.
© provided by the Associated Press
Representative Doug Collins R-Ga., Speaks at a press conference at the Republican Members' Conference in Baltimore on Thursday, September 12, 2019. (AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana)
"We must act if we see that they are breaking the law," Rohit Chopra, one of the FTC's commissioners, said in an interview with CNBC on Friday. Chopra, a Democrat, would not specifically confirm the names of the companies that could be investigated, but said that the agency was closely consulting with the Department of Justice and state attorneys general as their work progressed. .
Also on Friday, the EU's strong competition official said it plans to broaden the regulation on personal data, giving a hint of how it plans to use new powers against technology companies. Margrethe Vestager said that while Europeans control their own data through EU data protection rules, they do not deal with the problems of how companies use data from others. people "to draw conclusions about them or to undermine democracy".
The bipartisan agreement that underlies the antitrust judicial inquiry contrasts with the bitter division of the panel on the question of the removal of President Donald Trump. Republicans denounced Thursday's approval by Democrats of the basic rules committee for hearings, which paved the way for the opening of a dismissal investigation.
"Democrats have followed the yellow brick road and are now completely lost in Oz Impeachment," said Georgia's Republican Representative Doug Collins.
Legislators have set October 14 to the technology companies the deadline to provide the documents.
Spokespersons for Facebook, Apple and Amazon have not responded to requests for comment on Friday. Kent Walker, quoted by his vice president in charge of international affairs, recently told Google that the company was anticipating additional questions from inquiries and that "we have always worked constructively with regulators and we will continue to make".
The companies said they would cooperate fully with the congressional investigation.
The Chairman of the Judicial Committee, Representative Jerrold Nadler, DN.Y., said that these documents will help the committee understand "they use their market power in ways that harm consumers and competition and how the Congress should react ".
The letters were sent to the CEOs of the four companies: Larry Page from Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc.; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook; Jeff Bezos from Amazon; and Tim Cook from Apple. They were signed by Nadler and Collins; Representative David Cicilline, D-RI, who heads the antitrust subcommittee in charge of the investigation; and Wisconsin representative James Sensenbrenner, the oldest Republican on the subcommittee.
Cicillin said that Congress and antitrust regulators had wrongly let big tech companies regulate themselves, allowing them to run uncontrollably, dominating the internet and smothering innovation and the spirit of the world. online business. He suggested that legislative changes may be necessary, although he called for the dissolution of corporations as a last resort.
At an antitrust panel hearing in July, the leaders of the four companies rejected legislators' accusations that they acted as monopolies, exposing the means by which they claimed to be in fair but vigorous competition with their competitors over the market.
Cicillin said he is unhappy with the answers given by the leaders to legislators' questions, calling their testimony evasive.
The letter to Facebook asks for a breakdown of the company's profits since 2016 for its main products – including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp ads. He is also seeking communications from Zuckerberg and other senior officials related to a California court case in which plaintiffs accuse the company of misleadingly crushing thousands of applications in 2015 of which companies supported on their platform. Other internal communications included in the letter include six e-mail, video sharing and photo-sharing applications, particularly that Facebook has cut.
Lawmakers are looking in emails from Facebook executives for the decision to deny an application or category of apps access to Facebook data about or shared by users. This is a concern because critics say the company has deliberately separated from other online applications, which has allowed it to accumulate nearly 2.5 billion users without any clear competitor.
The letter to Alphabet looks for detailed financial information and names of the major competitors of Google's extensive operations, including search, YouTube video service, Android and Gmail mobile phone operating system. Internal communications sought by lawmakers include those related to Google's acquisition of the online advertising company DoubleClick, acquired in 2007, which critics often point to as being at the heart of Google's dominance of advertising.
For Amazon, lawmakers are looking for financial data and competitors names from Amazon Web Services, Alexa and Echo Smart Speakers, Amazon Prime, Whole Foods and other properties, as well as only on its online retail, movie and music on demand, digital advertising and cloud computing operations. An agreement with Apple in 2018 to sell Apple products to Amazon and limit the number of resellers that can sell Apple products on Amazon is among the decisions under review.
Financial information and competitors are searched for the Apple App Store, the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac, Siri, the Apple Pay, the Apple TV and the Apple Watch. Lawmakers are interested in Apple's decision to remove from the App Store or impose restrictions on some parental control and screen time apps, as well as the App Store algorithm that determines the ranking order of search applications on the site, among other areas.
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AP Technology Editor Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report.
Follow Gordon on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mgordonap
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