The US Antitrust Subcommittee has accused Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon of market abuse. The antitrust subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee said that Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon should not control and compete in the same business.
According to them, those four companies are abusing their market power. They are using “killer acquisitions” to destroy rivals, all in the name of profit, reports Reuters. The panel said that these companies should be restructured, but it didn’t go into detail on that.
The US Antitrust Subcommittee accuses four tech giants of market abuse
The full report, which you can read here, is 449 pages long. You will find suggestions for expansive changes to antitrust law. On top of that, the report describes “dozens of instances where companies misused their power”.
The report also goes into detail as to how companies did everything in their power to dominate the competitors in order to control large portions of the Internet. One of the examples is Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram in 2012.
The Subcommittee did suggest quite a few changes in the report. One of those concerns Google’s ad business. It suggests that Google should stop both run the auctions for online ad space, and also participate in them at the same time.
Another change concerns Amazon. It says that the company should stop operating on markets where it also competes with other retailers. This report also calls for the US Congress to give antitrust enforcers more freedom to stop purchases of potential rivals.
Tons of information is included in this report, needless to say. This is quite an important event, and it remains to be seen what will happen from this point. Things are not looking good for Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, though.
If the US Congress ends up listening to these recommendations, the days of purchasing rivals in the market may be over for all four companies. We’ll see what will happen.