Sundar Pichai gently replied that he would like to know the details of the charge.
Google and Facebook took the sharpest hits for alleged abuse of their market power by Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday in a much-anticipated Congressional hearing that put four of the top tech CEOs in America in the hot seat.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Inc, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc, Sundar Pichai of the owner of Google Alphabet Inc and Tim Cook of Apple Inc – whose companies have a combined market value of around $ 5 trillion – have parried a series of accusations by lawmakers that they have crippled smaller rivals in the quest for market share, via a videoconference hearing.
Although this was Bezos’ first testimony to Congress, he seemed the least baffled. Cook drew fewer barbed questions than Bezos and dealt with them effectively. Zuckerberg took the most damage, stumbling at times in the face of internal emails.
Alphabet and Google CEO Pichai was most heated by conservatives on the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel and looked the worst for it, as he repeatedly told lawmakers that he would be happy to review and come back to various situations. .
Unfortunately, the Big Tech audience was decidedly low-tech. Bezos escaped interrogation for about an hour in what could have been a technical glitch, and was taken to the screen looking for what appeared to be a snack.
Poor sound, flatscreen TVs turning off, and general managers appearing together as thumbnails on a big screen frustrated viewers and led to mockery of the virtual setup on Twitter.
Lawmakers have screamed at times, with a pandemic twist. A lawmaker shouted: “Put on your mask!”
Representative David Cicillin, Democrat and chairman of the antitrust subcommittee, set the tone when he began by accusing Google of theft.
“Why is Google stealing content from honest companies?” He asked.
Cicillin alleged that Google stole reviews from Yelp Inc and said Google threatened to remove Yelp from search results if it objected.
Pichai gently replied that he would like to know the details of the charge. “We conduct ourselves to the highest standards,” he added, disagreeing with the description that Google steals content to gain users.
Facebook’s Zuckerberg answered a series of questions about the company’s purchase of Instagram in 2012 and whether it was acquired because it was a threat.
Zuckerberg responded that the deal had been reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission and that Instagram at the time was a small photo-sharing app rather than a social media phenomenon. “People didn’t think they were competing with us in this space,” he said.
In one of the more notable exchanges, Representative Pramila Jayapal pushed Zuckerberg to find out if Facebook had ever copied its competitors.
“We have certainly adapted features that others have introduced,” he said.
“How many businesses did Facebook end up copying?” she asked. “Is it less than five? Less than 50?”
“Member of Congress, I don’t know,” Zuckerberg said.
The hearing was the first time the four CEOs have appeared together before lawmakers.
Jayapal asked Amazon’s Bezos if the company was using data from third-party sellers to make selling decisions. An Amazon executive previously denied the practice under oath and was contradicted by a report.
Bezos responded cautiously that the company had a policy against such actions. “If we found out that someone raped him, we would take action against them,” he said.
On the Republican side, Rep. Jim Jordan accused the companies of taking a long list of actions he said showed they were trying to stop Tories reaching their supporters.
“Big Tech is looking to attract conservatives,” he said.
Jordan’s claims come after President Donald Trump, who clashed with several of the biggest tech companies, threatened on Wednesday to take action against them with executive orders.
Jordan also asked Pichai if Google would help former Vice President Joe Biden, the alleged Democratic presidential candidate, win in November.
“We support both campaigns. We approach our work in a non-partisan way,” Pichai replied.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz asked Facebook’s Zuckerberg if content moderators disadvantage conservative content.
Zuckerberg said they were trained to be neutral. “We aim to be a platform for all ideas,” he said. “I certainly don’t want our platform to be run in such a way that it has a … bias.”
‘STREET FIGHT’
Apple’s cook rejected the idea that nothing is stopping his company from increasing the commissions it charges in the App Store.
“I don’t agree with that at all,” he said. “Competition for developers – they can write their apps for Android or Windows or Xbox or PlayStation. We have fierce competition from the developer side and from the customer side, which is essentially so competitive that I would describe it as a street fight. . “
A detailed report containing antitrust allegations against the four technology platforms and recommendations on how to tame their market power could be released by the end of summer or early fall by the committee, senior committee officials said.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
