Antitrust: Pressure increases on Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon

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The goal of this hearing is to create the conditions for the next Google, Facebook, Amazon or Apple to emerge," warned David Cicilline, chairman of the US House of Representatives' competition subcommittee, who summoned representatives of the four digital giants on Tuesday, July 16. Born thirty years ago, the Web has "revolutionized our lives" and "launched the growth" of these four companies "born in garages" and "which have become symbols of the greatness of our country," recalled the Democratic representative, before toughening his tone. "Today, we are increasingly concerned that anti-competitive practices in the sector overseas chinese in canada data are putting small and medium-sized businesses in this country at risk," he said, noting that none of the 436 acquisitions of companies by these four large groups had been prohibited and no antitrust investigation had resulted in sanctions since the Microsoft case in 1998. "The United States risks losing its capacity for innovation," he warned.

Read also Article reserved for our subscribers Competition and antitrust: what are Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple accused of?

Despite this preamble, the parliamentary hearing was a bit disappointing: some questions showed a lack of knowledge on the part of the elected representatives – “Why would a 9-year-old child prefer to watch a video of someone playing Fortnite rather than playing himself?” asked one of them. Few new elements emerged, nor concrete legislative solutions. But the nearly two-hour session allowed to measure the degree of hostility – bipartisan, but a little higher among Democrats – of the representatives and their points of concern. Moreover, this hearing is only the beginning of the subcommittee’s investigation. Above all, it is accompanied by other investigations and reflections on competition law applied to digital.
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To the point where Brian Acton, one of the creators of WhatsApp, left Facebook in 2017 and then explained that the logic linked to the deployment of advertising in its application went against its principles. To ensure funding without advertising, WhatsApp had for a time set up a very modest annual subscription system (one dollar per year). The acquisition by Facebook in 2014, for the astronomical sum of 19 billion euros , then led to the application becoming entirely free, on the model of all social networks provided by Facebook – whose free nature is normally financed by advertising.

But WhatsApp's message encryption, a core principle that Mark Zuckerberg reaffirmed in 2019 , is a thorn in Facebook's side in allowing the collection of users' personal data, on which these ads rely.