Big Tech's Congress showdown: Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple CEOs to argue they fear competition from rivals
Top bosses of four of the world’s biggest tech companies -- Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google -- were on Wednesday, July 29, set to argue in a congressional hearing on antitrust that they face intense competition from each other as well as other rivals. A Reuters report said the testimonies from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Apple’s Tim Cook were released to that effect on Tuesday, July 28. It portrayed the four chief executives’ fear over competition that could make them obsolete. They will be presented to the panel investigating how the business practices and data-gathering of the four giants have hurt small rivals.
Bezos and Zuckerberg, for instance, emphasized the success story of America through their respective company’s growth stories. He plans to highlight his e-commerce giant’s contribution to the economy and how it made a huge investment of $270 billion in the country over the last decade and created over 700,000 ‘indirect’ jobs.
Bezos stresses on creating local jobs
“To fulfill our promises to customers in this country, we need American workers to get products to American customers. When customers shop on Amazon, they are helping to create jobs in their local communities,” Bezos says in a tone that encourages the nationalist sentiment. The 56-year-old also said that Amazon has hired an additional 175,000 employees during the pandemic, including many who lost their jobs in the economic downturn. He also spoke on personal information about how he made it big after being raised by a teen mother and Cuban immigrant father who adopted him. “It's not a coincidence that Amazon was born in this country,” the billionaire says.
Facebook has grown big in American way, says Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg, one of the most celebrated tech icons, said Facebook grew into a massive industry in “the American way” whereby it started with nothing but gave people products that were found to be valuable.
“Although people around the world use our products, Facebook is a proudly American company. We believe in values - democracy, competition, inclusion and free expression - that the American economy was built on,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters. The 36-year-old defended Facebook's acquisitions by saying the social-media giant helped companies like WhatsApp and Instagram to grow. He also conceded that Facebook faces intense competition from big rivals including those “appearing at this hearing” and appealed again for government regulation in areas like harmful online content, election integrity, etc.
Google's continued success not guaranteed, says Pichai
Google CEO Pichai said he was concerned about staying relevant as more and more people were turning to Twitter, Pinterest, and other websites to gather information. Despite being a huge success story, Pichai, 48, spoke about a reality check to say: “We know Google’s continued success is not guaranteed. Google operates in highly competitive and dynamic global markets, in which prices are free or falling, and products are constantly improving.”
Apple doesn't have dominant market share, says Cook
Apple’s 59-year-old CEO Tim Cook said the company “does not have a dominant market share in any market where we do business. That is not just true for iPhone, it is true for any product category,” the report added. He was also set to tell the panel that his company’s “commissions are comparable to or lower than commissions charged by the majority of our competitors. And they are vastly lower than the 50 to 70 percent that software developers paid to distribute their work before we launched the App Store”.
The hearing was originally scheduled for Monday, July 27, but got postponed later since late Georgia representative and civil rights activist John Lewis lied in state on Capitol Rotunda on that day.
The committee will ask the tech giants questions as part of its sweeping investigations into whether they aim to harm and eliminate smaller rivals and are even accused of not making the best moves for the customers always. Though certain tech-lobby groups feel the hearing is unlikely to address main anti-trust issues of unveiling new information.
The committee is likely to release a report within weeks on their probe into the firms, which are also facing an investigation from the justice department. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook and Amazon while state attorney-generals are looking at Google and Facebook.