Several major U.S. technology companies, Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook, all account for close to half to most of the market share in their respective fields and have created a suspected monopoly on their respective markets. (Photo credit: AP composite image)
On February 4, the U.S. Senate introduced the “Competition and Antitrust Enforcement Reform” bill, which seeks to break the monopoly position of large technology companies in the U.S. market.
The “Competition and Antitrust Enforcement Reform” bill would significantly strengthen the staffing and authority of the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice by allocating $300 million in new funding, increasing the budgets of both units by nearly 30 percent and increasing the penalties for first-Time violations of the “antitrust laws. The amount of penalties for first-time violations of the “antitrust laws”.
Several major U.S. technology companies, such as Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook, account for nearly half to most of the market share in their respective fields and have created a suspected monopoly in their respective markets. At the same time, tech companies are using their special status to exert political influence and impose content regulation, which is also causing growing public discontent.
Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Korobach has always been very dissatisfied with the monopoly of big technology companies, and after the Democrats won the Senate, she will soon be the chairman of the anti-trust subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. She recently introduced this bill, which does not intend to make specific regulation of speech censorship of technology companies, but targets this aspect of technology companies’ suppression of competition.
One aspect of this monopoly is Google’s complete monopoly on Android technology, the first operating system derived from the Java technology of Sun Microsystems, which was originally purchased by Oracle. In 2010, Oracle took Google to court and the two sides have been involved in litigation for years, with the case now going to the Supreme Court and the final outcome being widely watched.
In addition, Texas and eight other states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on Feb. 10, suing Google and Facebook, the two technology companies that hold the No. 1 and No. 2 positions in the online advertising market, for entering into an illegal secret agreement in 2018 to divide the market for advertising on websites and apps.
Then again, Google also made a deal with Apple in which Google paid Apple $8-12 billion per year to automatically offer Google’s searcher on Apple’s mobile platform, making it easy for Google’s search engine to gain or strengthen its search engine market monopoly.
The acquisition of potential competitors by large technology companies to eliminate competition has also become an area of great concern to Senator Kolobach, which in her view is all about monopolistic behavior and the suppression of competition.
Senator Kolobach is also likely to find allies on the Republican side, which is very upset with tech companies because of their blocking of conservative speech, and Senator Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, has also introduced a bill to restrict takeovers by big tech companies.
But Big Tech isn’t going to take it lying down, and their lobbying power against Congress is getting stronger and stronger. They have spent as much as $65 million on lobbying in 2020 alone.
It remains to be seen whether this bill will ultimately receive bipartisan support, whether it will resist lobbying by the tech companies, and whether it will actually serve to protect the public interest in terms of restricting policy.
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