Apple\u2019s Tim Cook, Google\u2019s Sundar Pichai, Amazon\u2019s Jeff Bezos, and Facebook\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg beamed into a congressional hearing via video chat today to face 4+ hours of questions about whether they abuse their dominant positions in the market. Spoiler: they said everything’s cool.<\/b>
\nMark Zuckerberg appears via video chat at Wednesday’s hearing (Photo by Mandel Ngan-Pool\/Getty Images) The CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook faced the House Judiciary Committee virtually today, where they fielded questions about whether their respective tech companies take advantage of their dominant positions in the market to enhance their bottom lines. Spoiler: They all said they don\u2019t. As you\u2019d expect, Apple\u2019s Tim Cook, Google\u2019s Sundar Pichai, Amazon\u2019s Jeff Bezos, and Facebook\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg offered rosy assessments of their platforms during opening statements. But the limited time each member of Congress got to ask questions didn\u2019t allow for much additional explanation from the CEOs, many of whom are used to answering questions with winding speeches full of Silicon Valley platitudes. SEE ALSO: Apple: Our Electronics Supply Chain Will Be Carbon Neutral by 2030 Members on both sides of the aisle had bones to pick with the CEOs. The Democrats largely focused on the antitrust issues at hand: whether Amazon keeps its third-party sellers on a tight leash; if Google favors its own products in search; whether Facebook\u2019s acquisitions served only to thwart competition; and if Apple\u2019s fabled walled-garden approach persists. Some Republicans did, too, but a few veered off course to quiz the execs on pet projects: Google allegedly discriminating against conservatives; Google pulling out of the Pentagon\u2019s JEDI project; and why a certain member\u2019s campaign emails keep ending up in his father\u2019s spam folder. The four-hour-plus hearing covered a lot of ground, and some topics were more interesting than others. Here are some of the highlights. FacebookFacebook-Instagram: Illegal Merger or a Savvy Dealmaking? Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) accused Facebook of breaking antitrust laws by acquiring Instagram back in 2012 because it knew Instagram posed a potential threat to its hold over the social media market. \u201cIn your own words you bought Instagram to neutralize the competitive threat. This was an illegal merger at the time of the transaction,\u201d Nadler claimed, citing internal documents provided by Facebook. \u201cWhy should Instagram not be broken off into a separate company?\u201d Zuckerberg acknowledged he saw Instagram as a competitor, but only in the mobile-photo sharing space. The FTC also scrutinized and approved the acquisition in 2012. \u201cI think with hindsight, it probably looks obvious that Instagram would\u2019ve reached the scale it has today, but at the time it was far from obvious,\u201d he said, citing other top platforms of the time, like the now-defunct Path. According to Zuckerberg, Instagram\u2019s success is largely due to Facebook\u2019s investment. \u201cI think this has been an American success story,\u201d he added. Nadler disagreed. \u201cRather than compete with [Instagram], Facebook bought it. This is exactly the type of anticompetitive acquisition that the antitrust laws were designed to prevent. This should have never happened in the first place,\u201d he said. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Photo by Mandel Ngan-Pool\/Getty Images) Are You Threatening Me? Nadler and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, (D-Washington), both brought up Zuckerberg\u2019s negotiations with Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom ahead of the merger. \u201cIn a chat you told Mr. Systrom that Facebook \u2018was developing our own photo strategy, so how we engage now will also determine how much we are partners versus competitors down the line,\u2019\u201d Rep. Jayapal noted. \u201cInstagram\u2019s founder seemed to think that was a threat. He confided in an investor at the time that he feared you would go into \u2018destroy mode\u2019 if he didn\u2019t sell Instagram to you.\u201d Zuckerberg denied it was a threat and characterized his email as a negotiating tactic. \u201cI think it was clear this was a space where we were going to compete in, one way or another,\u201d he said. Preventing Imminent Risk of Life Twitter was not present at today\u2019s hearing, but its policies came up nonetheless. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, asked Zuckerberg why it had temporarily banned Donald Trump Jr. this week for sharing a COVID-19 conspiracy theory. Zuckerberg noted that it was Twitter, not Facebook, that took action against the president\u2019s son. But Zuckerberg explained why the move was probably the correct one. The video shared by Trump, Jr. featured a doctor who said that hydroxychloroquine cures COVID-19, which it does not. So while Facebook allows discussion around trials for drugs or personal experiences with experimental drugs, it does not allow people to definitively state that there is a cure for a disease when there isn\u2019t one, Zuckerberg said. \u201cIn general…we do not want to be the arbiters of truth,\u201d Zuckerberb continued. But if \u201csomeone is going to go out and say that hydroxychloroquine is proven to clear COVID and that statement could lead people to take a drug\u2026 we think that we should take that down. That could cause imminent risk of life.\u201d Later in the hearing, Pichai agreed with that line of thinking when Rep. Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, asked why the video in question was also removed from YouTube. \u201cWe believe in freedom of expression and there\u2019s a lot of debate on effective ways to deal with COVID. But during a pandemic, we look to local health authorities [and] the CDC for guidelines around medical misinformation and [how it] might cause harm in the real world,\u201d Pichai said. Amazon Jeff Bezos (Photo by Graeme Jennings-Pool\/Getty Images) No One Company Should Dominate Questions for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos mainly focused on the company\u2019s relationship with third-party sellers.Last year, Amazon\u2019s general counsel told Congress that Amazon does not scrape data from third-party sellers to develop competing products. But in April, the Wall Street Journal reported that it does, in fact, do that. Bezos today acknowledged that there might be some truth to the Journal story, but he wasn\u2019t entirely sure. \u201cWe have a policy against using seller-specific data to aid our private label business, but I can\u2019t guarantee you that policy has never been violated.\u201d Amazon continues \u201cto look into that very carefully,\u201d Bezos continued. \u201cI\u2019m not yet satisfied that we\u2019ve gotten to the bottom of that,\u201d citing the fact that some of the Journal\u2019s sources spoke to the paper anonymously. Rep. Jayapal, who represents Amazon\u2019s homestate of Washington, argued that such behavior could prevent the next big tech giant from emerging. \u201cThe whole goal of this committee is to make sure there are more Amazons [and] Apples and small businesses get to thrive\u201d; no one company should dominate, she said. Customer Service Nightmare Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Georgia) played testimony from a book seller who claims she was delisted from selling on Amazon without any explanation. \u201cAs we grew, we were shrinking Amazon\u2019s market share in the textbooks category,\u201d the unnamed seller said. \u201cSo now in retaliation, Amazon started restricting us from selling.“ According to McBath, the seller messaged Amazon over 500 times, but never got a response. Bezos said: \u201cI don\u2019t even understand what\u2019s going on in that anecdote, because we love for third-party sellers to sell books.\u201d However, McBath said numerous third-party merchants have told the Congressional committee about similar instances involving Amazon undermining their businesses. \u201cThere are more sellers who have exhausted all of their options before finally reaching out to you as last resort. But they are still waiting for your response,\u201d she said. \u201cI do not think systematically that\u2019s what\u2019s going on,\u201d Bezos responded, arguing that even allowing third parties on Amazon.com was a \u201cvery controversial decision\u201d 20 years ago. \u201cWe did that because we were convinced it would be better for the consumer. And I think we were right. Rep. David Cicilline (Photo by Graeme Jennings-Pool\/Getty Images) However, Rep. David Cicilline, D-Rhode Island, claimed the company was creating an \u201cinherent conflict of interest\u201d with its third-party merchants, especially since \u201cAmazon can set the rules of the game.\u201d \u201cThis investigation makes clear that Amazon\u2019s dual role as a platform operator and a competing seller on that platform is fundamentally anti-competitive, and Congress must take action,\u201d Cicilline claimed. Google Sundar Pichai (Photo by MANDEL NGAN \/ POOL \/ AFP) Stealing Content Cicilline quizzed Pichai about why it was \u201cstealing content\u201d from businesses to bolster its own and displaying content in search results that\u2019s most profitable for Google. Not surprisingly, Pichai took issue with that characterization, arguing in part that most product searches originate on Amazon, not Google. Pichai\u2019s style, however, did not really lend itself to the rapid-fire nature of today\u2019s hearing, and he didn\u2019t really get to complete many thoughts before time-limited members were forced to move on.\u2018Big Tech Is Out to Get Conservatives\u2019 Rep. Jim Jordan (Photo by Mandel Ngan-Pool\/Getty Images) Republicans also took aim at Google, with allegations that it censors conservative viewpoints on Google Search and via YouTube. \u201cI\u2019ll just cut to the chase: Big tech is out to get conservatives,\u201d said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in his opening statement. He later demanded Google pledge to avoid siding with the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden during the ongoing election. \u201cCan you assure us today, you are not going to try and silence conservatives?\u201d Jordan asked. Pichai said: \u201cYou have my commitment, it\u2019s always been true. And we\u2019ll continue to conduct ourselves in a neutral way.\u201d (After the exchange, Rep. Mary Scanlon, a Pennsylvania Democrat, dismissed Jordan\u2019s line of questioning as \u201cfringe conspiracy theories,\u201d prompting a fiery back and forth between both sides of the aisle.) Tweet China\u2019s Corporate Espionage Playbook Republicans also quizzed Pichai about why Google was willing to work with China, but not with the Pentagon? In 2018, Google pulled out of a US Defense Department project following internal protests from company employees. It later said it would not allow Google AI technology to be used as a weapon or for surveillance and that it would refuse to develop any AI projects that will „cause or are likely to cause overall harm.“ In the same year, however, news emerged that Google was secretly developing a search engine for China that would not only censor content, but also potentially allow government authorities to track people\u2019s website lookups. Google later abandoned the search engine. But today, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colorado) questioned whether the company was following \u201cChina\u2019s corporate espionage playbook. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said: \u201cFirst of all we are proud to support the US government,\u201d while citing the company\u2019s recent partnership with the US Defense Department to secure the Pentagon from cyber attacks. \u201cWe have a very limited presence in China,\u201d Pichai added. \u201cWe don\u2019t offer any of our services\u2014Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, etc.\u2014in China.\u201dApple Tim Cook (Photo by MANDEL NGAN\/POOL\/AFP via Getty Images) \u2018A Street Fight for Market Share\u2019 Apple CEO Tim Cook got off relatively easy during today\u2019s hearing. However, Rep. Henry Johnson (D-Georgia) did grill him about the iOS App Store, the sole way iPhone owners can download mobile apps. (Last month, the European Union launched its own antitrust investigation into the store\u2019s policies.) Currently, Apple takes a 30 to 15 percent cut of all in-app purchases on the store. \u201cWhat\u2019s to stop Apple from increasing its commission to 50 percent?\u201d Johnson asked, to which Cook noted that commissions have never increased in the App Store\u2019s 12-year history. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to stop you from doing so, is it?\u201d Johnson then asked. \u201cNo sir, I disagree strongly with that,\u201d Cook replied. \u201cThere\u2019s a competition for developers, just like there\u2019s a competition for customers.\u201d Those same developers can choose to write apps for other platforms, such as Android, Windows, and Xbox. \u201cSo we have fierce competition on the developer side, and the customer side, which is essentially so competitive, I would describe it as a street fight for market share in the smartphone business,\u201d Cook said. He went on to say that Apple never retaliates or bullies iOS developers for complaining about its policies. However, Johnson said the company still holds sole discretion over which apps get allowed on the iOS App Store. \u201cDevelopers have no choice but to go along with the changes, or they must leave the App Store. That\u2019s an enormous amount of power,\u201d Johnson added. Further Reading MailChimp vs. SendInBlue: Who Wins at Email Marketing? Local US Election Officials‘ Emails Vulnerable to Cyberattacks, Report Warns AT&T Apologizes for Alarming Email About 3G Network Shutdown Gmail Is Adding Brand Logos to Make Emails More Trustworthy More in Apple More in Business Reviews Campaigner GetResponse Salesforce Pardot Nagios XI iContact Business Best Picks The Best Time Tracking Software for 2020 The Best Business VoIP Providers for 2020 The Best Employee Monitoring Software The Best Employment Background Check Services for 2020 The Best Video Conferencing Software for 2020<\/p>\n