CEOs of Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet defend their operations as U.S. anti\u002Dtrust panel questions business tactics
During Wednesday’s hearing, chair Jerry Nadler said documents gathered by the committee suggest Zuckerberg viewed photo-sharing app Instagram as a competitor that could “meaningfully hurt” Facebook, and bought it instead.
In one example, U.S. Representative David Cicilline said the committee was told online business listings site Yelp complained to Google in 2010 that the search giant was taking its restaurant reviews, and that Google responded with a threat to limit Yelp’s visibility to consumers. U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal picked up on the thread late in the hearing, suggesting to Pichai that Google’s 50-per-cent-plus share of the online advertising market and the lack of transparency over how it runs gives it too much unregulated power.
Facebook and Google, which are reportedly facing anti-trust probes in the United Kingdom as well as the United States, have been ramping up partnerships with news publishers in recent months — moves critics suggest are meant to stave off having revenue-sharing arrangements, taxes, or breakups imposed on them to level the competitive playing field.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Bezos and the other tech executives rebuffed suggestions that they had made decisions to profit from the outbreak COVID-19 and related shutdowns to control the spread of the respiratory illness. But committee members continued to press him, saying third-party sellers told them Amazon is the “only game in town” with seven times the reach of the nearest online competitor.
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