House Panel Proposes Sweeping Antitrust Reforms To Curb Big Tech

On Tuesday, October 6, a House panel proposed a series of sweeping antitrust reforms to curb the power of US technology giants including Amazon and Alphabet ’s Google, the result of a yearlong antitrust investigation that found the companies are abusing their dominance, reported Bloomberg Law.

After a 16-month investigation into competitive practices at Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google, the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust has released its findings and recommendations on how to reform laws to fit the digital age. The report concludes that the four Big Tech companies enjoy monopoly power and suggest Congress take up changes to antitrust laws that could result in parts of their businesses being separated, reported CNBC.

The Democratic majority staff laid out their takeaways from hearings, interviews, and the 1.3 million documents they scoured throughout the investigation in a 450-page report. They conclude that the four Big Tech companies enjoy monopoly power and suggest Congress take up changes to antitrust laws that could result in parts of the businesses being separated.

The recommendations from Democratic staff include imposing structural separations and prohibiting dominant platforms from entering adjacent lines of business. Subcommittee Chairman David Cicillin (Democrat – Rhode Island) has previously referred to this method as a type of “Glass-Steagall” law for the internet, referring to the 1930s era law that separated commercial from investment banking.

The Democrats also would like to instruct antitrust agencies to presume mergers by dominant platforms to be anticompetitive, shifting the burden onto the merging parties to prove their deal would not harm competition, rather than making enforcers prove it would. And preventing dominant platforms from preferencing their own services, instead making them offer “equal terms for equal products and services.”

Republicans have voiced objections to some of the bolder proposals in the report, like imposing structural separations. Rep. Ken Buck (Republican – Colorado), a key ally of the subcommittee majority who has been in favor of antitrust reform, has prepared his own response to the report outlining areas of “common ground” and “non-starters,” according to a draft version obtained by CNBC. 

You can read the full report here.