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Congress Is Going To Throw The Kitchen Sink At Big Tech
Big Technology obtained the five draft bills currently circulating around the House of Representatives that target Big Tech. If they’re signed into law, it will be bad news for the tech giants.
The following is a selection from Big Technology, a newsletter by Alex Kantrowitz. To get it in your inbox each week, you can sign up here.
For years, Big Tech crushed the competition with relative impunity, squeezing every dollar from would-be rivals to reach unprecedented valuations. And while their anti-competitive practices may well continue, there are now five draft bills circulating in the House of Representatives that represent the biggest threat ever to their standard method of doing business.
The draft bills, which Big Technology obtained in full, contain just about everything Big Tech’s detractors have hoped for on the antitrust front. They take direct aim at Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft’s self-dealing, outline new speed bumps for anti-competitive mergers, and empower feeble federal regulators to bulk up and throw some punches.
The bills may change before they’re introduced, and they’ll inevitably go through a political process that will water them down. But even if only a portion of what’s written gets passed, the tech giants will lose several advantages they’ve exploited in recent years.
This week, let’s dig into each bill with some analysis of the text…
Bill 1: Platform Anti-Monopoly Act
This bill from Rep. David Cicilline is a whopper. It contains several provisions aimed at the tech giants’ self-dealing.
