Four Technology Giants’ CEOs Will Testify Before Congress in On-going Antitrust Investigation

Executives from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will appear (either virtually, as they are permitted to, or in person) before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee on July 27, 2020. According to its press release, the Subcommittee has been scrutinizing the companies’ dominance in their respective digital spheres and the “adequacy of existing antitrust laws and enforcement,” since June 2019.

The hearing will enable legislators to question the executives about possible antitrust abuses, which have been the focus of many federal, state, and foreign regulatory inquiries. For example, Representatives may inquire about Amazon’s treatment of third-party merchants who sell products on its e-commerce platform, Google’s highly profitable ad business, Apple’s App Store terms that infringe on the rights of third-party app developers, and Facebook’s leverage of previously acquired companies to solidify its social media dominance, according to a July 1, 2020 New York Times article by David McCabe. The hearing may serve as the crowning piece of the Subcommittee’s antitrust probe. As the Subcommittee’s press release stated, the CEOs’ “forthcoming” testimony is “essential” to completion of the investigation.