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9 Platforms and Antitrust

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The New Goliaths
This chapter is in the book The New Goliaths
1429Platforms and AntitrustThe hearing was a curious spectacle. For nearly six hours on July 29, 2020, the CEOs of four top tech firms, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Google, were interrogated on video by members of the antitrust subcom-mittee of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.The New York Times headline described this event as Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco Moment,” comparing it to the 1994 hearing when the CEOs of the seven largest tobacco companies appeared before Congress to answer questions.1 That hearing marked a turning point in the regulation of to-bacco. For decades, the large tobacco companies and tobacco growers had formed a potent lobby, preventing effective regulation despite well-known dangers of tobacco addiction. At the 1994 hearings, the executives were questioned about whether tobacco was addictive and should therefore be regulated as such.2 The tobacco chiefs all testified that they believed that tobacco was not addictive; several of them specifically denied that they manipulated the levels of nicotine in their products. Everyone knew they were lying, and evidence soon appeared proving that they had lied. Public outrage against tobacco surged, and tobacco’s long, cozy relationship with politicians broke apart, opening the way for regulation and court cases.While the Big Tech hearing might result in some legislation and perhaps emboldened the Justice Department to initiate an antitrust suit against Google, it does not seem likely that this hearing will mark such a drastic change in tech company fortunes. To be sure, just the fact that the hearing
© Yale University Press, New Haven

1429Platforms and AntitrustThe hearing was a curious spectacle. For nearly six hours on July 29, 2020, the CEOs of four top tech firms, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Google, were interrogated on video by members of the antitrust subcom-mittee of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.The New York Times headline described this event as Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco Moment,” comparing it to the 1994 hearing when the CEOs of the seven largest tobacco companies appeared before Congress to answer questions.1 That hearing marked a turning point in the regulation of to-bacco. For decades, the large tobacco companies and tobacco growers had formed a potent lobby, preventing effective regulation despite well-known dangers of tobacco addiction. At the 1994 hearings, the executives were questioned about whether tobacco was addictive and should therefore be regulated as such.2 The tobacco chiefs all testified that they believed that tobacco was not addictive; several of them specifically denied that they manipulated the levels of nicotine in their products. Everyone knew they were lying, and evidence soon appeared proving that they had lied. Public outrage against tobacco surged, and tobacco’s long, cozy relationship with politicians broke apart, opening the way for regulation and court cases.While the Big Tech hearing might result in some legislation and perhaps emboldened the Justice Department to initiate an antitrust suit against Google, it does not seem likely that this hearing will mark such a drastic change in tech company fortunes. To be sure, just the fact that the hearing
© Yale University Press, New Haven
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