In July 2020, House lawmakers questioned the CEO's of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, accusing the tech giants of gathering and exploiting monopolistic power. Google's Sundar Pichai, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos each faced a series of questions about their business models and competitive landscape, often posed by elected officials with seemingly little to no background in digital products or marketplaces.
In a particularly funny example of this lack of background knowledge, when Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin asked Mark Zuckerberg why Facebook has removed specific content, Zuckerberg responded "Congressman, well first to be clear, I think what you might be referring to happened on Twitter, so it's hard for me to speak to that."
The lawmakers do raise some relevant concerns though. Google maintains a dominant share of the Search industry (over 90% of U.S. search volume); Facebook operates three of the world's most downloaded mobile applications in Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram; Apple's App Store provides iPhone users with a convenient platform to download and update apps, but with no real competition; and Amazon has created a marketplace for countless small business owners, many of whom become direct competitors.
Each tech company has created immense value for the U.S. and global economies, but with considerable trade-offs. Their success often comes at the expense of their smaller competitors. We, as their consumer base, need to understand this trade-off, along with the ramifications of its continuation before we act quickly to either push for the break-up of these giants, or allow them to operate as they do today.
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