A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced four antitrust bills on Friday aimed at reining in the power of the tech giants, with one potentially leading to their break-up.
Two of the bills address the issue of giant companies, such as Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, creating a platform for other businesses and then competing against those same businesses.
One measure bans platforms from owning subsidiaries that operate on their platform if those subsidiaries compete with other businesses – potentially forcing the Big Tech firms to sell assets.
A second measure would make it illegal in most cases for a platform to give preference to its own products on its platform with a hefty fine of 30% of the U.S. revenue of the affected business if they violate the measure.
The third bill would require a platform to refrain from any merger unless it can show the acquired company does not compete with any product or service the platform is in.
A fourth would require platforms to allow users to transfer their data elsewhere if they desire, including to a competing business.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, as per “Big Tech,” Apple should not be lumped into antitrust bills with the likes of Alphabet/Google which actually does have a monopoly (which is legal, by the way) and is very likely abusing it (which is subject to any antitrust reform remedies).
The fact is that Apple has no monopoly in smartphones, or in any other market, so Apple is incapable of committing monopoly abuse.
Worldwide smartphone OS market share, May 2021:
• Android: 72.72%
• iOS: 26.46%
Worldwide desktop OS market share, May 2021:
• Windows: 73.54%
• macOS: 15.87%
I don’t think anybody reasonable is going to come to the conclusion that Apple is a monopoly. Our share is much more modest. We don’t have a dominant position in any market… We are not a monopoly. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, June 2019
If you haven’t already, give DuckDuckGo a try! https://duckduckgo.com
With this unprecedented power, platforms have the ability to redirect into their pockets the advertising dollars that once went to newspapers and magazines. No one company should have the power to pick and choose which content reaches consumers and which doesn’t. — MacDailyNews, November 9, 2017
We’d like to see real competition in the online search and advertising markets restored someday. — MacDailyNews, March 20, 2019
Interns, TTK! Prost, everyone! 🍻