CEOs of Tech Giants or the Big Four as they are popularly called which include Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all had their day at the House Judiciary’s probe Sub-Committee albeit via Cisco Webex for six gruelling hours.
The probe has been anticipated a long time coming as these technology companies have on several and multiple occasions come under scrutiny for their massive repertoire, sometimes times breach or compromise of user data and also for staving off competition by riding them out of the market.
The Representatives grilled all four CEOs including Bezos, tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Zuckerberg on competition, bias, acquisitions, cntent moderation, privacy and many more issues which seemingly exceeded the scope of the anti-trust probe
The Sub-Committee Chair included David Cicilline, Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Val Demings all asked frisky questions which kept the tech industry leaders on their toes.
Zuckerberg was particularly accused of trying to snuff out competition either by buying them out or aggressively ensuring they are unable to compete if an outright purchase is not an option as in the case of Instagram.
The quote from one of the founders was also brought in who claimed that “Zuck wold go into destroy” mode if the acquisition offer was rejected. Facebook has hitherto purchased several including Oculus VR, Whatsapp, Instagram, FriendFeed, Ascenta, Snapchat LiveRail and a few others.
The Conservatives also questioned the CEOs of the Big Four if there was discrimination against Conservatives as their social media following remains not as vibrant as their contemporaries, the Democrats.
The probe however did not affect the stocks of the companies as their stocks flew to an amazing high despite the Judiciary’s probe.
Through it all, the companies kept maintaining that the market was not monopolistic citing others in the industry like TikTok, which is currently facing a lot of backlash due to the amount of user data it requires, especially in the states and also tried to defend their competitive prices in terms of hiring for developers for their products etcetera…
