The Chief Executive Officers of the four big-tech companies engaged in a grilling session for more than five hours withe US lawmakers. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Amazon’s Jeff Bezoz, were invited to a hearing of the House Judiciary Sub-committee on Anti-Trust.
As per various news agencies, the CEOs connected over video call with the Congress and were questioned and inquired on their “monopoly power”. Representative David Cicilline stated that “these companies as they exist today have monopoly power”. It has been reported that these companies have already been undergoing investigation, since last one year, with regards to their control over the digital markets.
Therefore, the US Congress has been looking into measures to regulate their control or dominance over the markets, which usually prohibit any other company to step forward. “Some need to be broken up, all need to be regulated”, said Cicilline, the Representative from Rhode Island.
The testimony and questioning, of all of them, went on for over five hours in which the CEOs tried to clarify their stance on the issue. Reportedly, the executives provided a plethora of data to exhibit the amount of competition they face in their respective industries. They also emphasized on the value of their innovation and how essential are their services to the consumers.
However, the executives did fumble at a lot of points while answering the questions raised by the lawmakers in the Congress. India TV reports that the Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, failed to deflect some accusations of anti-conservative bias and reiterated “Happy to engage with you” to handle the answers of the questions which questioned the deeper algorithm of the company.
At the same time, The Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezoz, kept on replying “I don’t remember” or “We’re looking into it” as a response to a variety of concerns posed by the law makers.
This lack of a proper response was also recorded in a Congress session where Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was being questioned by Congresswoman Alexendria Ocasio-Cortez, last year. The executive was questioned on his awareness and response to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data security breach. The five minute session involved a series of questions and rhetoric and dis satisfactory responses from Zucherberg’s end.
Cicillian stated that this five hour long inquiry with the executives was imperative and bore fruits as many of their responses fell in line with the year long inquiry being held into the business practices at the Silicon Valley.
