Over a week ago, US lawmakers announced huge bipartisan bills aimed at huge tech companies. Many outlets reported that Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google were directly targeted in the new set of bills that would put more restrictions on corporations’ monopolistic tactics such as acquiring competitors. Naturally, these corporations are widely against the new bills and have begun executing their lobbying campaigns against the bills. The following is an excerpt from New York Times
Executives, lobbyists, and more than a dozen think tanks and advocacy groups paid by tech companies have swarmed Capitol offices, called and emailed lawmakers and their staff members, and written letters arguing there will be dire consequences for the industry and the country if the ideas become law,”
The NYT reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook personally called Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress to pushback against the bills. Cook warned Pelosi that the bills were “rushed” and, if passed, they would “hurt consumers by disrupting the services that power Apple’s lucrative iPhone” according to the NYT, citing five people who knew about the conversations. According to one of the people, Pelosi asked Cook to “identify specific policy objections to the measures,” Speaker Pelosi reportedly pushed back against Cook when he asked if the bills could be further delayed.
CNBC reports that Google’s VP of government affairs Mark Isakowitz warns that the bills would “require [Google] to degrade [its] services and prevent [it] from offering important features used by hundreds of millions of Americans.” Izakowits also warns that the bills could “raise serious privacy and security concerns,” and that they would “damage the way small businesses connect with consumers,”.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s VP of public policy warned about “significant negative impacts” that Amazon consumers would face, as well as the small and medium sized businesses that sell on the platform. A Facebook spokesperson told CNBC that antitrust bills are meant to “promote competition and protect consumers, not punish successful American companies,”. Facebook’s spokesperson also tried to explain that the bills undermine “competition with within the tech sector, including competition from foreign companies such as TikTok, WeChat, and Alibaba.” It’s worth noting these are all Chinese companies.
The new bills represent the modernization of antitrust laws that were designed to make it difficult for companies to engage in monopolistic behaviors. These antitrust laws are severely outdated and should be updated for modern times where technology, data collection, and digital retail are all such a huge part of society.
Here’s an overview of each of the five bills:
The bills still need to be voted on by the Judiciary Committee before arriving to the House of Representatives. The Senate would also need to approve the bills before they can be signed to laws by President Biden.
hahahaaaa so they call about why their phone has died? it's because they didn't charge it, of COURSE! Nobody is gonna go to customer service first. It's usually common sense first, then customer service, lol.
Why would they need to? They don't care about stupid spec for price metrics like apple haterzz do.
I wouldn't believe that at all. If you watched his video about the best smartphone of H1 2021, the Top 3 are all Xiaomi phones. Also, that is the guy who boldly claimed that the headphone jack is "on the way out" when he reviewed the A...
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