FULL STREAM

👇 SPARKNOTES 👇

JEFF BEZOS

Opening Statement 👉 docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-BezosJ-20200729.pdf

"Amazon accounts for less than 1% of the $25 trillion global retail market and less than 4% of retail in the U.S.

"Unlike industries that are winner-take-all, there’s room in retail for many winners.

"We didn’t have to invite third-party sellers into the store. We could have kept this valuable real estate for ourselves... But we committed to the idea that over the long term it would increase selection for customers, and that more satisfied customers would be great for both third-party sellers and for Amazon. And that’s what happened.

"I believe Amazon should be scrutinized. We should scrutinize all large institutions, whether they’re companies, government agencies, or non-profits. Our responsibility is to make sure we pass such scrutiny with flying colors."

Also talks about growing up poor, being the son of Cuban immigrants under Castro

• Was mostly grilled about Amazon's position as a platform to collect data on sellers that they also compete with

• Rep. Scanlon pointed to Diapers.com as an example of Amazon using their platform to undercut a competing service, corner them, then acquire their business and increase prices on consumers

• Rep. Jayapal referenced a Wall Street Journal article that reported on Amazon employees using their data on 3rd party sellers to develop competing products for their Amazon-branded products

• Bezos said there were policies at Amazon against employees being anti-competitive in this way, but he could NOT guarantee that they were enforced

• Rep. Neguse put up evidence of Amazon engineers using data to identify growing business on AWS, before launching competing products and targeted them to their customers

• Bezos denied knowledge and cited Netflix and Hulu as competitors that use AWS

• Briefly mentioned Amazon acquiring Ring for market dominance and provided emails for evidence, which Bezos confirmed

"There are multiple reasons that we might buy a company... Sometimes we are trying to buy some technology or IP. Sometimes it is a talent aquisition. But most times it is for market position." - Jeff Bezos

• Other thing they questioned him on was the amount of stolen and counterfeit products on Amazon. Bezos denied knowing whether sellers needed to provide a name, address and phone number before users could sell products on the platform

MARK ZUCKERBERG

Opening Statement 👉 docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-ZuckerbergM-20200729.pdf

"I understand that people have concerns about the size and perceived power that tech companies have. Ultimately, I believe companies shouldn’t be making so many judgments about important issues like harmful content, privacy, and election integrity on their own. That’s why I’ve called for a more active role for governments and regulators and updated rules for the internet.

"Several years ago, Facebook moved our headquarters to the campus where Sun Microsystems used to be. We kept their sign out front, on the back of ours, to remind us that things change fast in tech. I’ve long believed that the nature of our industry is that someday a product will replace Facebook. I want us to be the ones that build it, because if we don’t, someone else will. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions."

It's worth noting that all of the other tech CEOs opening statements reference specific competitors as evidence that they are not monopolies-- Jeff Bezos brings up Target, Kroger, Walmart and Costco; Tim Cook mentions LG, Samsung and Huawei; Sundar Pichai names Alexa, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snap and Pinterest-- except this one

Also hints that regulating Facebook would help China

• Came out swinging took shots at all the other CEOs in his opening remarks

"In many areas, we are behind our competitors... The most popular messaging service in the U.S. is iMessage. The fastest growing app is TikTok. The most popular app for video is YouTube. The fastest growing ads platform is Amazon. The largest ads platform is Google. And for every dollar spent on advertising in the U.S., less than ten cents is spent with us."

• Was questioned about Facebook's impact on election security and their role in spreading disinformation and hate speech

• Confirmed that there was a program at Facebook that paid teenagers for access to their personal data

• They focused on Facebook's acquisition of smaller startups like Instagram and WhatsApp, arguing that they wanted to increase their market position as well as neutralize competition

“… Facebook saw Instagram as a powerful threat that could siphon business away from Facebook so rather than compete with it, Facebook bought it... This is exactly the same kind of anti-competitive action that the antitrust laws were designed to prevent.” - Jim Sensenbrenner

• Admitted to copying ideas from competitors

• Jayapal questioned if Facebook had ever threatened founders to clone their products while also attempting to acquire their company, which Zuckerberg denied

• Zuckerberg argued that it was well known that Facebook would compete with Snapchat and Instagram, so his messages to founders about copying their features were not "threats"

• She brought out receipts of Instagram founder Kevin Systrom being shook that Mark would go DESTROY MODE if they didn't sell

• They even exposed emails of him talking about buying Google

SUNDAR PICHAI

Opening Statement 👉 docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-PichaiS-20200729.pdf

Talks about growing up poor in India without a computer

"At Google, we take pride in the number of people who choose our products and services; we’re even prouder of what they do with them — whether it’s the 140 million students and educators using G Suite for Education to stay connected during the pandemic . . . the 5 million Americans gaining digital skills through Grow with Google, part of our $1 billion initiative to expand economic opportunity . . . or the millions of small business owners connecting with customers through Google products such as Maps and Search.

"We now employ more than 120,000 Googlers around the world — more than 75,000 here in the U.S., across offices and data centers in 26 states. PPI estimated that in 2018 alone we invested more than $20 billion across the U.S., citing us as the largest capital investor in America that year. It’s also ranked us in the top five U.S. investors for the last three years.

"Another way we contribute is by making deep technology investments in America’s future. Every year, we are among the world’s biggest investors in research and development. At the end of 2019, our R&D spend had increased almost 10 times over 10 years, from $2.8 billion to $26 billion. We’ve invested over $90 billion over the last 5 years.

"Through these investments, our teams of engineers are helping America solidify its position as the global leader in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, and quantum computing. For example, last fall, our team of researchers based here in the U.S. was the first to reach a quantum computing milestone, a discovery that could eventually lead to new breakthroughs in medicine and more efficient batteries."

• The Chairman David Cicilline accused Google of diverting competitors' traffic from Google Search to their own services and of stealing content. And shouted out Genius

• Accused Google of monitoring competitors' web traffic data and using it to develop their own services, which Sundar would NOT deny

• Presented memos of Google engineers discussing websites receiving "too much traffic"

• The committee highlighted Google's purchase of Advertising Giant DoubleClick, and their promise from 2007 to never combine Google user data with DoubleClick data which they eventually did in 2016

• Val Demings BULLIED this man, gave a pretty excellent argument for what she described as abuse of Google's market power

“… Google’s bait and switch with DoubleClick is part of a broader pattern where Google buys up companies for the purposes of surveilling Americans and because of Google’s dominance users have no choice but to surrender.” - Val Demings

• Basically she argued that by harvesting users' browsing data from DoubleClick and using it with Google's user data from search, Gmail, Maps, etc., Google had essentially ended privacy on the internet

• Sundar argued that Google had introduced a number of features for users to control their private data

TIM COOK

Opening Statement 👉 docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-CookT-20200729.pdf

" More than 1.9 million American jobs in all 50 states are attributable to the App Store ecosystem...

" An Apple-commissioned study by economists at the A***ysis Group found that, in 2019 alone, the App Store ecosystem facilitated over half a trillion dollars in commerce worldwide and $138 billion just in the United States. This is nothing short of an economic miracle in a relatively brief span of time."

• Received the fewest questions, about half as much as everyone else

• Like Jeff Bezos, was mostly asked about The App Store's position as a platform while also competing with third party businesses on the same platform

• Rep. Johnson argued that App Store review rules are not available to developers and were arbitrarily enforced, questioned what would stop Apple from increasing their commission on developers

• Tim Cook argued there were many different smartphone manufacturers and operating systems competing for developers, compared the situation to a street fight for market share

• They brought up Screen Time apps that Apple had removed from the App Store in 2018, after releasing their own similar app and promoting it to their users

• Tim Cook argued that Apple had removed the apps because of privacy and security concerns, not anti-competitive reasons

• Rep. Lucy McBath provided RECEIPTS of Apple blocking publisher Random House from releasing their own eBook marketplace on the App Store so they would have to use Apple's own iBook store

• They showed evidence of Apple seemingly enforcing their own rules differently for different developers. Also of them apparently not following their own rules, after Tim Cook testified that they treat all developers the same. Which showed that he was possibly lying

• Also said that he "could not read" the evidence they gave

WHAT IS THIS?

al.com/news/2020/07/tim-cook-mark-zuckerberg-jeff-bezos-sundar-pichai-testifying-before-congress-today.html

Antitrust hearing

Congress wants to know if they're guilty of leveraging the MARKET POWER of their respective platforms (Amazon, Facebook, Google and The App Store) to bully smaller companies and suppress competition.

The answer will shock you!

Interestingly, Zuckerberg and Pichai agreed to testify only on the condition that Tim Cook would too, which he did

Despite Facebook and Google's horrendous track record on privacy, and the many horror stories defining Amazon's toxic work culture, the question of monopoly seems to be unique to Apple more so than anyone else

• There was recently controversy over an email app Hey being locked out of the App Store around the same time that Apple had acquiesced to letting users choose their own default mailer.

• Spotify has complained about Apple demanding a 30% cut of subscriptions while offering Apple Music for the same price.

• Facebook has repeatedly tried to put out a gaming app on The App Store for years and has been rejected every time. It's still unreleased.

Apple currently has 3 antitrust cases against them on 2 continents a long way from when it was them on the other side in a war against Microsoft

Steve Jobs was once asked about this situation a decade ago, and this was his response: "The iPhone supports two platforms. The first one is HTML5, which is an open standard... The second one The App Store , is curated."

Would be interesting if they still go with this

this is just theatre and all these congress people probably own stock in their companies. this is just an inconvenient day for these b******s.

congress not even going to ask the right question, this is a massive waste of time for all parties involved

king bezos will own

They defo do

Pointless tbh

"how come when I try to use google maps, it takes me through the tolls when I didn't want to?"

• probable questions this "smart" congress will ask

Yep. What is actually gonna be achieved? If they were serious these would all be individual hearings spread out over weeks or months, not one afternoon photo op.

Interested to see the circus though.

No more monopolizing

S need to be there too

dam 30% ?

moved out of tech sxn i didn't know if this belonged in tech or politics tbh

life sxn is good tho

can't wait till congress subpoenas you to answer for your crimes against internet humanity

Are these hearings separate from the DOJ investigations?

absolutely nothing will come from this

They’ll fight this off easily by saying they help small businesses by taking down entry barriers with cheap b2b services

right, we literally should not give 2 dog s***s. As if these billionaires don't have these Congress f***s in their pockets anyway

this is going to be a joke

i believe so

This s*** a song and dance

Money = power