According to foreign media reports, after more than a year's investigation, the U.S. House antitrust committee recently released an investigation report on whether Amazon, Facebook, apple and Google violated the anti-monopoly law. According to the report, the four major technology giants have abused market power and called for measures such as splitting, restricting mergers and acquisitions, and banning self-interest transactions that hinder competition.
The more than 400 page report shows that the four technology giants have abused their market power by charging extra fees, setting harsh contract terms and collecting useful information from individuals and businesses.
However, the report only indicates that these enterprises abuse market power, and does not call them monopolists. According to the report, Google has a monopoly in search business and Facebook in social network. Amazon and apple have "huge and lasting market power" in online retail market, mobile operating system and app store respectively.
It is pointed out that if the US legislators take actions such as splitting and restricting mergers and acquisitions of these technology giants, it can be said that it will be a big step in the regulation of the technology industry. For decades, these technology companies have been wearing "star halos" in the United States and have been given preferential treatment in terms of regulation. In recent years, however, it is being investigated more frequently in terms of competition, consumer privacy and speech.
Some analysts pointed out that with the approaching of the general election and the new Congress taking office in January next year, the recommendations in the current report are difficult to put into action. But the report provides a roadmap for Congress to take action in 2021. At present, it seems likely that the policy ideas of House Democrats will continue.
With the rapid development of new technologies, the scale of technology giants is expanding. Just like the problem of "too big to fail" faced by large banks, the huge scale of technology companies also makes global regulators face difficulties.
At present, the four major U.S. technology giants are also facing more stringent regulation in Europe. According to foreign media reports, EU leaders are also preparing to approve the relevant draft to introduce "unprecedented" strict supervision of the four major US technology giants, and hope to become a global rule maker in this regard. In December this year, the EU plans to introduce the digital services act to improve Internet regulation. One of the core contents of the newly proposed bill at the beginning of this month is the need to formulate specific and strict regulatory rules for us technology giants, which may include sharing valuable information, prohibiting pre installed applications, prohibiting the prioritization of search results, and changing the usage rules of app stores. Some analysts have pointed out that the previous EU regulatory actions on US technology enterprises often only involved large fines, but failed to fundamentally change their abuse of market power. The new regulatory act is expected to change this situation.