US House Dems, GOP probe Big Tech for monopoly, bias

A House panel is putting the public spotlight on the CEOs of four of America's biggest tech companies and probing whether the companies stifle competition and innovation, raise prices for consumers and pose a danger to society.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google and Tim Cook of Apple - are answering for their companies’ practices before Congress as a House panel caps its yearlong investigation of market dominance in the industry.

In its bipartisan investigation, the Judiciary subcommittee collected testimony from mid-level executives of the four firms, competitors and legal experts, and pored over more than a million internal documents from the companies.

A key question: whether existing competition policies and century-old antitrust laws are adequate for overseeing the tech giants, or if new legislation and enforcement funding are needed.

Subcommittee chairman Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, has called the four companies monopolies, although he says breaking them up should be a last resort.

While forced breakups may appear unlikely, the wide scrutiny of Big Tech points toward possible new restrictions on its power.

“Simply put, they have too much power,” Cicilline said in opening remarks Wednesday, as he laid out data pointing up the power of the four tech companies as essential cogs of commerce and communications.

Veering from the issue of market competition, Rep. Jim Jordan, a leading conservative Republican, aired longstanding grievances against the big tech companies of censoring conservative viewpoints.

"We all think the free market is great. We think competition is great. We love the fact that these are American companies. But what's not great is censoring people, censoring conservatives and trying to impact elections,"

Jordan said.