Jeff Bezos To Testify At Capitol Hill
Amazon said CEO Jeff Bezos was available to testify before the House to answer questions over an antitrust probe into the tech sector.
The last major CEO to testify on Capitol Hill was when Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, explained the internet to lawmakers during the Cambridge Analytica hearing in 2018.
The House will focus on whether Amazon and other tech companies have unfairly squashed competition.
- A WSJ report in April claimed that Amazon used data from independent sellers to launch its own competing products—a practice it denied to Congress.
- Lawmakers have also asked the CEOs of Apple, Facebook, and Googleto testify over other allegations of competition-busting practices.
Outlook: Big tech companies such as Apple, Amazon and Google can curtail competition because they make money in multiple ways.
- They can engage in predatory pricing because they offer a slew of other services that undercuts competitors pricing and squeezing them out in the market.
- With big tech taking over, there is no room for leverage for small companies. If your software relies on big tech services and you are competing with them, you have no room for negotiation and it limits a consumer’s freedom of choice.