Much of the heat of Democrat and Republican lawmakers in the United States congressional hearing, who questioned four America's most prominent tech CEOs, fell on Google and Facebook as the bosses of these two tech giants were criticized the most for their alleged abuse of their power in the market place.
In a video conference based hearing, a range of accusations from lawmakers that the companies had prevented and stifled smaller rivals in their efforts to gain market share, were leveled by the law makers to Facebook Inc's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon.com Inc's Jeff Bezos, Google owner Alphabet Inc's Sundar Pichai and Apple Inc's Tim Cook. The combined market value of these companies is about $5 trillion.
According to reports, the CEO who looked the least fazed was Bezos even though he was the first this was his first congressional testimony. On the other hand, analysts noted that the questions put forward to Cook were apparently handled quiet well by him. And Zuckerberg was apparently the most criticized and frilled as be sometimes stumbled to answer efficiently when he as confronted with questions based on internal emails of the company.
Conservatives on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel apparently targeted Pichai, CEO of both Alphabet and Google, the most and apparently he also stumbled to answer, said analysts. He was seen repeatedly telling lawmakers that he would be happy to look into various situations and get back to them.
And the Big Tech hearing was decidedly low-tech. Bezos could not be questioned for about an hour because of what appeared to be a technical tech issue and as once seen reaching out to possible get hold of a snack.
There ere a lot of frustrating moments for those who were watching as the chief executives appeared together as thumbnails on a large screen while poor audio and flat-screen televisions switching off hampered the viewing. This virtual set up was mocked and criticized on Twitter later on.
Google was accused of theft by representative David Cicilline, a Democrat and chair of the antitrust subcommittee.. "Why does Google steal content from honest businesses?" he asked. In addition to stealing reviews from Yelp Inc, Google also threatened to delist Yelp from search results if it objected, Cicilline alleged.
There was a meek response from Pichai who said that he would want to know the specifics of the accusation. "We conduct ourselves to the highest standards," he added while disagreeing with the characterization that Google steals content to win users.
Questions about whether the acquisition of Instagram in 2012 by Facebook was prompted by the former being a threat to Facebook were posed to Zuckerberg. In his response the Facebook founder and CEO said that the time of the acquisition, the deal had been reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission and added that at the time of the purchase, Instagram was a tiny photo-sharing app instead of the its current status as one of the largest social media platforms of the world. "People didn't think of them competing with us in that space," he said.
Amazon’s Bezos as questioned by Representative Pramila Jayapal about whether data from third-party sellers were used by the e-commerce company in making sales decisions. Bezos was cautious to answer the question and said that a policy against such action is propagated by the company. "If we found that somebody violated it, we would take action against them," he said.
The allegations against Apple that nothing could prevent Apple from raising the commissions it charges in the App Store were rejected by its CEO Cook.
"I disagree strongly with that," he said. "The competition for developers - they can write their apps for Android or Windows or Xbox or PlayStation. We have fierce competition at the developer side and the customer side, which is essentially so competitive I would describe it as a street fight."
(Source:www.livemint.com)
In a video conference based hearing, a range of accusations from lawmakers that the companies had prevented and stifled smaller rivals in their efforts to gain market share, were leveled by the law makers to Facebook Inc's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon.com Inc's Jeff Bezos, Google owner Alphabet Inc's Sundar Pichai and Apple Inc's Tim Cook. The combined market value of these companies is about $5 trillion.
According to reports, the CEO who looked the least fazed was Bezos even though he was the first this was his first congressional testimony. On the other hand, analysts noted that the questions put forward to Cook were apparently handled quiet well by him. And Zuckerberg was apparently the most criticized and frilled as be sometimes stumbled to answer efficiently when he as confronted with questions based on internal emails of the company.
Conservatives on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel apparently targeted Pichai, CEO of both Alphabet and Google, the most and apparently he also stumbled to answer, said analysts. He was seen repeatedly telling lawmakers that he would be happy to look into various situations and get back to them.
And the Big Tech hearing was decidedly low-tech. Bezos could not be questioned for about an hour because of what appeared to be a technical tech issue and as once seen reaching out to possible get hold of a snack.
There ere a lot of frustrating moments for those who were watching as the chief executives appeared together as thumbnails on a large screen while poor audio and flat-screen televisions switching off hampered the viewing. This virtual set up was mocked and criticized on Twitter later on.
Google was accused of theft by representative David Cicilline, a Democrat and chair of the antitrust subcommittee.. "Why does Google steal content from honest businesses?" he asked. In addition to stealing reviews from Yelp Inc, Google also threatened to delist Yelp from search results if it objected, Cicilline alleged.
There was a meek response from Pichai who said that he would want to know the specifics of the accusation. "We conduct ourselves to the highest standards," he added while disagreeing with the characterization that Google steals content to win users.
Questions about whether the acquisition of Instagram in 2012 by Facebook was prompted by the former being a threat to Facebook were posed to Zuckerberg. In his response the Facebook founder and CEO said that the time of the acquisition, the deal had been reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission and added that at the time of the purchase, Instagram was a tiny photo-sharing app instead of the its current status as one of the largest social media platforms of the world. "People didn't think of them competing with us in that space," he said.
Amazon’s Bezos as questioned by Representative Pramila Jayapal about whether data from third-party sellers were used by the e-commerce company in making sales decisions. Bezos was cautious to answer the question and said that a policy against such action is propagated by the company. "If we found that somebody violated it, we would take action against them," he said.
The allegations against Apple that nothing could prevent Apple from raising the commissions it charges in the App Store were rejected by its CEO Cook.
"I disagree strongly with that," he said. "The competition for developers - they can write their apps for Android or Windows or Xbox or PlayStation. We have fierce competition at the developer side and the customer side, which is essentially so competitive I would describe it as a street fight."
(Source:www.livemint.com)
