This groundbreaking 449-page antitrust report has concluded that Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google), are anti-competitive.

This groundbreaking 449-page antitrust report has concluded that Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google), are anti-competitive.

The “Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets, Majority Staff Report and Recommendations,” or as most people call it, the Big Tech antitrust case has finally be released for viewing by the public. Released this Tuesday, the 6th of October, this mammoth 449 page document has one very clear meaning: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are anti-competitive. This means that US antitrust needs to create a new system to allow more competition.

To quote the document’s introduction, “To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. Although these firms have delivered clear benefits to society, the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google has come at a price.”

This document written by the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee of the Judiciary comes at the end of an over year long investigation into the big tech companies currently dominating Wall Street and the internet as a whole.

Compared to Standard Oil and AT&T of the 20th century, Big Tech is made up of the four biggest companies in the world, possibly excluding Saudi Arabia’s SaudiAramco. These four are Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Together representing more than a third of the S&P 100, the 100 biggest companies of America, these companies are absolutely massive.

While large companies have been investigated in the past for being too large, like with Microsoft’s antitrust case, involving packaging Internet Explorer; and forcing the use of it; on Windows machines, this is unprecedented in this world’s environment of multi-trillion dollar corporations.

While understandably, most people might be confused as to how their phone developer, or their social media owner, or their search engine owner, or their online shopping might be considered monopolistic, there’s more than enough reasons to argue that these four companies do fall into monopolies.

That’s why each of the four corporations’ antitrust issues are going to be explained below, starting with

Amazon:

With Amazon’s massive 40 percent market share of the almost 400 billion dollar US e-commerce market, making it seven times larger than the number two, Walmart, the subcommittee’s report states that this Big Tech’s unique market position allows it to push anti-competitive measures across the rest of the market.

This falls in line with the report’s statement that Amazon actually has closer to a 50% market share, compared to the universally accepted 40% theory.

According to the report, this large market share allows Amazon to push unfair practices across not only its competition, but even some of the almost 3 million sellers on Amazon’s marketplace. The report argues that Amazon collects information and data from sellers on their marketplace, allowing it to replicate successful products, using their multi-billion dollar marketing to push the product.

Another criticism is that this access to successful sellers’ products allows Amazon to push their own products harder than competitors’ products, giving higher priority and chance for their product to be purchased.

The regulatory report also states that Amazon’s control over their platform allows them to either anti-competitively decrease their own prices to run competitors out of competitions, or increase fees to attack competitors. This would be impossible to counteract due to Amazon’s absolute negotiating power.

Apple:

This over two trillion dollar company is under regulatory investigation for monopolistic practices relating to their market share for operating systems, phones, and App Store.

According to the antitrust report, Apple uses monopolistic power through the over 50% of US phones that have the Apple App Store installed. This is directly related to the fact that if you own an Apple product, the only way to receive a new application or update officially, is through the Apple App Store. Through this App Store, Apple receives a 30% commission on every purchase.

The antitrust committee argues that Apple uses their virtually absolute monopoly on downloads and purchases on iPhones to charge a high fee on purchases, promote their first party applications more than others, and unfairly crush competition through assorted means.

These reasons are why Apple is currently in court with Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite amongst other games. Epic Games wanted Apple to receive a lower commission than the 30% they take from every app, and that resulted in Fortnite, Epic Games’ developmental account, and the Unreal Engine from being accessed through the App Store. (in reality, Epic’s secret motive was to launch their own competitor to the App Store in the form of Epic Games Store, but that’s another story for another day_

Apple has obviously refuted and argued against this point, stating that the vast majority of e-commerce going through the App Store goes directly to the third-party developers. They also claim that their commissions are completely mainstream and fair to competitors.

Facebook:

This 449 page document has the most complaints with the media giant Facebook. According to the subcommittee, Facebook breaks many antitrust rules, involving their “copy, acquire, and kill” strategies, as well as their monopolistic control over social media, with their 2 billion monthly active users.

This strategy is used to unfairly hurt rivals and competitors according to the report, as example with Facebook’s 2012 purchase of Instagram. Specifically, the report states that Facebook’s acquisition was used to neutralize a competitive threat, which Facebook accomplished by limiting Instagram’s success, to prevent Facebook from being even remotely competed with.

A specifically quoted piece of evidence was an email in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Facebook’s past CTO that he had been thinking about how much Facebook should be willing to pay to acquire mobile app companies like Instagram, specifically ones that were building networks that would have competed with Facebook’s own. This specific evidence is claimed to prove that Zuckerberg has had anti-competitive interests since the very beginning.

As part of the several tens of thousands of documents received from Facebook, one called the “Cunningham Memo,” written by Thomas Cunningham, a data scientist at Facebook, which acknowledged that Facebook was close to being a full monopoly, as well as stating that social media have a tipping point to becoming ubiquitous or forgotten.

Facebook’s response to this investigation is that it happens to be an American success story, who competed with billions of people using competing services. They also go to mention that Facebook has invested billions into their acquisitions, which are part of every company, adding that regulators didn’t see any reason to stop the acquisitions in the past.

Google:

The report states that Google has a monopoly in dual markets: the online search industry and the marketing industry. These combined create an intertwined monopoly, where each market grows stronger with the other.

The online search monopoly is by launching an “aggressive campaign to undermine vertical search providers,” which are specific search engines. These specific campaigns are against specific providers, such as with TripAdvisor, for hotels, or for Yelp for restaurants, and more.

The subcommittee says that Google uses their massive search engine influences to crush smaller specific competitors, such as those, as well as to build up their own “inferior content”, which is then pushed harder than the opponents.

Some examples of these are with Google’s flights, crushing the smaller individual flights and travel providers, or with Google’s weather services, compared to weather.com or accuweather.com

The marketing industry is pushed through Google’s inclusion of the Android operating system onto thousands of brands, as well as the push of their own apps on top of that operating system.

This forced inclusion of Google’s apps allows Google to collect additional data for everyone of their specific apps. For example, Weather or Maps allows location data, Google searches collects information on personal questions, the Play Store collects data on wants or needs, and so forth.

All of this data and the ability to display their own ads on their own apps for free, allows Google to take almost an absolute monopoly on the entire Android system, encompassing hundreds of millions of devices.

Google’s response to these allegations was that Americans don’t want Congress to “break Google’s products or harm the free services they use everyday.”

———————————————————————————————–

Overall, all of these details on what the subcommittee believes are anti-competitive practices might mean nothing. There have been countless antitrust cases against specific companies before, and only a few have actually done anything.

Without heavy Democratic influence, in a Republican term, nothing is going to be done. President Trump has gone on record many times stating that Big Tech is an important necessity for America and its people. He also happens to hold some investments within big technology companies as well.

This groundbreaking 449-page antitrust report has concluded that Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google), are anti-competitive.

This groundbreaking 449-page antitrust report has concluded that Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google), are anti-competitive.

The “Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets, Majority Staff Report and Recommendations,” or as most people call it, the Big Tech antitrust case has finally be released for viewing by the public. Released this Tuesday, the 6th of October, this mammoth 449 page document has one very clear meaning: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are anti-competitive. This means that US antitrust needs to create a new system to allow more competition.

To quote the document’s introduction, “To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. Although these firms have delivered clear benefits to society, the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google has come at a price.”

This document written by the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee of the Judiciary comes at the end of an over year long investigation into the big tech companies currently dominating Wall Street and the internet as a whole.

Compared to Standard Oil and AT&T of the 20th century, Big Tech is made up of the four biggest companies in the world, possibly excluding Saudi Arabia’s SaudiAramco. These four are Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Together representing more than a third of the S&P 100, the 100 biggest companies of America, these companies are absolutely massive.

While large companies have been investigated in the past for being too large, like with Microsoft’s antitrust case, involving packaging Internet Explorer; and forcing the use of it; on Windows machines, this is unprecedented in this world’s environment of multi-trillion dollar corporations.

While understandably, most people might be confused as to how their phone developer, or their social media owner, or their search engine owner, or their online shopping might be considered monopolistic, there’s more than enough reasons to argue that these four companies do fall into monopolies.

That’s why each of the four corporations’ antitrust issues are going to be explained below, starting with

Amazon:

With Amazon’s massive 40 percent market share of the almost 400 billion dollar US e-commerce market, making it seven times larger than the number two, Walmart, the subcommittee’s report states that this Big Tech’s unique market position allows it to push anti-competitive measures across the rest of the market.

This falls in line with the report’s statement that Amazon actually has closer to a 50% market share, compared to the universally accepted 40% theory.

According to the report, this large market share allows Amazon to push unfair practices across not only its competition, but even some of the almost 3 million sellers on Amazon’s marketplace. The report argues that Amazon collects information and data from sellers on their marketplace, allowing it to replicate successful products, using their multi-billion dollar marketing to push the product.

Another criticism is that this access to successful sellers’ products allows Amazon to push their own products harder than competitors’ products, giving higher priority and chance for their product to be purchased.

The regulatory report also states that Amazon’s control over their platform allows them to either anti-competitively decrease their own prices to run competitors out of competitions, or increase fees to attack competitors. This would be impossible to counteract due to Amazon’s absolute negotiating power.

Apple:

This over two trillion dollar company is under regulatory investigation for monopolistic practices relating to their market share for operating systems, phones, and App Store.

According to the antitrust report, Apple uses monopolistic power through the over 50% of US phones that have the Apple App Store installed. This is directly related to the fact that if you own an Apple product, the only way to receive a new application or update officially, is through the Apple App Store. Through this App Store, Apple receives a 30% commission on every purchase.

The antitrust committee argues that Apple uses their virtually absolute monopoly on downloads and purchases on iPhones to charge a high fee on purchases, promote their first party applications more than others, and unfairly crush competition through assorted means.

These reasons are why Apple is currently in court with Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite amongst other games. Epic Games wanted Apple to receive a lower commission than the 30% they take from every app, and that resulted in Fortnite, Epic Games’ developmental account, and the Unreal Engine from being accessed through the App Store. (in reality, Epic’s secret motive was to launch their own competitor to the App Store in the form of Epic Games Store, but that’s another story for another day_

Apple has obviously refuted and argued against this point, stating that the vast majority of e-commerce going through the App Store goes directly to the third-party developers. They also claim that their commissions are completely mainstream and fair to competitors.

Facebook:

This 449 page document has the most complaints with the media giant Facebook. According to the subcommittee, Facebook breaks many antitrust rules, involving their “copy, acquire, and kill” strategies, as well as their monopolistic control over social media, with their 2 billion monthly active users.

This strategy is used to unfairly hurt rivals and competitors according to the report, as example with Facebook’s 2012 purchase of Instagram. Specifically, the report states that Facebook’s acquisition was used to neutralize a competitive threat, which Facebook accomplished by limiting Instagram’s success, to prevent Facebook from being even remotely competed with.

A specifically quoted piece of evidence was an email in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Facebook’s past CTO that he had been thinking about how much Facebook should be willing to pay to acquire mobile app companies like Instagram, specifically ones that were building networks that would have competed with Facebook’s own. This specific evidence is claimed to prove that Zuckerberg has had anti-competitive interests since the very beginning.

As part of the several tens of thousands of documents received from Facebook, one called the “Cunningham Memo,” written by Thomas Cunningham, a data scientist at Facebook, which acknowledged that Facebook was close to being a full monopoly, as well as stating that social media have a tipping point to becoming ubiquitous or forgotten.

Facebook’s response to this investigation is that it happens to be an American success story, who competed with billions of people using competing services. They also go to mention that Facebook has invested billions into their acquisitions, which are part of every company, adding that regulators didn’t see any reason to stop the acquisitions in the past.

Google:

The report states that Google has a monopoly in dual markets: the online search industry and the marketing industry. These combined create an intertwined monopoly, where each market grows stronger with the other.

The online search monopoly is by launching an “aggressive campaign to undermine vertical search providers,” which are specific search engines. These specific campaigns are against specific providers, such as with TripAdvisor, for hotels, or for Yelp for restaurants, and more.

The subcommittee says that Google uses their massive search engine influences to crush smaller specific competitors, such as those, as well as to build up their own “inferior content”, which is then pushed harder than the opponents.

Some examples of these are with Google’s flights, crushing the smaller individual flights and travel providers, or with Google’s weather services, compared to weather.com or accuweather.com

The marketing industry is pushed through Google’s inclusion of the Android operating system onto thousands of brands, as well as the push of their own apps on top of that operating system.

This forced inclusion of Google’s apps allows Google to collect additional data for everyone of their specific apps. For example, Weather or Maps allows location data, Google searches collects information on personal questions, the Play Store collects data on wants or needs, and so forth.

All of this data and the ability to display their own ads on their own apps for free, allows Google to take almost an absolute monopoly on the entire Android system, encompassing hundreds of millions of devices.

Google’s response to these allegations was that Americans don’t want Congress to “break Google’s products or harm the free services they use everyday.”

———————————————————————————————–

Overall, all of these details on what the subcommittee believes are anti-competitive practices might mean nothing. There have been countless antitrust cases against specific companies before, and only a few have actually done anything.

Without heavy Democratic influence, in a Republican term, nothing is going to be done. President Trump has gone on record many times stating that Big Tech is an important necessity for America and its people. He also happens to hold some investments within big technology companies as well.