A rare public showdown between Congress and the CEOs of tech’s biggest companies is still on track after being postponed last week. The House Judiciary Committee hearing, originally set for Monday, will now take place Wednesday, July 29 at 12 PM Eastern Time. The date was changed in light of the death of the civil rights leader and Georgia Representative John Lewis, who will be honored in a ceremony Monday in the Capitol building.
The hearing, titled “Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,” will see an unusually comprehensive cast of tech’s most powerful leaders face off with lawmakers.
Any hearing that manages to drag a single tech CEO to Washington D.C. — even virtually, in this case — is notable and Wednesday’s hearing will hear testimony from four of them. In the hearing, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook will all face questions about their company practices and concerns that anticompetitive behavior is impacting some of tech’s key markets for the worse.
The hearing is the latest chapter in the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee’s ongoing antitrust investigation targeting many of tech’s largest, most powerful companies that was first announced last year.
“Since last June, the Subcommittee has been investigating the dominance of a small number of digital platforms and the adequacy of existing antitrust laws and enforcement,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline said in a joint statement.
“Given the central role these corporations play in the lives of the American people, it is critical that their CEOs are forthcoming. As we have said from the start, their testimony is essential for us to complete this investigation.”
We’ll be following the hearing closely on Wednesday. If you stumble onto this page the day of, the link below should provide a reliable stream.
source https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/27/tech-hearing-apple-google-amazon-facebook-antitrust-house-judiciary/
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