author: Philippe Coste, on assignment in New York - July 30, 2020
translation: GoogleTranslation/doxa-louise
GAFA
From theUnited States: the "emperors" of tech under crossfire from representatives of Congress
Mark Zuckerberg by videoconference during a hearing of the Judicial Subcommittee of the House of Representatives, Wednesday. Photo Graeme Jennings. AP
The top executives of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have been heard by the antitrust commission. Democrats blame them for their anti-competitive practices, Republicans their opposition to Trump.
Only three months away from an election where every danger lurks, the cordial understanding seemed dream-like. On Wednesday, the elected Republican and Democrats in the House of Representatives, usually at loggerheads, concluded a five-hour truce, time enough to turn their arms towards one of their rare common enemies: "Big Tech", represented by Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, CEOs of the four titans Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. Heard by videoconference by members of the Congressional Antitrust Commission, the latter had to answer to the Democrats for their anti-competitive practices and to the Republicans for their alleged hostility to conservative values and the Trump administration.
Attacked from all sides, by the American justice department, by the competition authority (the infamous Federal Trade Commission), by the prosecutors of several states and facing European sanctions, the flagships of the Gafa were duly prepared for this new offensive in the form of a popular trial co-orchestrated by the two camps of Congress. While Donald Trump opened the White House session with a tweet promising to restrict the power of the digital giants by decree if Congress failed in its task, Democrat David Cicilline, chairman of the sub-committee, recalled that 'Like our founding fathers, who did not want to bow down to a king, we do not bow down to the Emperors of the online economy '.
Humble mortals
Like him, his fourteen colleagues saw in this hearing under oath a unique opportunity to take public opinion as witness to their bravery in front of a camp of Silicon Valley moguls, including the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, present for the first time before Congress, and the sixth planetary fortune in the person of Mark Zuckerberg.
The “emperors” - in the opinion of some - wanted to remind us that they were also humble mortals. Jeff Bezos, who at this time is also seeking through a national advertising campaign to deny the poor working conditions in Amazon warehouses, described his childhood in Arizona, with a single mother who was 17 years old when he was born. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google once again confided that he did not own a computer or television when he was youth in India, and spoke of his dismay at the first sight of a computer room at an American university.
Reduced to their simple human expression, in the absence of the swarms of congressional photographers and their army of advisers, they nevertheless suffered heavy fire from elected officials. Sundar Pichai was asked “why his company steals content from honest entrepreneurs,” alluding to the power of the Google search engine. Mark Zuckerberg was sharply criticized for "cloning the applications of his competitors by abusing their data", before being confronted with an internal exchange of emails supposed to prove that his acquisition of Instagram was to take control of a potential rival.
"These rules may have been broken"
Jeff Bezos, visibly unaccustomed to this type of performance, had to answer a series of nested questions from the Democratic representative of a Seattle constituency including Amazon headquarters, Pramila Jayapal, tech-savvy, dismantling the practices of Amazon in terms of pricing and the use of data from sellers using its platform to promote its own in-house products. Bezos, pointing out that internal directives prohibit this kind of hacking admitted that "these rules could have been broken".
In a less technical and much more emotional register, the congressmen, hearing him deny any pressure on these sellers, served him a recording of a telephone conversation with a publisher begging the latter to raise the prices of his books on the site. Tom Cook, boss of Apple, was largely spared by members of Congress, except for a few jabs on the access of program developers to the Apple App Store; but he, like his three colleagues, had to proclaim his patriotism loud and clear in response to Republicans' attacks on the Silicon Valley elite.
Trump versus Google
The pro-Trump camp, once again, gifted its electoral base a lawsuit against Google, accused of censoring conservative voices on its search engine, and even, to make matters worse, of directing personal emails sent by Republican Representative Greg Steube to his family to the spam bin. Sundar Pichai, the only Asian present, was entitled to heavy attacks from Tim Jordan (Ohio) who reproached him for his alleged pro-Chinese leanings and asked "the multicultural leader" - accusing him of having pushed Hillary Clinton in 2016 - to swear that 'he would not promote Joe Biden on Google leading up to the November election ...
The coup de grace came from the Democrats, and the conclusions of the chairman of the antitrust subcommittee. Assenting that these four companies "exercise monopoly power" , he advanced that "some must be dismembered, others better regulated and accountable". While a Federal Trade Commission antitrust action against Facebook is possible this summer, the Gafams were thus able to gauge their popularity in Washington.
Philippe Coste serving in New York
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