Big Tech Summoned to Washington for Antitrust Hearing
July 09 2019 - 3:40PM
Dow Jones News
By Ryan Tracy
WASHINGTON -- Representatives of four huge U.S. technology
companies will testify next week at a hearing on "online platforms
and market power," the House antitrust subcommittee said.
The hearing will be an early flashpoint in what is shaping up to
be a yearslong, high-stakes debate in Washington about if, and how,
to limit the reach and influence of tech giants over markets and
Americans' personal lives.
The attendees include executives from Alphabet Inc.'s Google,
Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc., said the
Democrat-led panel, which is conducting a broader inquiry into
antitrust concerns in the tech sector. The hearing is set for July
16.
Other congressional hearings in recent weeks have focused on Big
Tech's impact on the privacy of personal financial data, child
predators and the news business. Meanwhile, U.S. antitrust
regulators have divvied up jurisdiction over big tech companies
ahead of possible investigations.
For next week's hearing, the companies will be sending in-house
legal and policy experts to testify. The witness lists includes
Adam Cohen, Google's director of economic policy; Nate Sutton,
Amazon associate general counsel; Matt Perault, Facebook's head of
global policy development; and Kyle Andeer, chief compliance
officer at Apple.
Witnesses also will include antitrust experts such as Timothy
Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and former staffer in the Obama
White House who has advocated for stronger antitrust enforcement
generally, and for breaking up Facebook.
Also testifying are Yale University professor Fiona Scott
Morton, Institute for Local Self-Reliance co-director Stacy
Mitchell, and Baker Botts LLP partner Maureen Ohlhausen, the
committee said.
Write to Ryan Tracy at ryan.tracy@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 09, 2019 15:25 ET (19:25 GMT)
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