Break up, merger restrictions and other ways US Congress is trying to rein in Big Tech
The bipartisan legislation targets the companies’ structure and points toward breaking them up, a dramatic step for Congress to take against a powerful industry whose products are woven into everyday life. Groundbreaking legislation is advancing in Congress that would curb the market power of tech giants Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple and could force them to untie their dominant platforms from their other lines of business. But they fit into a new legal category it creates called “covered platforms” that fall under the new restrictions: online platforms with 50 million or more monthly active users, annual sales or market value of over $600 billion, and a role as a “critical trading partner.” Some critics of the industry have pointed to Facebook’s popular messaging services Instagram and WhatsApp as strong candidates to be divested. “Amazon takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection, and like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively.” Hard to merge Lawmakers want to make it tougher for giant tech companies to snap up competitors in mergers, which they have completed by the hundreds in recent years, waved through by antitrust enforcers in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
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