By: Financial Times
July 03, 2020
Strength in numbers — or guilt by association?
When Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg appear together to answer questions from U.S. lawmakers in the coming weeks, it could be a watershed moment for Big Tech.
Their appearance before a House committee looking into whether Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. unfairly freeze out competition will mark the first time Congress has tried to hold Big Tech’s leaders jointly to account. The corporate power on display — not to mention the combined wealth of a quarter of a trillion dollars — will be unlike anything lawmakers have faced before.
The group hearing before the House judiciary committee, which the CEOs agreed to this week, means that they will escape the sort of grilling they could have expected had they appeared individually. There won’t be time for lawmakers to drill too deeply into the complexities of the companies’ very different markets and business models.