New step to curb the power of the giants of advanced technology from the Senate panel

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By Marcy Gordon Associated Press

Congress has taken a new step towards controlling Big Tech’s market dominance.

Bipartisan legislation advanced by a Senate college would prevent dominant online platforms from favoring their own goods and services over those of their rivals. It could, for example, prevent Amazon from directing consumers to its own brands and away from competing products on its giant e-commerce platform.

The bill could also lead to restrictions on Google’s search engine, which accounts for around 90% of web searches worldwide and regularly places its services at the top of search results.

The legislation got a 16-6 vote in the Senate Judicial Committee on January 20 and was passed to the full Senate. The action marked a new turning point in Congress’s effort to curb the dominance of tech giants and anti-competitive practices that critics say have harmed consumers, small businesses and innovation.

The industry has warned that the bill’s restrictions would harm Amazon Prime, the hugely popular streaming and shopping service with free delivery and some 200 million members worldwide.

The bill “would harm consumers and the more than 500,000 US small and medium-sized businesses that sell in the Amazon store,” Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, said in a blog post. “It would undermine Amazon’s ability to manage a marketplace for sellers and significantly degrade the Amazon Prime benefits that customers love.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat who leads the legislation, and other lawmakers assured that the bill would not affect Amazon Prime or other subscription services.

The kerfuffle highlighted the delicate task facing lawmakers as they aim to tighten the reins around a powerful sector whose services, mostly free or almost free, are appreciated by consumers and integrated into daily life.

The new legislation is complex and senators from both parties have opposed some measures, even if all have condemned the conduct of the tech giants. Many proposed amendments were carried over for negotiations before the bill reached the Senate chamber, and those talks promise to be tiring.

With the mid-term elections coming in November, the window for action is narrow, noted Klobuchar, head of the judicial subcommittee on competition policy. “We have to get him ashore before then,” he said in a telephone interview.

If the Democrats were to lose their weak majority in Congress, the prospects for passing technology legislation could drop dramatically. While most Republican lawmakers are critical of Big Tech dominance, many of them are against a major overhaul of competition rules.

Legislative advancement comes as tech giants are already suffering from federal investigations, epic antitrust lawsuits from federal and state regulators, and a new head of the powerful Federal Trade Commission who is a ferocious critic of the industry.

In the House, the college of the judiciary last June passed an ambitious package of laws that could curb the tech giants’ market dominance and even force them to separate their dominant platforms from their other lines of business. There has been no House action on the package since then.

In a Senate committee debate ahead of the vote, Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Said, “We need this bill to help consumers and prevent stifling competition and limiting innovation.”

But NC Senator Thom Tillis, one of six Republicans who voted against the bill, insisted that the legislation so elaborated risks stifling innovation. “We need more clarity about what conduct is allowed or prohibited,” he said.

Five other Republicans joined the committee’s Democratic majority in voting for the legislation, including Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the panel’s senior Republican, who co-authored the bill with Klobuchar. Sponsors claim he has won support from competitors from tech giants including Roku, DuckDuckGo, Yelp, Spotify, Match Group, Sonos, and Patreon.

Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California, home of Big Tech’s Silicon Valley, said that “cracking down on the” self-preference “technology platform bill for its products could harm consumer choice and one-click convenience. get answers from certain search engines “.

Like Amazon, Meta, Google and Apple, they deny that they are abusing their dominant market positions. They argue that improper market intervention through legislation would harm consumers and small businesses who rely on their platforms.

The bill includes measures “that hinder our ability to offer security by default on our platforms, exposing people to phishing, malware and spam content attacks,” said Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer. by Google and its parent company Alphabet. in a blog post. “And it still includes provisions that could prevent us from providing useful free services to consumers and businesses.”

Apple, in a letter to judicial committee leaders obtained by the Associated Press, said the legislation and a separate app bill to be considered later raise concerns about “the true harm they will do to the privacy and security of individuals. American consumers “.

“These bills will reward those who have been irresponsible with user data and authorize attackers who would target consumers with malware, ransomware and scams,” the letter states.

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