See How Tech’s Most Influential CEOs Take Part in Tomorrow’s Antitrust Hearing
On Wednesday, July 29, four of the technology industry’s most influential CEOs will appear before the House Judiciary Committee to determine whether their companies are engaging in anti-competitive business strategies against smaller rival companies. The hearing will be broadcast live on YouTube for everyone.
The House Subcommittee will question Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg about anti-competitive behavior, including so-called copy-get-kill and sherlocking strategies.
Copy-takeover-destroy is what happens when a large company identifies potential innovators who might undermine their own products, buys a product from a smaller company or individual, and then closes their business. Sherlocking is when a company directly undermines a competitor’s product by updating its own with the same or very similar features. The term was coined after Apple’s Sherlock search software was updated to match a rival competitor named Watson.
Such strategies can help large companies maintain a monopoly in their market by stifling competition, which, if you didn’t know, is super-legal.
Why Wednesday Hearing Is So Important
The four executives will give virtual readings on Wednesday afternoon ET. They will also be questioned by members of the commission. It’s rare to see this Big Four in the same (virtual) room together, let alone testify before the same committee in Washington DC, so it must be interesting to see whatever comes of it. …
Wednesday’s hearing could lead to new and updated antitrust laws that will bring big changes to the tech industry, making it difficult to maintain long-standing dominance of Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. It is also possible that the trial will be nothing more than politicians waving their fingers to four very rich men, without any change.
(It is worth noting that several of the subcommittee members attending the hearing hold shares in the companies interviewed, according to a Business Insider report .)
Ultimately, however, it turns out that this hearing makes a big difference, and you can watch it via the YouTube video embedded below or on theofficial YouTube page of the House Judiciary Committee .