By Silvia Ribeiro on August 1, 2020
On July 29, 2020, four of the five largest technology companies on the planet – Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple appeared in a public hearing before the United States Congress, accused of monopolistic practices against smaller competitors, consumers, and users. This is a key aspect of the negative impact of these tech giants and is only one that characterizes the unprecedented economic, political, and social power that they wield.
The value of these four companies together is currently more than 5 billion US dollars. Together with Microsoft they are among the 10 companies with greatest market capitalization value in the world and in the history of capitalism. Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon, together with the oil companies Petrochina y Saudi Aramco, are the only six companies that have exceeded one trillion dollars in market value. Facebook is close to that figure, valued at 633 billion dollars, along with Chinese digital platforms Alibaba and Tencent.
In the hearing, which lasted more than five hours, the representatives of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple heard a long series of questions, based on over a year of investigation and more than a million pages of evidence generated by the House Antitrust Subcommittee chaired by David Cicilline. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon; Marc Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (both among the eight richest men on the planet); Tim Cook,the CEO of Apple; and Sundar Pichair, CEO of Alphabet, which owns Google, defended their companies against a preponderance of evidence difficult to refute.
The cases that were presented were no less serious for having been previously known. For example, email evidence showing that Facebook bought its competitors Instagram and WhatsApp because they were perceived as a threat to their control of users; Alphabet (Google) acquired YouTube for similar reasons. Evidence was presented that Google steals content from smaller companies’ websites – for example, Yelp restaurant reviews – and exercises its dominance by threatening to hide these companies from its top search results. Google controls 90% of on-line searches. The accusations against Apple revolved around their making it impossible for clients to use apps from other developers.
Amazon has surpassed Walmart, the largest super-store in the world, in retail purchases since 2019. With the pandemic, its earnings increased exponentially, making Bezos the richest man in the world, with a personal fortune of 181 billion dollars. Amazon’s control of its sellers is brutal, with the power to put out of business those that cannot or will not agree to its conditions. It was made clear that Amazon also copies, supplies with its own brand, and initially sells their products cheaper focusing on the most profitable products of other companies, causing them to go under.
In addition the manipulation of data and information with political and discriminatory impacts were also discussed, although the discussion did not approach the actual extent of the problem. The special aspect of this hearing was the high level of preparation done by the Antitrust Committee, which even shook the executives. Two years ago, Zuckerberg had to testify before Congress concerning the leak (or sale) of the data of more than 80 million Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica, which this company and its operatives used, by both direct and subliminal means, to decisively influence the election of Trump and of others, such as Bolsonaro in Brazil. On that occasion, Zuckerberg took control of the debate, faced with congressional representatives who barely understood the subject, and got off with just a 5 million dollars fine, which is not a small amount but is much less than the profits he obtained in the dealings and then the value of the immediate upturn of stock values as soon as this sentence was announced.
It is notable that they did not call Microsoft and its founder Bill Gates, who together with GAFA, control more than half of the world digital platform market. Probably this is because Microsoft was summoned to a similar hearing 22 years ago to answer for its monopoly in the software market, a process that influenced the structuring of the company and changed some plans, such as the development of telephones. Nonetheless, Microsoft and its current power of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and control of Big Data play a fundamental role in control of economies and policies, along with the other four digital monsters.
The subject of monopoly control of markets is decisive, but it is just one of the crucial aspects involving these new forms of capitalist accumulation of data about the lives of all of us that make up the so-called surveillance capitalism, a subject we should understand and collectively organize ourselves to confront.
This concerns not only digital technology but the fact that digitalization has become part of all aspects of productive and social life.
Silvia Ribeiro is a researcher and Latin America Director for ETC Group
Source: Internet Ciudadana, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau