House: Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google have “monopoly power,” should be split

Enlarge / The United States Capitol Building, the seat of Congress, on the National Mall in Washington, DC. (credit: Omar Chatriwala | Getty Images)

Last June, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law began an in-depth investigation into four major firms-Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The subcommittee wanted to answer one key question: did Big Tech get big playing by the rules, or does it cheat to stay at the top? After 16 months of hearings, research, and analysis, the panel's findings are out... and the results look really bad for every company involved.

The tech sector does indeed suffer from abuses of "monopoly power," the subcommittee concluded in the mammoth 450-page report (PDF) published late yesterday afternoon.

"As they exist today, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook each possess significant market power over large swaths of our economy. In recent years, each company has expanded and exploited their power of the marketplace in anticompetitive ways," Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and antitrust subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said in a joint statement. "Our investigation leaves no doubt that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation, and safeguards our democracy."

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