FAANG Faces Allegations from US Antitrust Subcommittee

DECbot writes:

First spotted over at XDA Developers, the US Antitrust Subcommittee has finally released its long awaited report. To the astute, it lists the blatant obvious conclusions.

The [US Antitrust] Subcommittee just released their conclusion and report on this investigation, and it contains scathing remarks on how these companies have indulged in anticompetitive, monopolistic, and dominating behavior. While the complete report runs into a good 450 pages, we strongly recommend reading at least the Chairs' Foreword (pages 6-9) and the Executive Summary (pages 9-21) for an overview.

In its report, the Subcommittee notes that even though Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are different companies that operate across different segments, their business practices have some common problems:

• Each platform serves as a gatekeeper over a key channel of distribution.
  • By controlling access to markets, the giants can pick winners and losers throughout the US economy.
  • They not only wield tremendous power as a gatekeeper, they also abuse the position by:
    - Charging exorbitant fees
    - Imposing oppressive contract terms
    - Extracting valuable data from people and businesses that rely on them.
    
• Each platform uses its gatekeeper position to maintain its market power.
  • The companies control infrastructure and use this control for surveilling other businesses to identify potential rivals.
  • These rivals are then either bought out, copied, or have their competitive threat cut off.
    
• Each platform has abused its role as an intermediary to further entrench and expand its dominance. This can take the form of self-preferencing, predatory pricing, or exclusionary conduct. The end result is that dominant platforms have exploited their power to become even more dominant.

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