Big Tech Summoned to Washington for Antitrust Hearing

By Ryan Tracy 

WASHINGTON -- Representatives of four huge U.S. technology companies will testify next week at a hearing on "online platforms and market power," the House antitrust subcommittee said.

The hearing will be an early flashpoint in what is shaping up to be a yearslong, high-stakes debate in Washington about if, and how, to limit the reach and influence of tech giants over markets and Americans' personal lives.

The attendees include executives from Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc., said the Democrat-led panel, which is conducting a broader inquiry into antitrust concerns in the tech sector. The hearing is set for July 16.

Other congressional hearings in recent weeks have focused on Big Tech's impact on the privacy of personal financial data, child predators and the news business. Meanwhile, U.S. antitrust regulators have divvied up jurisdiction over big tech companies ahead of possible investigations.

For next week's hearing, the companies will be sending in-house legal and policy experts to testify. The witness lists includes Adam Cohen, Google's director of economic policy; Nate Sutton, Amazon associate general counsel; Matt Perault, Facebook's head of global policy development; and Kyle Andeer, chief compliance officer at Apple.

Witnesses also will include antitrust experts such as Timothy Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and former staffer in the Obama White House who has advocated for stronger antitrust enforcement generally, and for breaking up Facebook.

Also testifying are Yale University professor Fiona Scott Morton, Institute for Local Self-Reliance co-director Stacy Mitchell, and Baker Botts LLP partner Maureen Ohlhausen, the committee said.

Write to Ryan Tracy at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 09, 2019 15:25 ET (19:25 GMT)

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