San Francisco (AFP)
The bosses of the four tech giants - Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon - will be questioned by American parliamentarians as part of an investigation into possible anti-competitive practices.
Sundar Pichai (Alphabet, parent company of Google), Tim Cook (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) agreed to answer questions from the Judicial Committee of the United States House of Representatives.
The hearing will take place on July 27, and the four CEOs can introduce themselves virtually if they wish.
"Since last June, the subcommittee has been investigating the dominance of a small number of digital platforms and the relevance of existing antitrust laws and their application," said Jerry Nadler, chair of the commission, and David Cicilline, that of the subcommittee on competition, in a statement Monday.
"Given the central role of these groups in the lives of the American people, it is essential that the CEOs are cooperative," they added.
Google and Facebook, which monopolize most of the world's digital advertising revenue, provide "free" services that have become widely dominant in their niche (such as the search engine or the YouTube platform for Google).
Users' interactions with these products allow them to collect data on their profiles and sell ultra-targeted advertising space, on a very large scale.
At Apple and Amazon, it is rather their sales platforms (the App Store on the iPhone and iPad and the e-commerce site for Amazon) that are in the crosshairs of representatives, because the two companies are both hosts and tradespeople.
Several investigations are in progress at the level of the federal authorities and also of the States on the practices of "GAFA" in terms of competition or data management.
© 2020 AFP