The US House of Representatives witnessed a historic hearing as Democrats and Republicans launched various accusations against the practices of the four major and most important technology companies in the United States and the world, Google (Amazon), Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, or as they know it (Gava) .
The hearing comes after the investigations conducted by the Ministry of Justice and continued for more than a year, the policies of these monopoly companies, mainly at the request of the Anti-Monopoly Committee of the Judicial Committee in the House of Representatives. The investigations examined 1.3 million documents and took hundreds of hours of secret and closed hearings and briefings.
The anti-monopoly committee in Congress had requested the appearance of the heads of the four major technology companies to discuss their great benefit from the pandemic of the emerging epidemic of Corona, which some members described as dangerous because they had "a lot of influence."
In this unprecedented scene before the House Judicial Committee, Tim Cook of Apple, Jeff Bezos from Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Google participated in the session millions of people around the world watched.
We are a powerhouse of America
The four companies control the way most of the inhabitants of the planet communicate and control the way they learn, work and market, and Amazon has 150 million subscribers in its services, and it employs a million people around the world, while Apple has a market value of more than $ 1.6 trillion and sold two billion iPhones around the world.
And 3 billion people around the world participate in the Facebook application, through which the company controls a quarter of the electronic advertising market in the world, while Google uses 90% of searches on the Internet.
Americans have become more dependent on these companies after the outbreak of the Coronavirus, having to stay home, and closing businesses, factories, schools, and universities.
The corporate chiefs played the chord of American nationalism and patriotism by asserting that their companies are American companies and a success story of the American democratic experiment model that encourages success, innovation, expansion and growth.
"We believe in certain values, which are democracy, competition, inclusiveness and the freedom of expression on which the American economy is based, and there are no guarantees that our values will prevail. China, for example," said Zuckerberg, Facebook president of Facebook. , She builds her own version of the Internet on very different ideas, and passes this vision on to other countries. "
For his part, President of Google Sander Bishay company pointed out his company's investments in areas that enhance America's strength, especially in the field of artificial intelligence or driverless cars.
The heads of the four companies also focused on creating hundreds of thousands of jobs inside the United States and millions of jobs outside.
Democratic and republican attack
The four companies are accused of following monopolistic policies that allow them to eliminate any competition, whether through legal practices or illegal methods aimed at expanding and gaining more strength.
Democrats pressed corporate heads on competition issues, their monopolization of the market, and their removal of small or medium-sized companies from the market, while Republicans were more concerned about marginalizing tech companies' conservative views on social media.
Although the Congress session was devoted to discussing issues of profiting from the Corona virus and the monopoly of major technology companies, Republicans focused on accusing technology companies of being biased against conservatives.
"Big companies are trying to clamp down on conservative voices and get them out of the arena of competition," Rep. Jim Jordan, a close associate of President Trump, said in his opening speech. Jordan read the headlines of several newspaper articles claiming that voices with conservative inclinations have been suppressed or censored on Facebook and Google.
"We all think that the free market is a good thing, and we think the competition is wonderful. We love the fact that these are American companies. But what is not wonderful is to impose a control on the conservatives and try to influence the elections," said Jordan.
On the other hand, the president of the Facebook company, Zuckerberg, confirmed that his company was able to detect foreign attempts to interfere in the American elections before it was exposed by the American government agencies themselves.
While the President of Google Company stressed that "his company has not and will not try to influence the American elections."
And the companies defended themselves by adopting the concepts of innovation, innovation and continuous success, which it considered a success of the American model of freedom and creativity.
Trump enters
Although the session was restricted to members of Congress and corporate heads, President Trump, through his favorite platform Twitter, interfered in the debate.
Trump criticized Amazon and threatened to take action against it, he wrote, "If Congress does not achieve equity with large technology companies, which should have happened years ago, I will do so with executive orders."
Trump has a estrangement relationship between Trump and Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, who also owns the Washington Post, which Trump believes is targeting him with unrelenting criticism.