End of the year clap on a landslide victory for Gafam in the United States.
The vast expenditure law for 2023, presented Tuesday, December 20 before Congress, was an opportunity to prove the firepower of the lobbying of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.
This text, which provides for the possibility of incurring 1,700 billion dollars in public spending next year, has caused a lot of ink to flow for what it contains.
He mentions, in particular, a ban on downloading TikTok for all government agents, an envelope of 44.9 billion additional dollars to help Ukraine, measures to make it more difficult to violently challenge election results or even additional funds to cope with the increase in natural disasters linked to global warming.
Over $100 million spent
But what is not there is just as revealing.
And one of the major absentees from this “omnibus” law (which cover subjects that are often unrelated to each other) is an early Christmas present for American Big Tech.
Two bills representing, according to the Bloomberg channel, “the largest legislative effort in 30 years” to control the power of the giants of Silicon Valley have disappeared.
These texts, although officially supported by the White House and executives of the Democratic and Republican parties, planned to prevent Gafam from promoting their own services on their site - like Google which would highlight Gmail when you do a search. for messaging services - and to force Google or Apple to open their iPhone and Android to application stores other than their own.
This summer again, it seemed that these bills had every chance of passing before Congress despite already significant lobbying, underlines the Wall Street Journal.
But increased pressure - including from Tim Cook or Sundar Pinchai (CEO of Apple and Google) himself - finally allowed Big Tech to win this battle of epic proportions, notes the Washington Post.
For the story of this first-class legislative burial is one of an unprecedented effort by some of the world's most powerful corporations to, for once, coordinate rather than shoot each other in the leg in order to defeat "legislation that appeared to them as existential threats,” notes Bloomberg.
In one year, these behemoths have spent more than 100 million dollars in targeted advertising, in the promotion of oriented academic work, or in various and varied gifts to achieve their end, detailed the Wall Street Journal.
sons of ads
A lightning offensive was notably carried out in the spring of 2022, a few months before the mid-term elections.
“In several states where Democratic candidates were in trouble, advertisements highlighting the dangers of these reforms flooded the television networks.
They have achieved their goal: several candidates have asked their parties not to pass these laws before the November election”, underlines Bloomberg.
Gafam lobbyists also knew how to choose their words according to the political color of their interlocutors.
To Democrats, they claimed these laws would destroy privacy and hurt minorities especially, while Republicans were treated to a verse about the dangers to free speech online if they were prevented from promoting the best tools. (i.e. their own) to protect this sacrosanct First Amendment, says Bloomberg.
Dozens of small entrepreneurs - backed by Amazon and Google - traveled to Washington in March to support the cause of Big Tech, whose solutions would be essential to the development of their online businesses.
Some of these Gafam-funded SME associations even claimed to speak on behalf of members who had, in fact, never heard of them, the CNBC channel discovered.
Google also brandished the threat from Beijing to scare elected officials.
The Internet giant “has mobilized its network of former members of Homeland Security” to explain that any legislative obstacles to the activities of American multinationals would be a gift to Chinese competitors who do not have to comply with these kinds of regulations. , says Bloomberg.
“We have been constantly seeing advertisements for months, and receiving hundreds of calls and emails,” acknowledged Democrat Chris Coons, interviewed by the economic channel.
This close friend of President Joe Biden even received a personal visit from the CEOs of Google and Apple, specifies the Washington Post.
Big Tech or Too Big Tech?
Faced with this show of force, the camp of supporters of these regulations could hardly make the weight.
A coalition of smaller tech companies – including search engine DuckDuckGo, secure alternative to Gmail Proton and business review site Yelp – had formed to support these reforms.
They also bought advertisements and multiplied contacts with elected officials.
But in this battle, Goliath was really too strong for those lobbying Davids.
Thus, over the first six months of 2022, the support groups for these “anti-Big Tech” bills spent $193,000 to broadcast advertisements, a far cry from the $36.4 million mobilized by Gafam on this same period, calculated the Wall Street Journal.
The Big Tech giants were in a hurry to derail the regulation offensive.
As of January 1, 2023, a new Congress - whose members were elected in the November midterm elections - will take office.
“Much more divided, it risks not succeeding in agreeing on major bipartisan texts”, underlines the Wall Street Journal.
Proponents of limiting the powers of the Gafam were to throw their forces into battle before the end of the year.
This is why Google, Apple and the others have pulled out all the stops. By winning this round, they hope to have won the war.
The summary of the
France 24 week invites you to come back to the news that marked the week
I subscribe
Take international news everywhere with you!
Download the France 24 app