In the days leading up to another expected confrontation between Big Tech leaders and ruling Congressional members, two of the three participating companies took remedial measures to lower the temperature.
Facebook Inc. FB,
denigrated by lawyers and privacy advocates as a form of information misinformation about vaccines, he drew a face last week: It is going to remove fake content from the platforms digital as they direct 50 million people to information on how and where to get the vaccine.
In the meantime, Alphabet Inc. GOOGL,
GOOG,
he said he will reduce the service fee he collects to 15% from 30% on the first $ 1 million that developers earn from their Play Store app marketplace. (In November, Apple Inc. AAPL,
criticized for the same use, they introduced a new Small Business Program that reduced the App Store’s commission rate to 15% for developers earning up to $ 1 million per calendar year in revenue net of app sales and in-app purchases.)
Earlier in March, Google said it would not develop new advertising tools that monitor users across their web browsing. The previous practice of monitoring individuals has come under increasing criticism from privacy advocates and scrutiny from regulators. The action has raised concerns for Justice Department analysts, who are urging advertising industry executives to push the move to smaller competitors, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The shift in action reinforces growing concern – perhaps even fear for the first time – about the steps federal lawyers will take to address concerns about trustworthiness.
Meanwhile, Facebook and Google have put up ads in the DC area to make their case, says one critic. “They’ve written the sound wheelhouse – you could say they augmented the misinformation through Facebook ads on buses about its support for regulation, or Facebook and Google ads about cable news shows like‘ Morning Joe ‘and popular tech newsletters, ”Luther Lowe, senior vice president of public policy and government affairs at Yelp Inc. YELP,
MarketWatch reported.
A tremendous trifecta of hearings, legislation and anti-tech professionals like Columbia University law professor Tim Wu to the Biden administration have prompted some of the targeted companies to downplay their business strategies and deal critically with criticism. Facebook, Google, and Twitter Inc. CEOs TWTR,
they should expect tongue lashing Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on misinformation online.
“There is more fear after years of avoiding Washington,” Derek Horstmeyer, a professor of finance at George Mason University Business School, told MarketWatch. “There is more political will to follow this, and the American people – especially Republicans – are angry about the power of these four companies over our lives.”
Thursday’s hearing, the latest in a series of high-profile demonstrations for lawmakers to dismantle the tech industry’s practices and recommend legislative remedies, comes as the Department Justice and Federal Trade Commission continue investigations against anti-trust and Biden administration builds up their team of industry voice critics such as Wu and his academic colleague Lina Khan, who are expected to nominated to the FTC.
Lawyers have been embracing Big Tech for years, but trust experts are predicting a tougher tone this week with Democrats taking control of the legislative branch. “The country now sees a more reasonable prospect of going through legislation, compared to the last four years, [and] lawyers will have the opportunity to investigate the executives, ”says Jennifer Lee.
The recent shift in trends by Google and Facebook shows that big tech companies are “responding to a sense of popularity,” Nii Ahene, chief strategy officer at search engine marketing company Tinuiti, told MarketWatch. “People and politicians are more aware of the power of these platforms, and the impact they have on our lives. It’s much more visible in 2021 than it was in 2018, 2016, 2013. We spend a ton of time on these platforms through smartphones. This is an unregulated place. “
Google’s best efforts may have been undermined, however, by the discovery of more than 300 pages of confidential documents, to no avail from the initial Google investigation during the Obama administration. that some trusted experts call “Pentagon Antitrust Papers.” Politico first reported on the documents.
The memos highlight how Washington regulators misread the negative influence of Google and others, and continue to dominate the economy, according to some technical observers. Among their erroneous conclusions: they saw only “limited growth potential” in ads that track users across the web, which has reached a baseline of $ 182.5 billion per year. -A alphabet in annual income; they assumed that consumers would still rely on PCs to seek information rather than the 62% of queries that now occur on mobile phones and tablets, where Google is the market leader; and they believed Microsoft Corp. MSFT,
Mozilla and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN,
offers Google active competition in the market for the software that runs smartphones, a market controlled by Google and Apple.
“It was very difficult to know that this was going to happen, to see it happen, and then to see unsustainable damage to Yelp,” Lowe said.
Republican Senators Mike Lee (Utah), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) And Josh Hawley (Mo.) have reportedly sent a letter to Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.) For a full hearing based on the papers.
As the heat pushes on Google and Facebook, Apple and Amazon have maintained low images and avoided the full political climate.
“Apple doesn’t cause the same kind of public concern that Facebook and Google do because it doesn’t spread our lives every day,” Anti-trust lawyer Paul Swanson told MarketWatch . “What worries me is the lack of attention on Amazon. They have created and competed with many markets, and it is difficult to understand how these markets can be run fairly. ”
“Apple and Amazon are big questions for consumers that regulators and lawyers still don’t have,” he said.