Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon to testify in antitrust hearing

Executives from Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Alphabet’s Google will testify before a House of Representatives congressional committee next week in a hearing to discuss the tremendous market power wielded by online platforms.

In a statement on Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee said witnesses would include: Adam Cohen, director of economic policy at Google; Nate Sutton, associate general counsel for regulation at Amazon; Facebook’s Matt Perault, head of global policy development and Apple vice president for corporate law Kyle Andeer.

There is a lot of concern about the power these platforms have, and with good reason. I’m not convinced that the government, any government, has the wherewithal to actually understand the technology that has ultimately raised these concerns though—that creates an even bigger problem. Of all the companies called to testify, it seems that Apple is in the safest position, partly because of its stance on security and privacy, and they don’t have the social networking platform that the others have.