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The Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives recently released a comprehensive series of bills designed to curb the excesses of Big Tech. One of them, the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, addresses one of the biggest, most obvious problems among the largest tech companies: that they use their deep pockets to buy up services and companies which might have one day competed with them.
We’ve said before that increased scrutiny of mergers and acquisitions is the first step in addressing the lack of competition for Big Tech. Restraining internet giants’ power to squash new competitors can help new services and platforms arise, including ones that are not based on a surveillance business model. It would also encourage those giants to innovate and offer better services, rather than relying on being the only game in town.
Big Tech’s acquisitiveness is well-known and has been on the rise. Analysis of Apple’s finances, for example, revealed that over the last 6 years, the company was buying a new company every three to four weeks. Not only do these sales keep startups from ever competing with incumbent powers, they also bring more data under the control of companies that already have too much information on us. This is especially true when one of the draws of a startup’s service was that it provided an alternative to Big Tech’s offering, as we saw when Google bought Fitbit.
The acquisition practices of the largest tech firms have distorted the marketplace. Mergers and acquisitions are now seen as a primary driving force to securing initial investment to launch a s
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Read the original article: Congress Wants to Put the Brakes on Runaway Acquisitions by Big Tech