The CEOs of the four great technology companies in the United States will appear electronically this Wednesday before a commission of the United States Congress that will examine their possible monopolistic and anti-competitive practices.
The appearance will begin at 18:00 Spanish peninsular time. During their speeches, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Sundar Pichai (Alphabet), Tim Cook (Apple) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) will have to answer questions posed by US Congressmen. Except for Bezos, the rest of the CEOs have already gone to Congress to submit to similar appearances.
Although the focus will be on what the executives, who lead several of the world’s most highly listed companies, can say, the focus will also be on the Federal Reserve meeting, which meets between today and tomorrow and will communicate its decision on monetary policy just two hours after the appearance of Congress begins.
The main concerns of US regulators and deputies regarding Apple and Amazon focus on their dual role, owning platforms used by millions of customers and, at the same time, participants in those same markets.
In this sense, the European Commission is investigating Apple after a complaint by Spotify about the alleged abusive conditions imposed by it in order to benefit its Apple Music service, which competes directly with the Swedish firm. In addition, Brussels is also investigating Amazon’s role regarding its vendor and customer data and how it would have used it to launch its own products.
On his side, concerns regarding the other two big tech companies focus both on their predominant role in the advertising business, common to Facebook and Alphabet, and on Facebook’s role in disinformation campaigns that could affect US politics. . The country holds presidential elections in November.
