Should Technology Companies be Held to a Higher Standard?

On July 29, 2020, the United States Congress’ House Committee on Judiciary will conduct a hearing titled “ Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google” under the broader Antitrust Investigation of the Rise and Use of Market Power Online and the Adequacy of Existing Antitrust Laws and Current Enforcement Levels. In this virtual hearing, Chief Executive Officers (CEO) of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are expected to answer questions raised by the House Committee’s Democractic and Republican members. In addition to asking questions, it is expected that House Committee members will discuss Freedom of Speech, censorship, breaking large technology companies along with the usual jabs at each other.

In my previous posts, What Questions Do You Have For Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook? and What Questions Do You Have For Sundar Pichai of Google?, I provided a list of possible questions that could be asked so that the public is aware of what is going on. In this post, I am going to provide some questions that should be asked from these technology titans as well.

Some Questions

1. How many companies has your company (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) acquired that were in direct competition with your company?
2. What did your company (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) do with the existing products, processes, people, services and technologies of the companies that you acquired?
3. Can your company (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) provide a list of companies that still exist under your umbrella after acquisition?
4. What procedures do you have in place to strike a balance between anti-poaching and people’s right to apply to any job that they want?
5. What is your company’s (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) business relationships with each other?
6. What user information do your companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) share with federal, state and local governments?
7. What antitrust laws should be in the books for your company (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google)?
8. As companies move into your cloud enviroments, what specific steps is your company (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) taking to safeguard against using your client’s cloud data for your own competitive advantage?
9. What is your company (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) doing to safeguard against internal and external data breaches for the purpose of corporate espionage?
10. As Artificial Intelligence (AI), takes over almost every industry, what steps is your company (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) taking to not be a monoply in this area?
11. Would your company (Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google) take an oath aganist misuse of data?

So, what questions do you have for Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google?

Here are some of my comments as the hearing continues:

Originally published at http://arsalankhan.com on July 29, 2020.