MarketWatch: Senate panel approves antitrust bill targeting Apple, Google and Amazon
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday overwhelmingly passed antitrust legislation barring tech’s biggest platforms from favoring their products and services over competitors, taking aim at Apple Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act — which, for example, would prohibit Apple, Google, and Amazon from ranking their apps higher than rivals’ on their own mobile app stores — passed 16-6 in a bipartisan vote that amounts to an early victory for proponents of strict Big Tech regulation. The bill faces the steeper challenge of getting 60 senators to support it in its next legislative step.
“In recent years, Big Tech has taken on a larger and larger role in determining what Americans buy, hear, see and say online,” the bill’s co-author, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement. Lawmakers amended the bill Thursday, including a new provision designed to include large foreign-owned tech platforms such as the popular TikTok app owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd.
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“Despite millions of lobbying dollars by monopolists spent to influence lawmakers, a bipartisan group of Senators just stated with a clear voice that Big Tech is too powerful,” Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said in a statement.