Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are Testifying Before Congress Virtually

Lined up in little boxes on a giant TV mounted on the wall, the four executives all raised their right hands at the same time to be sworn in, mumbling their agreement at the same time. Due to the pandemic, the CEOs were attending remotely, over a competitor’s video chat app, Webex. Instead of being stuck at a table with nothing but water, notepads and a flank of video cameras around them, they were able to stream from their home bases.

Fittingly, even CEOs of the world’s most powerful technology company were not immune to teleconferencing issues. During their opening statements, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, and especially Mark Zuckerberg, all suffered from slight audio delays that caused their words to be out of sync with their lips. The audio quality was clear, and the video quality high enough to see their faces clearly most of the time.

Inside the hearing, where many lawmakers and media were attending in person, with masks and social distancing, the CEOs appeared on multiple screens. The largest was on the back wall, under the U.S. eagle seal, sandwiched between two clocks counting down each speaker’s time limit.

After Bezos read part of his opening statement, the people behind the scenes figured out how to make a single speaker fill the screen so it was less like watching sentient postage stamps talk. Cook, who recently did an Apple product announcement entirely over video, seemed the most at home in the medium, speaking confidently and warmly to the camera for his intro.

When it was not their turn to talk the executives passed the time doing what normal people do on long video calls: sipped water and snacked.

David N. Cicilline, chairman of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, used his first round of questioning of Big Tech CEOs to call out Google’s dominance in search and how much it controls basic navigation of the Internet.

Cicilline’s decision to direct his first questions to Google CEO Sundar Pichai was a surprise, as many were expecting the leader of the antitrust investigation to try to pin down Bezos during his first appearance in Congress.

Cicilline’s questioning could cast fresh light on long-running tensions between companies and the search giant. Google has faced antitrust scrutiny from regulators in both the United States and Europe. The Washington Post has previously reported that the Justice Department could bring antitrust charges against the company as early as this summer.

Cicilline told Pichai he has heard from many small businesses that Google “steals content” from smaller websites, to keep people on Google’s own sites.

“I disagree with the characterization of that statement,” Pichai said.

Cicilline passionately laid out concerns that Google has created a “walled garden” by cribbing information from other’s sites and putting it into its own products to capture even more Web traffic, and therefore making more money from ads.

“We have always focused on providing users the most relevant information,” Pichai said.

Cicilline concluded his questioning of Pichai with a summary of his concerns, casting doubt that Pichai’s responses budged his opinion at all.

“The evidence seems very clear to me: As Google became the gateway to the Internet, it began to abuse its power,” Cicilline said. “It used its surveillance over Web traffic to begin to identify competitive threats and crush them. It has dampened innovation and new business growth, and it has dramatically increased the price of accessing users on the Internet, virtually ensuring that any business that wants to be found on the Web must pay Google a tax.”

Tim Cook’s opening statement largely followed the testimony that he posted Tuesday night. According to Cook, Apple is no a monopoly. Google, in fact, owns the dominant operating system around the world, and that’s Android.

Cook took credit for inspiring and growing the massive market for mobile software. He even used the “It just works” line to describe Apple products.

But Cook ignored what everyone knows: Apple’s is dominant in a couple of important ways. Its App Store is crucial for developers, forcing them to go by Apple’s rules and, until recently, stay mum about the company’s aggressive encroachment on their businesses. And Apple locks in its customers. Its business strategy is designed to make the use of alternatives painful. Anyone who’s ever bought an Apple product has experienced this.

The first two questions went to Google and Facebook. It’s unclear how much Apple will be targeted with questions during the hearing.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai kicked off his prepared testimony by going slightly off-script. He offered a word of remembrance for the late congressman John Lewis, the civil rights leader and longtime lawmaker who died this month.

The Big Tech hearing was rescheduled so legislators could attend Lewis’s memorial services Monday.

Pichai, the soft-spoken CEO of Google and its parent company, Alphabet, calmly walked through his personal story of growing up in India and being impressed and inspired by easily accessible computers when he moved to the United States for graduate school.

He emphasized that Google is focused on giving people access to technology, to services that can give individuals and small businesses a leg up.

“Google aims to build products that increase access to opportunity for everyone,” Pichai said.

Google is being investigated not just by the federal government but also by a coalition of states and occasionally by the European Union for its tremendous size and dominant position in digital advertising and Web search. Lawmakers are increasingly focusing on what Google’s size means for its competitors, sidestepping Google’s argument that it is beneficial for users

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos noted in his opening statement that consumers press Amazon to do what’s best for them as he rebuts lawmaker claims that the company’s clout stifles competition.

“Customer obsession has driven our success, and I take it as an article of faith,” Bezos said as he read from his opening statement. “The customers notice when you do the right thing. You earn trust slowly over time by doing hard things well, delivering on time, offering everyday low prices, making promises and keeping them, and making principled decisions even when they are unpopular.”

(Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Sitting in an office, wearing a tie and jacket, Bezos went on to wrap his success, and Amazon’s, in the promise of American opportunity. He talked about Amazon’s earliest days, when he dreamed about how “one day we might afford a forklift.” And he crowed about how Amazon now offers 1.7 million small and medium-size businesses the opportunity to sell their goods on Amazon.

“With all of our faults and problems, the rest of the world would love even the tiniest sip of the elixir we have here in the U.S.,” Bezos said.

It did not take long for Republican lawmakers to change the focus to alleged bias against conservatives, an accusation that politicians and conservative pundits have been lobbing at the tech companies for years without convincing evidence.

“I’ll cut right to the chase: Big tech is out to get conservatives,” Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), the Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, said in his opening remarks.

Jordan pointed to claims that Google was censoring Breitbart and other conservative news sites and that Amazon video streaming company Twitch suspended President Trump’s account. In fact, Twitch temporarily suspended the Trump 2020 campaign’s account for violating its policies on hateful conduct. The account has since been restored.

Jordan noted he invited Twitter to join the hearing, which would presumably have made the hearing’s focus even more centered on alleged conservative bias. Twitter, which is significantly smaller than the other companies, was not invited to the meeting by Democrats leading the panel. Twitter has so far labeled five of Trump’s tweets with warning labels for running up against its rules. On Tuesday, it suspended Donald Trump Jr. for tweeting a misleading video with misinformation about a coronavirus treatment. Trump Jr. was required to delete the tweet.

“If it doesn’t end, there have to be consequences,” Jordan said, signaling regulation could be coming to the industry.

Democrats have worried that such accusations would distract from antitrust issues at today’s hearing. Partisan fighting broke out over Jordan’s attempt to have Mike Johnson, the top Republican on the Constitution subcommittee, participate in the proceedings. He does not sit on the antitrust panel so Democratic lawmakers objected, sparking a back and forth between the two parties. Cicilline had to bring down his gavel to call order to the room.

F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the subcommittee, raised the issue in his own testimony minutes before Jordan, signaling this could be a line of questioning for many members on the committee.

“Conservatives are consumers too, and they need the protection of antitrust laws,” he said.