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US presidential candidate proposed to split the business of Amazon, Google and Facebook to stimulate competition



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Senator Elizabeth Warren, who plans to participate in the US presidential election, presented a detailed plan for dividing the business of Amazon, Google and Facebook. In her opinion, these IT giants have become too large and possess such resources that damage the American economy and put democratic values ​​at risk.
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What is the meaning of claims to the IT giants


A Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren was not the first to say that the largest Silicon Valley companies are trying to replace the government in some areas. However, her case is special - when a senator who will participate in the 2020 elections speaks about such problems is a completely different matter.

The essence of the claims of Warren is this - the senator believes that some areas of the IT industry and services have become as important and necessary as utilities. Both electricity and water are necessary for the survival of modern man and should be available at adequate prices, which are regulated by the state. At the same time, in spite of their goal to make their services equally important - Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, for example, had previously stated this - companies do not want the same serious regulation by the state.

The essence of the new proposals


According to the proposed regulation, companies will be considered to be offering services that are comparable in importance to utilities if their annual revenues exceed $ 25 billion. Such organizations will have to allocate all business lines that use their own business platform for promotion to independent companies, they will not be allowed to exchange data users, and also to support fair competition of the platform participants. Regulation may affect smaller IT platforms, but they will not necessarily sell business lines that use their own infrastructure.

For example, for Alphabet, Google is both a search engine and an advertising exchange. Each of these areas can be classified as “platform utilities” (a service comparable in importance to utilities), which means that they need to be separated from other products and services belonging to the holding. Smaller competitors of Google services have repeatedly complained that the company lowers them in its search results.

Senator Warren’s proposals have not yet spelled out which department will monitor the implementation of the new rules, but it is said that it will be possible to sue the companies for breaking them - both government officials and ordinary citizens can do it. Fines can be up to 5% of the company's annual revenue.

Warren also identified a number of recent mergers and acquisitions in relation to which the separation rule can be applied. These included Amazon’s purchase of the Whole Foods supermarket chain, Facebook’s takeover of WhatsApp and Instagram, Google deals on Waze, Nest and DoubleClick

Regulatory perspectives


Analysts call Senator Warren's proposals the starting point in the discussion about the emergence of monopolies in some markets. In the course of this discussion, many issues have to be resolved, for example, such as in the past, many services that users of IT companies today receive for free cost them money. Dividing companies only because they are big will not help consumers; on the contrary, they will face inconvenience and possibly financial costs, said Rob Atkinson, president of Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in a conversation with Bloomberg.

To critics, Warren replies that he is not trying to create a “socialist version of the Internet,” but cares about users. In her mind, for consumers, Google’s search engine or Amazon’s marketplace should look the same, but behind the scenes the government will stimulate competition and innovation, which should solve “many problems”.

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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/443994/

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