WASHINGTON: Google and Facebook took the sharpest jabs for alleged abuse of their market power from Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday in a much-anticipated congressional hearing with four of America’s most prominent tech CEOs in the hot seat.
Facebook Inc’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon.com Inc’s Jeff Bezos, Alphabet Inc-owned Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple Inc’s Tim Cook – whose companies have a combined market value of about $5 trillion – parried a range of accusations from lawmakers via videoconference before the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel.
Though it was Bezos’ first congressional testimony, he appeared the least fazed by his grilling. Cook drew fewer barbed questions than Bezos, but handled them efficiently while Zuckerberg took the most damage, stumbling a few times when confronted with internal emails.
Pichai took the most heat from conservatives and he looked the worse for it, as he repeatedly told lawmakers he would be happy to look in to various situations and get back to them.
Unfortunately, the Big Tech hearing was decidedly low-tech. Bezos escaped questioning for about 90 minutes in what may have been a