the Heads of the big four tech giants – Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google appeared before us lawmakers Wednesday, July 29, to protect your company from accusations of abusing their power. It wasn’t pretty – at least, during the hearings touched on several topics, frankly unpleasant for the titans of American high-tech market.
strangled Like Facebook Instagram
Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, it is a known fact. But what was the motivation of buying young and actively developing company a market leader? This topic was raised a Democrat Jerry Nadler.
the Argument in favor of the Facebook motives were not so pure and innocent, was the correspondence between the chief Executive officer mark Zuckerberg and chief financial officer David Ebersman.
In a letter to Zuckerberg commented: “these companies are just emerging, but established networks, brands are already significant, and if they grow to a larger scale, they can be very destructive for us… I’m curious, do you think we should do one or two of them.”
this Ebersman directly asked whether Zuckerberg hopes thus “to neutralize a potential competitor.” Mark Zuckerberg said that he hopes to improve services Facebook, however, additional competitors of the company, too, to anything. However, in his next letter, he added: “I don’t mean that we will buy them to prevent their competition with us in any way.”
At the hearing, Zuckerberg said that several international regulators, including the Federal trade Commission investigated the takeover at the time and decided not to block it. Now, however, the deal does not seem so transparent, at least for American legislators.
New technology conservatives do not like
Some Republicans made accusations in anticonservative bias in social networks. Republican Jim Sensenbrenner asked Mark Zuckerberg why Twitter has removed the post of the US President’s son Donald trump Jr., in which they discussed the effectiveness of the drug hydroxychloroquine.
mark Zuckerberg emphasized that Facebook does not belong to Twitter, but he added that Facebook indeed deleted the posts that could be directly harmful to humans. However, what rules defines “harm” Zuckerberg said.
Another Republican Jim Jordan have suggested that Google may adjust its algorithm to help the presidential campaign of Joe Biden.
“Can you assure us that you are not going to silence conservatives, and you are not going to adjust their algorithms in favor of Joe Biden?”asked Jordan.
“You have my word. It’s always been, and we will continue to remain neutral,” – said the Executive Director of Google Sundar Pichai.
Also, several times it was suggested that social networks build algorithms which suppress conservative channels. However, the leaders of the technological market is flatly deny everything.
Google was accused of collaborating with China
Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz said that Google cooperates with Chinese universities that take “millions and millions of dollars from the Chinese military.” The politician noted that investor Peter Thiel has previously accused the company of “treason.”
Sundar Pichai denied that his company was opposed to American interests. “We do not work with the Chinese military, is absolutely false. What we do in China, compared to our peers, is very very limited in nature. Our work in China is limited to a handful of people working on projects with open source,” he said.
Republican Greg Stub also asked four bosses the question: “do You believe that the Chinese government steals technology from American companies?”. The answers are different, but only mark Zuckerberg openly accused China.
Apple Executive Tim cook said: “I don’t know of specific cases where the Chinese government was stealing from us”.
Sundar Pichai said: “I don’t know any reliable information about what China stole from Google”.
mark Zuckerberg said, “I think it is well documented that the Chinese government steals technology from American companies.”
With him in General, I agree, the Director of Amazon Jeff Bezos. He said, “I haven’t seen this personally, but have heard many reports about this.”
