WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th July, 2020) The four biggest high tech communications giants are likely to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis even more wealthy and dominant in the US economy than they were before, US House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline said on Wednesday.
"In the light of COVID-19, they are likely to be more powerful and wealthy than ever before," Cicilline said at the start of a hearings where CEOs Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Google, Tim Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook all testified. "It is possible our economy will emerge from this crisis even more consolidated than before."
Cicilline said any single action by one of these four companies can affect hundreds of millions of Americans and there was no escape from their dominance.
"The dominant platforms have wielded their power in destructive and harmful ways in order to expand. They discourage entrepreneurship, degrade quality and destroy jobs. They have too much power. Their dominance is killing the small businesses [and] entrepreneurship in America," Cicilline said.
Amazon now captured 70 percent of all online marketplace sales and its market evaluation recently hit $1.5 trillion while Facebook had become the world's largest provider of social media making a $18 billion profit last year, Cicilline said.
Google enjoyed a billion users and 90 percent of online searches, Cicilline added.
