Google's Search Dominance Deserves Hot-Seat Scrutiny
As Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai faces Congress with the rest of Big Tech, there’s a lot riding on what he says.
Google’s search engine accounts for more than 80% of Alphabet’s earnings, and it’s not hard to see why.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergThe main event has arrived. On Wednesday, and for the first time as a group, the CEOs of four of the biggest technology companies — Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. — will go before a U.S. House subcommittee to address allegations of monopolistic practices and abusing the power of their platforms to crush or stifle competitors.
Each of the giants is vulnerable in its own way. Apple, for instance, has come under increasing scrutiny for the onerous terms of its App Store, which has become a crucial gateway for developers to reach smartphone users; look for CEO Tim Cook to defend the company’s fee structure and its requirements to use Apple’s payment system. Count on Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to extol the benefits of its vast e-commerce operations amid a pandemic as he faces questions on whether the company has used third-party seller data to develop its own competing products. And watch for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to espouse his company’s ability to counteract the growing power of Chinese internet apps such as ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, tempering critics who say the company is too dominant in the social media category.