 REP. JERRY NADLER: Mr. Zuckerberg, you have written that Facebook can likely always just buy any competitive startups. In fact, on a day Facebook bought Instagram, which you described as a threat. You wrote, quote, "One thing about startups is you can open a [INAUDIBLE],"," close quote. Mr. Zuckerberg, you are referring to companies like Instagram in that quote, weren't you? MARK ZUCKERBERG: Congressman, I don't have the exact document in front of me. But I've always been clear that we viewed it Instagram both as a competitor and as a compliment to our services. In the growing space around after smartphone start getting big, and that they competed with us in the space of mobile cameras, and mobile photo sharing, but at the time almost no one thought of them as a general social network. And people didn't think of them as competing with us and that space. REP. JERRY NADLER: Facebook store Instagram is a threat that could potentially siphon business away from Facebook. And so rather than compete with it, Facebook put it. This is exactly the type of anticompetitive acquisition that the anti-trust laws were designed to prevent. This should never have happened in the first place. It should never have been permitted to happen, and it cannot happen again. REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: So let me ask you, Mr. Bezos. Does Amazon ever access and use third party seller data when making business decisions? And just a yes or no will suffice, sir. JEFF BEZOS: I can't answer that question yes or no. What I can tell you is we have a policy against using seller specific data to aid our private label business. But I can't guarantee you that that policy has never been violated. REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: Mr. Bezos, you're probably aware that an April 2020 report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that your company does access data on third party sellers both by reviewing data on popular individual sellers and products and by creating tiny product categories that allowed your company to categorically access detailed seller information in a supposedly aggregate category. Do you deny that? JEFF BEZOS: And we continue to look into that very carefully. I'm not yet satisfied that we've gotten to the bottom of it, and we're going to keep looking at it. We do have certain safeguards in place. We train people on the policy. We expect people to follow that path through the same we would any other. It's a voluntary policy as far as I'm aware no other retailer limits their use of data at all. REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: There's no actual enforcement of that policy. So it's voluntary, and there's no actual enforcement. So maybe that answers my-- JEFF BEZOS: Sorry. No, I think I may have misspoke. I'm trying to say that Amazon's-- the fact that we have such a policy is voluntary. I think no other retailer even has such a policy. Enforcement of that policy, we would treat that like any internal policy. And if we found that someone violated it, we would take action against them. REP HANK JOHNSON: Throughout our investigation, we've heard concerns that rules governing the App Store review process are not available to app developers. The rules are made up as you go. They are arbitrarily interpreted and enforced and are subject to change whenever Apple sees fit to change. Mr. Cook does Apple not treat all app developers equally? TIM COOK: Sir we treat every developer the same. We have open and transparent rules. It's a rigorous process. Because we care so deeply about privacy and security and quality, we do look at every out before it goes on. But those rules apply evenly to everyone. And as you can tell by going off from-- REP HANK JOHNSON: Some developers are favored over others though. Isn't that correct? TIM COOK: That is not correct. REP. DAVID CICILLINE: Emails show that over a decade ago, Google started to fear competition from certain web sites, web pages that could divert search traffic and revenue from Google. These documents show that Google's staff discuss the proliferating threat is how it was described, that these web pages posed to Google. Any traffic loss to other sites was a loss in revenue. One of Google's memos observed that certain web sites were getting and I quote too much traffic. So Google decides to put an end to that. Mr. Picahi, you've been in Google since 2004. Were you involved in these discussions about the threat from vertical search? SUNDAR PICHAI: Congressman, without knowing the specifics, I'm not fully clear of the context. But definitely, when we look at vertical search, it validates the competition we see. For example, when users come looking to shop online, independent studies show that over 55% of products searches originate with Amazon. And over 70% originate for the major e-commerce companies. In the few categories which are commercial in nature, we see vigorous competition be it travel, be real estate, and we are working hard-- REP. DAVID CICILLINE: Let me ask very specifically as you chat. The evidence that we collected shows that Google pursued a multipronged attack. First Google began to steal other web pages content. For example, in 2010, Google stole restaurant reviews from Yelp to bootstrap its own rival local search business. Mr. Pichai, do you know how Google responded when Yelp asked you to stop stealing their reviews? Well, I'll tell you. Our investigation shows that Google's response was to threaten to delist Yelp entirely. In other words, the choice Google gave Yelp was let us steal your content or effectively disappear from the web. 

Tech’s biggest CEOs grilled on anticompetitive business practices

Tech

Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai, and Cook testified remotely.

Tech CEOs get grilled by Congress

Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Tim Cook testified in Congress remotely.
