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Five and a half hours of testimony with four of the world’s top hard CEOs. Lots of screaming. The richest guy on the planet forgot to reactivate the sound before starting a video call.
What did they tell us at the Big Tech CEO hearing on Wednesday?
Almost nothing.
But fortunately for us, even though much of the House Antitrust Subcommittee was distracted by online conspiracy theories and inconsistent problems, it still made much of the paintings smart and dirty over the next year, collecting more than a million documents from Apple. and Google in its antitrust investigation opposed to companies. These documents are a much larger antitrust case opposed to the 4 tech giants than anything THE CEOs have said at the hearing.
The multitude of documents, released Wednesday night after the hearing ended, provides juicy important points, such as how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was looking to buy Instagram at least one component to weigh a competitive developing risk and how Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos negotiated a love deal. Apple to get Amazon’s Prime Video app on Apple TV.
The deal between Amazon and Apple is interesting. The two corporations had been at a standstill since about 2016, after Apple opened Apple TV to all third-party video apps. But Amazon is remarkably absent from Apple TV, and documents released Wednesday reveal that it’s because Amazon didn’t need to pay Apple the popular 30% reduction in its sales through the Apple platform.
Bezos then met with Apple TV’s vice president of rate Eddy Cue, and instead negotiated a 15% reduction. Shortly after the agreement reached, Amazon also began promoting Apple’s products.
This contradicts Tim Cook’s testimony yesterday, when he said Apple treats all programs equally. According to the emails, Amazon has earned a special resource from Apple, unlike other apps. (Today, Apple is getting 30% relief on subscription fees through its platform for the first year and 15% thereafter).
Forward zoom icon, fly pointing outwards
It didn’t stop there with Amazon.
About a decade ago, Amazon was at a fierce festival with a burgeoning e-commerce company called Quidsi, operating Diapers.com and Soap.com. Documents show that Amazon deliberately reduced diaper costs on its site to weaken Quidsi.
“We’ve already presented a more competitive ‘victory plan’ that opposes diapers.com,” an Amazon executive wrote in an email through the subcommittee. “As this plan undermines the core diaper activity to diapers.com, it will slow down the adoption of Soap.com.”
And Amazon’s email said, “[These guys are our first short-term competitor… [We must] adjust the costs of these types, regardless of cost.”
After that, Amazon ended up buying Quidsi for about $500 million. Amazon closed Quidsi almost seven years later. Quidsi was not very lucky to succeed only because of the value tension caused by its biggest competitor, Amazon.
As for Facebook, the documents show that its $1 billion share of Instagram in 2012 at least in part due to Zuckerberg’s preference to weigh a developing competitor. (Zuckerberg argued in his testimony Wednesday that there was no guarantee that Instagram was a good fortune at the time, and that its position today as the dominant social media app is due to the fact that it had Facebook’s infinite resources to function.)
But in emails with then-CHIEF Financial Officer David Ebersman, Zuckerberg talked about the benefits of buying Instagram. Zuckerberg agreed with Ebersman that the acquisition of Instagram would “neutralize a potential competitor.”
“Instagram can harm us especially if it doesn’t fit a massive company,” Zuckerberg wrote in an email Wednesday.
This fits perfectly into one of the remedies proposed against Facebook: splitting the company by separating Facebook from the primary programs it has acquired, Instagram and WhatsApp.
It’s just a taste. There are many more documents that were released on Wednesday to search. They’ll do a beach reading for all the antitrust fools out there.
Even if you are not convinced that the report of the Next House Antitrust Subcommittee on the 4 Giants will lead to a satisfactory law through a fractured and sour Congress, we now have a new look at Big Tech’s behind-the-scenes transactions as the four giants have done. Dominant. strengths of the world economy over the past decade.
And that doesn’t stop Congress. The DOJ, FTC and teams of attorneys general investigate these 4 corporations to varying degrees. These investigations are more likely to lead to immediate action without waiting for Congress, which has not yet followed unwrified primary technology regulations since techlash began a few years ago.
As expected, Wednesday’s audience resulted in a spectacular and substanceless political theater. But the passing government has products on Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, and those documents go a long way if action is taken against those big tech companies.
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