Sources say Apple and Google CEOs are personally lobbying senators to oppose antitrust legislation

Several of the largest U.S. tech companies are very worried about the new antitrust laws. According to a report by Punchbowl News, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sandal Pichai have personally "called and met with senators" urging them to oppose the legislation in the making, citing information revealed by "multiple Senate aides."

The legislation that wants to lobby to block is the American Innovation and Online Choice Act, a bipartisan bill led by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). The legislation is currently in its early stages and will be considered today by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill would need to pass a vote in both the House and Senate to become law, but it's still not hard to see why it infuriated Silicon Valley's biggest beast.

The legislation prohibits online platforms from giving their "products, services or lines of business" an advantage over their competitors. It only works for the biggest tech companies. Apple, Amazon, Facebook owner Meta and Alphabet-owned Google (although Bloomberg News reports it will be expanded to include Chinese tech giants TikTok and WeChat). These platforms will be prohibited from favoring search results in their favor, restricting competitors' access to platform data, and using non-public data from customers to compete with them (companies including Amazon and Google have been accused of doing so).

While the exact impact of the legislation is difficult to predict, there is one aspect that worries Apple in particular: it could pose a threat to its app store's business model. In a letter the company sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Apple said that if the bill becomes law, it will be forced to allow users to "sideload" apps on iPhones and iPads, just as it does on Macs — meaning installing them from sources other than the app store. Apple says this threatens the security of its users as it allows unaudited apps to enter devices and cuts one of its main revenue streams (Apple charges up to 30 percent commissions from App Store sales).

In response to Apple's arguments, a spokesperson for Klobuchar told Bloomberg. "The bill doesn't force Apple to allow unfiltered apps to enter Apple devices. All of Apple's arguments about 'sideloading' are actually desperate attempts to maintain the monopoly of its app store, which they use to charge huge fees to the businesses they compete with."

Although the Klobuchar-Grassley bill has been strongly opposed by the tech community's largest companies, smaller companies have stepped up to support the legislation. A coalition of 35 tech companies recently wrote a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee arguing that the legislation is necessary to curb "many of the anti-competitive self-recommendation tactics employed by dominant tech companies to gain and consolidate their gatekeeper status."

The letter' signatories, which include DuckDuckGo, Patreon, Sonos, Wyze and Yelp, said: "For too long, dominant technology companies have made it difficult for other businesses to compete in the digital marketplace by abusing their gatekeeper status. "

This isn't the first time top executives at big tech companies have personally mobilized against antitrust legislation. Last year, when U.S. politicians were considering five new antitrust bills, Cook called Speaker Nancy Pelosi to issue a "warning" about the impact of "hasty" legislation.