The tech giant "Big Killer" is coming! The US Senate voted to advance the blockbuster antitrust bill

The blockbuster antitrust bill, which makes american tech giants extremely jealous, is another step towards being passed by Congress.

On Thursday, January 20, EST, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee passed by a vote of 16 in favor and 6 against, continuing to advance the "American Choice and Innovation Online Act" . Six of the opposing votes in the vote came from Republican lawmakers, but five Republican lawmakers voted in favor. Although the bill has not yet been voted on by all in the Senate, the results of the Judiciary Committee vote reflect that the bill has bipartisan support, laying the foundation for the entire Senate to vote for it.

In June, the House of Representatives published drafts of five antitrust bills, and in the same month, the House Judiciary Committee struggled to pass four of them, the "American Innovation and Choice Online Act", which is the core content of which aims to prohibit large platforms from engaging in behavior that benefits their own products or services, disadvantages other business users, or discriminates against business users in similar situations, such as cutting off competitors from using the services provided by the platform, and prohibiting the dominant platforms from using the services collected in their services. Data that is not disclosed to the public to promote self-operated products and services.

At that time, the Wall Street news article mentioned that these bills can be called the "biggest legislative effort" of the Congressional subcommittee against a small number of large technology companies so far, and if the bills are passed in both the Senate and the House, the four major technology giants of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will have to completely change their business behavior, and the acquisition will be more difficult, or even split.

After the Senate vote, on Thursday, the US stock market was in the afternoon session, and Apple, which had risen more than 2% in the morning, gave back all the gains slightly, Google's parent company Alphabet, which had risen nearly 1.7% in the morning, turned down, and Amazon, which had already turned down slightly in the afternoon, expanded the decline to about 1%.

Ahead of Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee vote, some experts commented that the America's Choice and Innovation Online Act is one of the best opportunities for members of Congress to enact major antitrust reform legislation against tech giants. Compared to the Open App Market Act, another antitrust bill to be considered by the commission, which is largely limited to app store operators such as Apple and Google, the U.S. Choice and Innovation Online Act is more widely targeted and may prevent companies like Amazon from placing private label products in a more favorable position for third-party competitors in search rankings.

Therefore, the advance of the "American Choice and Innovation Online Act" bill is by no means good news for the tech giants. The media pointed out that the bill has a particularly large impact on Amazon, Apple and Google, and the text content of the current bill shows that it also applies to large platforms such as Facebook's parent company Meta and TikTok. Because it prohibits dominant platforms measured by user and market size from discriminating against businesses that rely on its services.

Tech giants have recently lobbied aggressively with the Biden administration in an attempt to block the bill's passage. On Wednesday, Chamber of Progress, a trade group in which tech companies such as Apple and other tech companies participate, warned that at the political level, the White House's support for the bill would not be welcomed by voters and could hurt Democrats ahead of the November congressional midterm elections, as their polling data showed that voters in key states were not prioritizing tech regulation. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also opposed the bill on Wednesday, saying it would lead to higher prices of goods, reduce options for American households, limit opportunities for small businesses and harm the U.S. economy.

The "antitrust fighter" promised to strengthen regulation

It is worth mentioning that the day before the Senate vote, Lina Khan, the new chair of the FTC of the United States, who has always been known as an "antitrust fighter", made it clear this Wednesday that under her leadership, the FTC will no longer back down from intimidation or threats from more resourced opponents, and specifically mentioned that while focusing on past corporate violations, the FTC "prejudges the next generation of technology that can help companies accumulate power is very important."

Khan said the FTC's choice of enforcement action would give special consideration to deterrence to potentially illegal behavior, seeking to truly change the dynamics of the entire market, and while focusing on past violations by companies, it is important to anticipate the next generation of technologies that can help companies accumulate power. The agency is also considering cracking down on illegal practices that may involve "stifling competition at the source.".

Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard became an antitrust touchstone

Khan's speech comes a day after Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it was spending $68.7 billion to buy game giant Activision Blizzard. For the U.S. antitrust agency, which vows to crack down on the market power of big technology companies, Microsoft's biggest deal in history will become a "focus object", and whether it can successfully pass customs depends on how determined the US technology anti-monopoly is.

Bill Baer, a former Brookings Institution chief executive and former head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, noted that the acquisition was an ideal opportunity for antitrust agencies to take action, with FTC leaders arguing that the Justice Department was too lenient in allowing mergers, especially in the tech sector.