Apple and Google failed to lobby? The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee approved the antitrust bill

Financial Associated Press (Shanghai, editor Xia Junxiong) news, local time on Thursday (January 20), the US Senate Judiciary Committee approved an antitrust bill against technology giants, making the bill one step closer to the deliberation of the Senate plenary.

The bill was co-sponsored by Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, and the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill by a vote of 16 in favor and 6 against, showing that the two parties have reached some degree of consensus on the bill.

The bill, designed to protect digital competition, would prohibit tech giants from giving their products, services or lines of business advantage on their platforms, targeting Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Some smaller companies have complained that these giants with large platforms have exploited unfair business practices to maintain their dominance.

Naturally, tech companies will not sit idly by in the face of yet another antitrust bill under proposal, actively lobbying members of Congress and saying the bill will give foreign competitors an edge, hurting U.S. innovation, endangering not only user privacy and security, but also the products or services used by consumers.

According to media reports, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were personally involved in lobbying the senators.

Although supporters and opponents of the bill have lobbied Congress aggressively, U.S. President Joe Biden has yet to speak publicly about the bill.

It is worth mentioning that the White House on Wednesday met with a number of small tech companies, including Yelp and Sonos, which have been staunch supporters of the bill.