In October, 2020, House law makers in the US completed a 16-month investigation into Big Tech firms — Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook and suggested that their dominance should be curbed.

Justice Department filed a major suit against Google on 20th October, 2020 relying on anti-trust laws. If the company uses restrictive contracts to protect its dominant position, and undermines competition, and consequently harms the consumer interests, it violates the existing anti-trust laws.

Eleven other states have joined the justice department in the suit. Google’s exclusive deals with Apple have been cited. The same is true for other partners. This stifling of competition harms the consumer interest. There are fewer choices available to consumers.

Google calls this a flawed suit. This is happening after 22 years. In 1998, a similar suit was filed against Microsoft which dominated the PC operating system — Windows. It was using its gatekeeper power to block the potential threat from other browsers. MS has restrictive contracts with PC makers and others to stop the distribution of Netscape. It worked. It was proved that MS repeatedly violated the nation’s anti-trust laws.

Microsoft bundled software of its browser for free along with Windows. Less competition could mean less innovation, and less consumer choice. Thus the US government calls Google a competition crippler, a reducer of consumer choice and stifler of innovation.

All Big Tech firms are on radar — Google in search, Amazon in commerce, Facebook in social media and Apple in cell phones.

Facebook has acquired 100 firms, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) just enquired about one acquisition — that of Instagram in 2012.

Google claims that the wider use of its search engine is because it stands in a class of its own. Its index has billions of webpages and exceeds 10 crore gigabytes in size. This scale requires an investment of billions of dollars. Its maintenance would cost millions of dollars. It has 88 per cent share of the search market, Bing has seven, Yahoo! has less than four, and DuckDuckGo less than two per cent. Apple signs Google because it is the best.

Google is blamed for the failure of Amazon to develop something like Android. However, a lot of R&D has gone into development of Android.

Google has positive spin offs. The US created Internet, expanded it.

According to Obama, the US perfected internet in ways that others cannot compete. This reality US cannot ignore.

If confrontationist approach is taken, the law makers will be provoked to write new laws aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech,