Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google CEO’s face landmark antitrust hearing today

Industry

Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook’s chief executives, who together represent a net worth of over $260 billion, will all face a congressional hearing today.

Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg will all give testimony at a landmark antitrust hearing today.

Each will argue their case to a panel of the US’ most senior lawmakers who are investigating their business practices including their use of user data to maintain such dominance online.

Bezos is expected to draw the most attention from lawmakers, primarily because he is the only CEO not to have testified before congress before.

READ MORE: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google demanded to hand over internal documents amid antitrust probe

It is understood the Bezos plans to argue that Amazon, though a large company, only occupies a small share of the overall retail market and still has numerous major competitors like Walmart.

He also plans to argue that Amazon allows small businesses to flourish on its platform through its third-party marketplace.

This is expected to be a key point of contention for lawmakers, alongside its private label practices, labour relations and counterfeit enforcement policies.

Similarly, Apple boss Cook will argue that the retailer remains in fierce competition with rivals like Samsung, and that it holds just a minority of the smartphone market (46 per cent) in the US.

One of the key points of contention for Apple is set to be its tight controls over its app store, not only acting as a gatekeeper but taking a significant 30 per cent cut of any app sales made through the platform.

The hearing will commence today at 12pm ET (4pm GMT).

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