[ad_1]
Congressional lawmakers have proposed legislation to break Google and Facebook’s monopoly on digital advertising, accusing the tech giants of taking advantage of their market dominance.
Both the House and Senate have enacted the “Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act,” which advocates say will restore and protect fair competition in the digital ad markets dominated by Google and Facebook.
In a statement promoting the bill, the bill’s lead sponsor, Senator Mike Lee, said it would free the internet from online monopolies.
“This lack of competition in digital advertising means monopoly rents are imposed on every ad-supported website and every company, small, medium or large, that relies on internet advertising to grow its business,” he said. “It’s essentially a tax on thousands of American businesses and therefore a tax on millions of American consumers.”
The bill is yet to be considered in committees in either house and has faced backlash from cautious lawmakers, particularly from California, home of Apple, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Facebook’s parent company Meta, and numerous other legislators. tech gamers
But it marks another of Congress’s many legislative attempts to maintain federal control over the thriving and largely unmanaged online industry.
The bill would ban large digital advertising companies like Google from owning more than one part of the digital advertising “ecosystem” and prevent them from playing a dual role in the advertising process.
Big companies, namely Google, would have to end ownership of both the supply-side platforms and the demand-side platforms that help them generate significant revenue.
In 2021, Alphabet made more than $209 billion from ads, and Meta made about $115 billion from ads.
Other Big Tech firms will also be affected.
Utah Republican Mr. Lee said the legislation would likely require Google and Facebook to “dispose of substantial portions” of their advertising businesses, which account for a large portion of their ad revenue.
Mr. Lee said Amazon may also need to divest, and the bill would “affect” Apple’s thriving third-party advertising business.
Mr. Lee said Google, Facebook and other Big Tech firms need regulation as they use enormous treasures of user data to create a monopoly on digital advertising that hinders competition and harms consumers.
The measure has so far attracted a handful of co-sponsors.
Like other Big Tech bills, support comes from a coalition of Republicans and Democrats, whose desire to rein in the industry has crossed party lines.
The bill, Texas Republican Sens. Ted Cruz is jointly supported by Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal.
The same measure was introduced in Parliament on Thursday. Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck sponsored it.
Parliamentary support also spans the political spectrum. Mr. Buck is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Co-sponsors include Rep. of Washington, who chairs the Progressive Caucus of Democrats. It is located in Pramila Jayapal.
Representatives Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican, and David Cicciline, Cicilline, Rhode Island Democrat, also sponsor.
Rep. “The online advertising market is monopolized, obscure, and favored by only two companies: Google and Facebook,” Cicilline said.
Despite the broad political coalition that supported the bill, its transition, and even grassroots opinion, is far from guaranteed. Lawmakers on both sides have opposed the imposition of government controls on thriving online platforms.
Previous attempts in Congress to implement antitrust reform in the tech industry have yet to get very far, and the legislative window is closing fast this year.
The congress is expected to be postponed until August for a long summer break. When they come back, the midterm elections will be just a few months away, and lawmakers often avoid major laws before they meet voters at the ballot box.
Among the major bills that Mr. Buck, Ms. Klobuchar, and other advocates hope to pass this Congress is the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would prohibit online businesses like Amazon and Facebook from preferring their services over other advertisers.
The bill has moved forward in the Senate and House, but has yet to get a base vote in either house, as other lawmakers on both sides said the bill was too broad and would potentially harm consumers.
Big Tech leveraged a firewall of protection from the House and Senate delegation from California.
“While we share the desire to reform digital markets and increase competition, the bills, by draft, are inadequate and will do more harm than good to American consumers and the U.S. economy,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, said in a statement. He opposed the American Election and Innovation Online Act and a series of bills developed earlier this year to curb technology monopolies.
Tech giants have spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to curb federal controls over their industries.
They argue that government controls will cause a wide variety of problems that will harm advertisers and consumers.
In a blog post in January, Ken Walker, Head of Global Business at Google, said that legislation to control major technologies could hinder innovation by requiring firms to obtain government approval before launching new programs. Consumers may end up with less useful apps, lower quality search results, and less security against cyber attacks.
“Antitrust law is about enabling companies to compete fiercely to create their best products for consumers,” Walker said. But the vague and sweeping provisions of these bills will only benefit the handful of companies that bring their claims to Washington, by disrupting popular products that help consumers and small businesses.”
[ad_2]
Source link