The House Judiciary panel on antitrust released its long-awaited report on competition in digital marketplaces Tuesday after multiple delays and a rocky effort to secure bipartisan support for its proposals.
The Hill reports the Democratic report — which was crafted over 15 months using more than a million documents, testimony gathered in and out of hearings and interviews with hundreds in the industry — paints the country’s biggest tech companies as gatekeepers that stifle competition.
It focuses on Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, which were worth a combined $5 trillion in September and made up a third of the S&P 500.
The report includes a series of recommendations on how to address the concentration of market power in those firms, including revamping existing antitrust laws and strengthening the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice antitrust team.
The challenge for Democrats now turns to getting bipartisan support for those proposals.
While the investigation launched last June was always billed as a cooperative effort between the parties, support for the recommendations appears to have frayed on party lines.
The report acknowledges that not every lawmaker will endorse its entirety, but stresses the findings show a need for reform.
“Although we do not expect that all of our Members will agree on every finding and recommendation identified in this Report, we firmly believe that the totality of the evidence produced during this investigation demonstrates the pressing need for legislative action and reform,” it reads. “These firms have too much power, and that power must be reined in and subject to appropriate oversight and enforcement.”
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