Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren is the first presidential candidate in the 2020 race to outline how she would take on Big Tech.
“Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy,” Warren wrote in a new Medium post published today (March 8). “They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation.”
In her post, Warren recalls the 1990s antitrust proceedings against Microsoft $MSFT. The case halted the company’s plans to dominate the web-browsing business, which would have likely given it control over the internet (paywall). Promoting competition “allows new, groundbreaking companies to grow and thrive ,” and pushes others to offer better products, Warren writes. “Aren’t we all glad that now we have the option of using Google $GOOGL instead of being stuck with Bing?”
Of course, Google and other Silicon Valley giants are Warren’s current targets. One approach she suggests: “platform utilities,” a new designation for any company that makes over $25 billion and offers an online marketplace or platform that connects third parties. These utilities would need to remain separate from platform participants, Warren says. So for example, Amazon $AMZN’s main retail site and the Amazon companies that make products, like AmazonBasics, would have to be different companies.
Warren also says she would appoint regulators to use “existing tools” to unwind anti-competitive mergers, and offers seven examples:
“Unwinding these mergers will promote healthy competition in the market ,” Warren writes, “which will put pressure on big tech companies to be more responsive to user concerns, including about privacy.”
