worked,” Schruer said. “The results were fewer
choices for readers and less competition among
news outlets.”
Stepping ahead of the criticism, Google’s vice
president of news Richard Gringas said the
company has “worked for many years to be a
collaborative and supportive technology and
advertising partner to the news industry.”
“Every month, Google News and Google
Search drive over 10 billion clicks to publishers’
websites, which drive subscriptions and
significant ad revenue,” he said in a statement
this week.
In a Capitol steeped in partisanship, inflamed
by special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and
Democrats’ intensifying probes of President
Donald Trump, Congress’ new investigation of
tech market power stands out. Not only is it
bipartisan, but it’s also the first such review by
Congress of a sector that for more than a decade
has enjoyed haloed status and a light touch
from federal regulators.
With regulators at the Justice Department
and Federal Trade Commission apparently
pursuing antitrust investigations of Facebook,
Google, Apple and Amazon, and several state
attorneys general exploring bipartisan action
of their own, the tech industry finds itself in
a precarious moment — with the dreaded
M-word increasingly used to describe their
way of doing business. Cicilline has flatly called
them monopolies.
Politicians on the left and right have differing
gripes about the tech giants. Some complain of
aggressive conduct that squashes competition.
Others perceive a political bias or tolerance of
extremist content. Still others are upset by the
industry’s harvesting of personal data.
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