Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, released opening speeches Tuesday night, in which their companies were seen as icons of American ingenuity as they prepared for a highly anticipated company antitrust hearing with the legislature on Wednesday.
The two CEOs, which include Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, will appear before the House Cartel Subcommittee. All four men will testify remotely via video chat due to the coronavirus pandemic. (CNET provides details on how to monitor the process Here.)
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For more than a year now, members of the subcommittee have been investigating whether the four technology giants suppress competition and harm consumers. During this time, the subcommittee collected more than 1.3 million documents from companies, competitors and antitrust authorities. That's what the bosses from Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple say.
Amazon
Bezos of Amazon began his testimony with a personal story about his upbringing from his mother, who was a 17-year-old student when she had him, and his adoptive father, a Cuban immigrant. He went through the early days of Amazon when he started the company in his garage and drove packages himself to the post office. Back then, Amazon was anything but safe and its parents were its first investors. The company struggled through the Dotcom bankruptcy and was not profitable for years, he wrote.
It is clear that he embodied the history of his company as one that embodies the American dream. While for many people the dream is a house and a stable job, Bezos has expanded its company into the world's largest online retailer. He is now the richest person in the world, valued at approximately $ 180 billion.
As Amazon and the other technology giants did to defend themselves against monopoly problems, Bezos encounters job creation, its investments in the United States, and competition.
As for job creation, he said Amazon now employs 1 million people. He added that many of these jobs cannot be outsourced in the U.S. because they are needed in local communities to package products and ship them to customers. "The trust that customers place in us every day," he wrote, "has enabled Amazon to create more jobs in the United States than any other company in the past decade - hundreds of thousands of jobs in 42 states."
He said Amazon had invested more than $ 270 billion in the U.S. in the past decade.
And in competition, he said his company was only a tiny player in global retail, making up less than 1% of the global retail industry and less than 4% of the US market. These numbers assume that Amazon is by far the dominant player in US online sales with a 38% market share.
While Bezos tried to identify its competition - including Walmart, Target and Alibaba - and to classify Amazon as relatively small in the context of the larger retail world, he offered to defend large companies, saying that only large companies could deal with some of the companies' complexity, that goes with the business. "I don't care how good you are as an entrepreneur," he wrote, "you won't build a Boeing 787 with full fiber in your garage."
Bezos also went out of its way to highlight how Amazon is a driving force by pushing its climate promise, encouraging other retailers to raise their minimum wages, and launching Amazon Future Engineer's youth program.
The letter is littered with many terms, phrases, and concepts that he often takes up in his remarks, including Amazon's obsession with customers, how he lives his life to minimize his regret, and his urge to take great risks, for great rewards to obtain.
He added a bezosism that he often uses to defend his company: "I think Amazon should be checked. We should check all major institutions, whether they are companies, government agencies or nonprofits. Our responsibility is to make sure that we pass them. " Examination with flying colors. "
(Read the full testimonial here.)
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg will show US lawmakers On Wednesday, the social network is a "proud American company" that has competition, including Chinese technology companies.
Zuckerberg said in his five page prepared comments that the company was "exposed to intense competition worldwide". Facebook's competitors include TikTok, owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance, and U.S. social media apps like Twitter and Snapchat. According to Zuckerberg, Facebook competes with Apple, Amazon and Alphabet, which Google and YouTube own.
"We believe in values - democracy, competition, inclusion and freedom of expression - on which the American economy is built. Many other technology companies share these values, but there is no guarantee that our values will prevail," said Zuckerberg in his prepared Remarks . "For example, China is building its own version of the Internet that focuses on very different ideas and is exporting its vision to other countries."
Zuckerberg said he supports a "strong and consistent competition policy" that ensures a level playing field. Facebook has also developed new products in response to the competition, contributes to the open source community, and creates new tools that help nonprofits, people check whether their loved ones are safe during a natural disaster, and meet the needs of users during the Corona virus pandemic, he says in his prepared remarks.
Calls to dissolve Facebook became hotter last year after one of the company's founders, Chris Hughes, published a detailed comment in the New York Times about the threat to democracy from the growing power of the social network. The company has been exposed to several scandals, including data protection and election interference. Facebook owns the popular photo service Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp. Hughes and other critics want Facebook to outsource Instagram and WhatsApp so that the services can compete as separate companies.
Facebook faces several antitrust investigations, including the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, the House Cartel Committee, and a group of attorneys general. The FTC is reportedly reviewing whether Facebook's acquisitions were part of the social media giant's strategy to suppress competition, the Wall Street Journal reported. The FTC has refused to comment on its investigation.
Zuckerberg will tell legislators that his acquisitions have helped drive innovation without hindering it. Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook all work together to fight spam and harmful content that breaks the rules of the social network, he said.
"Our acquisitions have helped drive innovation for people who use our own products and services and for the wider startup community. Acquisitions bring together the complementary strengths of different companies," said Zuckerberg in his prepared comments.
Instead of breaking up the company, Zuckerberg has pushed for more regulation on issues such as data protection and data portability.
"I understand that people have concerns about the size and perceived power of technology companies. Ultimately, I believe that companies shouldn't make so many judgments on important issues such as harmful content, privacy, and voting integrity themselves," said Zuckerberg.
He also believes that Facebook will one day be replaced by another social network, and notes that the company has kept the sign of Sun Microsystems' former headquarters on its campus to remind them that the tech industry is fast moving changed.
"I have long believed that the nature of our industry was that one day a product would replace Facebook," he said. "I want us to be the ones who build it, because if we don't, someone else will."