"As they exist today, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook each possess significant market power over large swaths of our economy [...] Our investigation leaves no doubt that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation, and safeguards our democracy," Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
The panel’s recommendations include, among other remedies, structural separations to prohibit platforms from operating in lines of business that depend on or interoperate with the platform; prohibiting platforms from engaging in self-preferencing; requiring platforms to make services compatible with competing networks to allow for interoperability and data portability.
The investigation report totals over 400 pages based on seven congressional hearings, the production of nearly 1.3 million internal documents and communications, submissions from 38 antitrust experts, and interviews with over 240 market participants, former employees of the investigated platforms and others.