We reported earlier this month on Sonos CEO Patrick Spence’s testimony before the US House’s Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, outlining his company’s complaints against Google and Amazon. Now the chairman of the subcommittee’s investigation into digital markets, David Cicilline, has been talking to The Verge about his views on competition and the big technology firms.
“I think there’s broad recognition from Republicans and Democrats that this market is not functioning properly, that there is a significant absence of competition and strong evidence of anti-competitive behavior by the dominant platforms,” he said, later adding that “we may have made a mistake by allowing some of these companies to get as large as they have — in fact, we have made a mistake”.
He also expresses interest in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s view that companies should choose between being a platform or a producer of services. “It’s kind of an interesting idea to think: should you at least separate out those functions and say you can be one or the other, but you can’t be both?” he said. “I think these companies are too big, and we’ve allowed them to exercise monopoly power. We have to figure out how to correct that.” Apple, Amazon and Google – not to mention Spotify and other music services – will be following this closely.
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