The United States House of Representative Judiciary Committee has approved a bill seeking to ban big tech companies from making any further acquisitions or merger deals. This proposal was introduced by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley earlier in the week.
According to the proposal big tech companies are defined as tech companies with over a market capitalization of $100 billion. Five U.S tech companies fall under this category including Amazon Inc. (AMZN), Apple Inc. (AAPL), Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), Facebook Inc. (FB) and Microsoft Inc. (MSFT).
This house committee voted 24:17 in favor of the bill, these votes were spilt across party lines said the representative for Rhode Island David Cicilline.
“Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook each hold monopoly power over significant sectors of our economy. This monopoly moment must end. I look forward to crafting legislation that addresses the significant concerns we have raised,” said Cicilline.
The bill was also introduced in the Senate by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar in which it aims at giving more powers to enforcers of antitrust laws to have the ability to stop merger deals which will result to crushing small companies.
The proposal seems to have gained more momentum after big tech decided to censor conservative speech during U.S Presidential elections held last November this resulted to Facebook and Twitter suspending the accounts of former President Donald Trump.
