Elizabeth Warren suggests breaking up Apple, as well as Google, Facebook and Amazon
Democratic 2020 President Hopeful Elizabeth Warren announced in an interview on Saturday that she wants to break up not only Amazon, Google and Facebook, but also Apple – as the Massachusetts Senator pushes further to the left of its many democratic rivals in a number of populist issues.
In his speech to The Verge at South (SXSW) technology conference in Austin, Texas, Warren specifically requires that Apple be forced to surrender control over the App Store or stop selling its own Apps in it.
"Apple, you must destroy it from the App Store. It must be one or the other," Warren said. "Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They're not going to do both at the same time. "
She elaborated:" If you run a platform where others are going to sell, then you don't get to sell your own items on the platform because you have two comparative advantages One has sucked up information about each buyer and each seller before making a decision about what to sell, and secondly, you have the capacity ̵[ads1]1; because you run the platform – to prefer your product over someone else's product. a huge comparative advantage for the platform. "
Warren argued that similar anti-trust principles were" used for railway companies more than a hundred years ago, "and that" we must now look at the technical platforms in the same way. "
In response At a recent federal appeal court's refusal of Trump Justice Department's bid to block the planned AT & T-Time Warner merger, Warren told The Verge: "How good do I do if the Justice Department and the FTC do not good at all, and in
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In a long post on Warren said the big tech giants had used mergers to "restrict the competition", with examples such as Facebook's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Amazon uses its market power to "force" smaller competitors, such as Diapers.com to sell to the company, and Google buys mapping firm Waze and advertising agency DoubleClick.
President Donald Trump speaks to Apple Inc. Managing Director Tim Cook during the US Advisory Council's first meeting in the White House State Dining Room in Washington, Wednesday, March 6, 2019. (AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta)
She also mentioned that their marketplaces were used to restrict competition. "Amazon is crushing small businesses by copying the merchandise they sell on the Amazon Marketplace and then selling its own brand version. Google allegedly sniffed out a competing little search engine by demote the content of its search algorithm, and it preferred its own restaurant rating over those of Yelp , "Warren wrote.
Warren, who specifically refused to be a socialist as recently as the weekend, proposed two ways to restore competition to the technology sector, including passing legislation that would denote the major platforms as "platform tools" and reverse already approved mergers, which she considered to be "illegal and competitive competition".
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Rob Atkinson, president of the ITIF, a think tank for science and technology policy, strongly disagreed with Warren's proposal.
"The Warren campaign call to break up big tech companies reflect a" big is bad, little is beautiful "ideology running crazy," Atkinson said in a statement obtained by Fox News. "The proposal ignores the fact that many of the services that large corporations now offer free of charge used to cost consumers money. Breaking up large online companies simply because they are large will not help consumers. It will harm them by reducing convenience, reducing quality on service and innovation, and in some cases leading to the introduction of price service. "" Breaking up big internet companies just because they are big will not help consumers. "
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Warren himself tempered some of her rhetoric on Saturday and said only, "I'm not" when asked if she considered herself a democratic socialist, in the New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"All I can tell is what I think – there is a huge amount to get from markets. Markets create opportunities … but markets must have rules. They must have a policeman on the rhythm," Warren told an energetic crowd at Austin City Limits Moody Theater.
Warren demands major changes to the antitrust law following her other relatively radical proposals, including the idea of taxing idle assets. In particular, Warren has proposed an annual 2 percent tax on every dollar of net worth over $ 50 million and a tax of 3 percent on every dollar's net worth over $ 1 billion.
But because Warren would seek to tax wealth himself – as opposed to income or some other form of transfer – without an equal distribution of such taxes among the states, legal experts say it is likely to be unconstitutional.
Warren has also said that Indians should be "part of the conversation" for African-American replacement – a move that threatens to bring back their own history with Indians.
Her co-workers 2020-hopeful late Kamala Harris, D-Calif., And former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro have come out for replacement for African Americans, but so far have not gone as far as Warren opened the door to Indian repairs .
Fox News & # 39; Chris Ciaccia and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
