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When the Washington Democrats were making final preparations for an attack on the power of Big Tech, it seemed like a decisive two-stroke.
One week ago, the House of Representatives proposed the clutch of new antitrust laws. This led to a public hearing last year and a damn report from Congress last year, which was due to the work behind Lina Khan, an academic who has had an impact on shaping the response of technological power.
Then, this week, it appeared that he would become Khan next head Forming the Federal Trade Commission as one of Washington’s major trusts.
The following natural questions: Will Congress continue with the new legislation? Otherwise, will Khan alone be an FTC trying to establish new rules to control huge technologies? And if he does, how much can he get under the anti-competition laws of hope?
The legislative agenda is ambitious. Inevitably, the most attention has fallen on turnover to break big tech companies.
Forcing the most successful (and still well-known) industry in America to completely restructure seems to be in high order, even at a time when partisan politics is living less frequently. Notable has been the support of Republican parties for House bills. But it will be difficult to get proof of 60 votes in the Senate.
Less stringent laws would prevent companies from giving fair priority to their services. This comes closely with Khan’s approach he has defended through his competent work, especially on Amazon, where he preferred non-discriminatory rules that applied to key public services.
However, many see little opportunity to incorporate this into the law. There may be consensus in Washington about downsizing tech companies, but opinions about the legislation to do so are all over the map, so the Biden administration is likely to take swift action under existing laws, according to Nicholas Economides, a professor of economics at York University.
At the FTC, Khan has an action against Facebook and a legacy of research on Amazon. But he made it clear that he would rather work through regulation than in the courts. Last year, he wrote a favorable work significant rethinking how the agency uses its powers to prevent “unfair competition methods” while advocating broad rules for the entire industry. If the FTC already has them take steps in this direction, a new centralized staff group will be created this year with proposals for regulations.
It is likely that there will be other voice actors who call for swift action outside of Congress. Tim Wu was a professor of Columbia law school (like Khan) named this year he has been a White House adviser arguing that current laws give trustees powerful weapons, all they need to do is enforce them in a more aggressive way.
It is not that it would be a common unilateral regulatory action. If he moves forward without the backing of Congress, Khan would be politically exposed. Legal challenges would be unavoidable.
In the meantime, while the FTC is trying to enforce tough, non-discriminatory rules, meanwhile, there are serious questions about how effective they can be.
Efforts on the issue in Europe have been meager. These include forcing Microsoft to choose a default Internet browser for new computers and asking Google to select the preferred search engine for Android users. Both actions had no significant impact on the competition.
It presents great design challenges on how to give real internet users a real chance on today’s major platforms. At this stage, it is questionable how many iPhone customers would jump in with the option of using a non-Apple App Store, or when many Android users choose a non-Google search engine.
Despite all this, some investors are already looking forward to the opening of platforms that will give life to the set of specialized Internet services. Since the November presidential election – and even before Democrats gained close control of the Senate – the shares of Yelp, a local search company that has long been criticized by Google, have doubled. Expedia travel company, another rival to the search company, has risen 77 percent.
Investors from these and many other similar companies hope that Khan, after Democrats tried to set the agenda for the attack on Big Tech, will be able to deliver the goods.
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