House asks big tech CEOS to testify in competition probe

The House is asking CEOs of big tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple, to testify in a competition probe. Yahoo Finance's Tech Editor Dan Howley joins The First Trade to discuss.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: The House is investigating competition in big tech. And now the Judiciary Committee is reportedly asking if the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Twitter will testify in July. Here to discuss is Tech Editor Dan Howley.

Dan, why this investigation, and will any of these CEOs even show up?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, so the investigation really has to do with all the competition, or the potential lack of competition in various tech sectors. So we're talking about the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, really the big ones that have been kind of the target of these investigations from states attorney general and as well as the Department of Justice, basically just looking at whether or not they have strangleholds on their markets, whether or not they stifle competition, if they're doing anything with pricing. And so the idea is to get these CEOs in the house to actually talk to them, members of the House.

It's kind of up in the air whether or not we'll see every CEO. Amazon, Jeff Bezos has not appeared yet. We have seen other CEOs, those Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, come before committees and kind of discuss the issue of competition, as well as different other goings on, such as election manipulation, use their platforms for nefarious purposes by foreign actors.

So this is really something, though, that is going to focus specifically on this idea of the anti-trust issues, whether or not they are taking advantage of their size and stifling competition. It'll be interesting to see who actually replies here.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, exactly, Dan. I mean, what if the CEO doesn't get sent in to testify, they send a lower level C-suite executive? Is that going to be good enough?

DAN HOWLEY: No, I don't think it will be. And we've seen that kind of reply before from members of Congress saying, look, we want XYZ person. Send them. Do not send us a letter saying that you'll send a surrogate in their place, a lower level executive.

But they have done this before in certain situations. We talked about I believe at one point there was chat of hate speech on these platforms. There were lower level executives sent in. It's happened various times.

But like I said, Sundar Pichai has been there. Mark Zuckerberg has been there a few times. But Jeff Bezos has not shown his face yet there.

And it's really those companies-- Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook-- that are facing the biggest amount of scrutiny. We're not really hearing anything about Microsoft being placed under the same kind of pall of the idea of antitrust, although that's because they have that history of being one of the only companies in big tech, or the only company in big tech to be involved in such a situation.