The Last Week Tonight host examined Google, Amazon and Apple and efforts to address ‘anti-competitive conduct’
John Oliver has called out “anti-competitive conduct” of big tech, urging bipartisan support of bills that would help curb such behaviour.On Last Week Tonight, the host said that “our experiences on the internet are now dominated by a small handful of companies who are getting pretty used to throwing their weight around”.
He then went back to tell the story of AT&T, the company that used to be in charge of both local and long-distance services as well as many related products. “Fuck AT&T now and forever,” Oliver said of the corporation that used to own HBO until recently. On Apple’s app store, 95% of searches related to their own specialist apps preferenced them while the company also has a “stranglehold on developers who want to get their apps on their phones”.
But 41% of a first page of results goes to the company’s own properties and direct answers. It has meant that other companies are de-prioritised and often de-platformed. “Google’s algorithm shouldn’t determine whether someone’s business is real,” he argued. The two bills are called the Open App Markets Act and the American Choice and Innovation Online Act and they are currently before Congress. They “would address some of the problems” being mentioned and so “tech companies are fighting these bills hard”.
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