Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., announced a new platform plank for her presidential campaign Friday: Breaking up big tech companies.
Warren compared Amazon, Facebook, and Google with the famous monopolies of the early 20th century in a blog post published Friday morning, and called for new legislation to designate them and other large online platforms as utilities. The purpose would be to prevent companies that host marketplaces from directly competing with participants in those marketplaces.
“These companies would be prohibited from owning both the platform utility and any participants on that platform,” Warren wrote. “Platform utilities would be required to meet a standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with users. Platform utilities would not be allowed to transfer or share data with third parties.”
Warren also said she would appoint regulators to target past mergers and acquisitions and break up the country’s largest tech companies, including Amazon and Google, to promote competition.
“Weak antitrust enforcement has led to a dramatic reduction in competition and innovation in the tech sector,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote. “With fewer competitors entering the market, the big tech companies do not have to compete as aggressively in key areas like protecting our privacy. And some of these companies have grown so powerful that they can bully cities and states into showering them with massive taxpayer handouts in exchange for doing business, and can act — in the words of Mark Zuckerberg — ’more like a government than a traditional company.’”
Warren went to say she does not want to put Facebook or Amazon completely out of business.
“You’ll still be able to go on Google and search like you do today. You’ll still be able to go on Amazon and find 30 different coffee machines that you can get delivered to your house in two days. You’ll still be able to go on Facebook and see how your old friend from school is doing,” she added.
[Opinion: 3 reasons Elizabeth Warren’s tech giant breakup plan is idiotic]
