• Yelp, Sonos, DuckDuckGo and Spotify wrote to Senators to vote for antitrust bill against Big Techs
• Klobuchar said she had 60 Senate votes needed to end debate and move to vote on final passage
Several companies and business organizations sent a letter to the US senators on Monday urging them to support an antitrust bill aimed at reining in the Big Techs like Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google.
A bipartisan group of senators, including Democratic US Senator Amy Klobuchar and other lawmakers, introduced an antitrust bill in May, aiming at conflicts of interest in the advertising technology industry.
Klobuchar last Wednesday said that the bill would be pushed for Senate voting this month, which needs to pass the legislation to prevent the tech platforms, including Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Meta Platforms Inc’s (NASDAQ: META) Facebook, from favoring their own businesses on their platforms and break up its dominant online-ad business.
Companies, including Yelp, Sonos, DuckDuckGo and Spotify, are supporting the measure and called it a “moderate and sensible bill aimed squarely at well-documented abuses by the very largest online platforms,” Reuters reported.
Other signatories included the American Booksellers Association, the American Independent Business Alliance, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Kelkoo Group, the report said.
Move to pass antitrust bill
The companies and the organizations urged the Senate to pass the bill, saying it would modernize antitrust laws, so smaller companies have space to compete.
Klobuchar said she believed she had 60 Senate votes needed to end the debate and move to a vote on final passage.
Earlier this month, Amazon, in a blogpost, has criticized the bill and said the bill “jeopardizes two of the things American consumers love most about Amazon: the vast selection and low prices made possible by opening our store to third-party selling partners, and the promise of fast, free shipping through Amazon Prime.”
Picture Credit: FT
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