At the half-way point of Biden’s four-year term, it looks like Big Tech might just be able to pull off a Houdini-like escape and be spared of meaningful reforms, at least in the foreseeable future. Though privacy, data protection and anti-trust are often regarded as bipartisan issues, the two major anti-trust bills remain stalled in the final weeks of the lame-duck Congress despite a last-minute push from the White House. Reining in Big Tech is lower down on the list of priorities for Republicans in Congress.
For two years now, the narrative around dominant “Big Tech” platforms — iPhone maker Apple, search giant Google’s owner Alphabet, e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com, dominant social media player Facebook owner Meta Platforms and software supremo Microsoft Inc — was that they faced increasing regulatory scrutiny.
So any new mergers were out, previously approved tech mergers were being scrutinised, and data privacy violation and business models remained under the microscope. US President Joe Biden installed prominent and outspoken Big Tech critic Lina Khan as the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Jonathan Kanter as the Assistant Attorney-General of the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice (DoJ). At the same time, Senate and the House of Representatives saw members began reaching across the aisle to draft new legislations to rein in Big Tech.
