Silicon Valley Is on a Lobbying Spree in California
Big Tech has grown enormously due to tactics such as price gouging and anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions. New legislation to address these in California faces a stiff and very well-funded resistance.
Financial disclosures show that Big Tech is lobbying hard against a proposed regulatory bill in the California State Senate. With a vote looming, those in the Democratic caucus widely seen as holdouts have received large donations from Silicon Valley. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
Silicon Valley and other powerful industries have spent millions of dollars to defeat a landmark bill in California that would expand state regulations against monopolies and threaten common business practices of numerous tech giants. The Lever has uncovered that lawmakers who may cast the deciding votes on the legislation in committee have taken thousands in campaign donations from deep-pocketed corporate interests.
From social media giants Facebook and Google to ridesharing apps like Uber, Big Tech has grown its businesses by resorting to a variety of tactics that skirt antitrust laws, such as anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions, price gouging, and pricing discrimination. Only in recent years have these firms’ practices started to face legal scrutiny from federal and state regulators, including a spate of lawsuits to break up Big Tech.
Under current law, California regulators can prosecute antitrust cases only when at least two companies collude to restrain fair competition. The new legislation, now facing a crucial June 30 vote in the Judiciary Committee, would allow the state, for the first time, to begin cracking down on single firm monopolies — when one company dominates a certain industry or uses its large status to unfairly drive out competition.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.