Congress is on the brink of passing major legislation which would restructure how Big Tech does business. But advocates worry if it is not passed quickly, or at least by the end of the year it could die. On the other side are lobbyists hired by Big Tech, working feverishly to block it.
The bill, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year by a wide margin. This Senate bill closely resembles an earlier House version.
So far the bill appears to have overcome intense lobbying by the tech sector, and is heading toward passage before the August recess.
Senate leader Chuck Schumer has said he fully supports the bill and will put it to a vote on the Senate floor by early summer, according to a source.
It is unclear if it has the 60 votes it would need to overcome a filibuster and pass the Senate however. Some activists want to put it to a vote immediately and force Senators to go on the record siding with Big Tech or not, while others would rather give lawmakers time to see if they can secure enough votes to guarantee passage. Many are confident however, given the bill has garnered bipartisan support, uniting such divergent figures as Amy Klobuchar and Ted Cruz. Others point to resistance from lawmakers who do not wish to upset Big Tech.
Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech said he is “bordering on confident” the self-preferencing bill will become a law by August. He said, “I do think that this is kind of like a make-or-break time where stuff’s either going to start to move forward in this next upcoming month or two or the window is going to close quicker than people think.”
It is unclear what effect the bill will have on tech company stock prices. The bill does contain a provision focusing its application only on larger tech companies, with valuations over specific benchmarks.
Much of these larger companies’ business models have as a key advantage, the ability to leverage large audiences and customer bases to preferentially upsell their own additional services and products over others’. If they are barred from exploiting that advantage, it is not impossible the passage of this bill will affect investor perception of the profitability of these larger companies and that will translate into yet more woes for the tech sector.
