[Senate Hearing 117-874]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]






                           


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-874
 
                    THE IMPACT OF CONSOLIDATION AND
                 MONOPOLY POWER ON AMERICAN INNOVATION

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                  SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMPETITION POLICY,
                     ANTITRUST AND CONSUMER RIGHTS

                                 OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                           DECEMBER 15, 2021

                               __________

                          Serial No. J-117-48

                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
         
         [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 



                        www.judiciary.senate.gov
                            www.govinfo.gov
                            
                               ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 56-248               WASHINGTON : 2024                     
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                   RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois, Chair
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont            CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa, Ranking 
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California             Member
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island     LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota             JOHN CORNYN, Texas
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware       MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut      TED CRUZ, Texas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              BEN SASSE, Nebraska
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey           JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
ALEX PADILLA, California             TOM COTTON, Arkansas
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
                                     THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
                                     MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
             Joseph Zogby, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
      Kolan L. Davis, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director

        .........................................................

             SUBCOMMITTEES ON COMPETITION POLICY, ANTITRUST
                          AND CONSUMER RIGHTS

                    AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota, Chair
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont            MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah, Ranking 
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut          Member
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey           JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  TOM COTTON, Arkansas
                                     THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
                                     MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

                Keagan Buchanan, Majority Staff Director
                  Wendy Baig, Minority Staff Director
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page

Durbin, Hon. Richard J...........................................     5
Klobuchar, Hon. Amy..............................................     1
Lee, Hon. Michael S..............................................     3

                               WITNESSES

Alford, Roger....................................................    14
    Prepared statement...........................................    41
    Responses to written questions...............................    86
Harman, Alex.....................................................     9
    Prepared statement...........................................    49
    Responses to written questions...............................    77
Hein, Bettina....................................................    12
    Prepared statement...........................................    55
    Questions submitted with no response returned................    79
Migicovsky, Eric.................................................    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    61
    Responses to written questions...............................    80
Moss, Diana......................................................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................    67
    Responses to written questions...............................    82

                                APPENDIX

Additional materials submitted for the record....................    96


                    THE IMPACT OF CONSOLIDATION AND



                 MONOPOLY POWER ON AMERICAN INNOVATION

                              ----------                              


                      WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2021

                               United States Senate
             Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust,
                                        and Consumer Rights
                                 Committee on the Judiciary
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice at 2:37 p.m., in 
Room 226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Amy Klobuchar, 
Chair of the Subcommittee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Klobuchar [presiding], Blumenthal, 
Ossoff, Lee, Hawley, and Blackburn.
    Also present: Chair Durbin, Senators Grassley, and Cruz.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR,

           A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

    Chair Klobuchar. Thank you, everyone. I call to order this 
hearing of the Subcommittee on Competition, Antitrust, and 
Consumer Rights entitled ``The Impact of Consolidation and 
Monopoly Power on American Innovation.'' Good afternoon. I want 
to welcome our witnesses, and I thank Senator Lee and his staff 
as well as my staff for planning this hearing.
    Innovation is part of the American spirit. It is the core 
of the American spirit. Innovation generates new opportunities 
and new hopes for businesses, workers, and families. 
Breakthroughs in science and technology has given us the 
vaccines that are getting us through the pandemic and driving 
the development of clean energy solutions to take on the 
climate crisis that we see every day, as my State is getting 
record heat wave and thunderstorms in the middle of December 
today. Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are 
driving innovation across our economy.
    Of course, some of our economy's largest companies began as 
startups with new innovations, and we continue to see 
innovations. We also have to remember that innovation is all 
about competition and bringing in new players to innovate. That 
if we just simply have monopolies, over time, we do not get the 
innovations that we need. I think history shows us with the 
story with the breakup of AT&T and the innovations that we saw 
after that in terms of everything from the cell phone industry 
on. Looking back at our history, it's always been innovation 
that has fueled the American economy, from the railroads and 
the telegraph to smartphones and the internet. America would 
not be where it is today without innovations and strong 
competitive policy and laws on the book.
    The innovation that is vital to our American economy cannot 
thrive without open competitive markets, because it's 
competition that pressures manufacturers to invest in research 
and development to constantly innovate, to improve their 
projects, and introduce new products to compete. It's 
competition that provides opportunities for entrepreneurs to 
develop new ideas and start new businesses and for young people 
to dream about new possibilities.
    In recent years, we have seen the growth of monopoly power 
across the American economy, from cat food to caskets. Dominant 
players are using their power to maintain monopoly positions 
and thwart competition. Between the early 1980's and the last 
few years, the rate of new business formed in the U.S. fell. 
Data suggests that as we move out of this pandemic, Americans 
are starting new businesses at historic rates. That's great. 
Remember we fell by 40 percent before. Businesses can start, 
but can they really grow to the point of being competitive?
    That is something that we want to talk about today. Why 
invest in innovation? Why spend on research and development? 
Why start a new business if the market are controlled by a 
handful of dominant companies that control access to customers 
and have the power to suppress new businesses. Monopoly power 
threatens to choke off innovation. Over the last several 
decades, companies like Google and Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and 
Microsoft have created many great innovations. We went from the 
Wall Street Gordon Gecko days with his cell phone, 
affectionately known as ``the brick,'' that weighed two pounds 
and was 13 inches long, to cell phones the size of a watch.
    While these tech companies were once scrappy startups 
innovating to survive, they are now the largest companies the 
worlds have ever known. They are still innovating and 
introducing new products, yes. They are also gatekeepers, and 
that is the thing that we need to focus on. Gatekeepers that 
use their powers to stifle competition and innovation by their 
competitors and the businesses that have no choice but to use 
their services. We don't want to stop them from innovating. We 
don't want to destroy them. We just want to stop them from 
stopping others from catching on and innovating.
    Just yesterday, the Competition and Markets Authority in 
the UK issued a report highlighting that Apple and Google's 
control over app stores can limit innovation and choice and 
lead to higher prices, none of which is good for users. Small 
businesses develop new and innovative products for American 
consumers, and many of them advertise on the gatekeepers, 
Facebook, Google, Amazon. Can they sustain this incentive to 
innovate when Amazon or Apple knocks off their products and 
puts their own copycat products first in search results?
    Developers across the country are creating useful new apps 
for consumers, but they are sometimes slow to reach users, 
because Apple takes weeks or months to review them before 
putting them up on the app stores. If they want to reach iPhone 
customers, they have no choice, because there's no other way 
into the market. Once upon a time, disruption was a good thing 
in tech. New companies on the block were proud of breaking into 
markets and changing the status quo, adopting company mottos 
like, ``Move fast and break things.'' Now, disruption is what 
they seem to fear.
    Before Facebook bought Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg wrote in 
an email that if Instagram were to, quote, ``grow to a large 
scale, they would be very disruptive to us.'' We will never 
know if an independent Instagram would have found solutions to 
the massive privacy and content and children's problems we are 
seeing today. Why? Because Facebook bought it, and our laws are 
not equipped to address this kind of conduct. Current law 
allows judges to consider harms to innovation and antitrust 
cases, but they rarely do. That's because judges often demand 
an impossibly high standard of proof, which can be hard to show 
when you are talking about how innovation in the future might 
be harmed.
    We need solutions to these problems. The Competition and 
Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act would update the legal 
standard to prohibit harmful mergers across the economy, 
shifting the burden to dominant companies to prove that their 
acquisitions don't threaten competition. This doesn't mean 
they're not going to purchase other companies. They are. It 
just makes them have to prove that they don't hurt competition.
    To address the issues in the digital economy, I joined 
Senator Blumenthal and Senator Blackburn to introduce a bill 
that will open up the twin app store monopolies that Apple and 
Google operate. That's the Open App Markets Act. I'm also proud 
of the bipartisan legislation that Senator Grassley and I have 
introduced to prevent dominant digital platform from engaging 
in behavior that harms competition by favoring their own 
products or services just because they own them. We have 
authors from across the political spectrum on that bill. 
Someone referred to it as ``the Ocean's Eleven of sponsors.''
    American businesses and consumers need a renewed and 
strengthened antitrust movement. They needed a movement 
grounded in a pro-competitive economic agenda that will 
actually help capitalism and innovation across the economy. We 
must act now to protect American innovation and promote 
competitiveness in tech and healthcare, and indeed in all 
sectors of the economy.
    I'll now turn it over to Ranking Member Senator Lee, and I 
note that our Chair is here. We're grateful he's here, Senator 
Durbin. If he would like to say a few words as well when 
Senator Lee is finished.

               STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL S. LEE,

              U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF UTAH

    Senator Lee. Thank you, Chair Klobuchar. I'm a huge 
advocate of the consumer welfare standard, and I've also made 
clear that in no universe should application of that standard 
be limited to a focus on price and output. Those are factors to 
be considered. They are not the exclusive list of things to be 
considered when applying the consumer welfare standard.
    Innovation effects are a perfect example of how antitrust 
enforcers, and also courts, can and should apply a more 
comprehensive understanding of consumer welfare. When 
competition suffers so does innovation, and when innovation 
suffers, that harms consumers. In fact, one might say that 
competition is itself the mother of innovation. Competition 
really can't occur, especially in our society, in our economy 
today, without a lot of innovation.
    Monopolists and other large unthreatened incumbents feel no 
need to improve their products or to develop new ones, not as 
long as consumers continue to pay for the old ones. And as long 
as that expectation holds firm, they're not going to feel it. 
They're even less motivated to develop products and services 
that create new markets that would cannibalize the old. There's 
no reason horse and buggy manufacturers--it is no worry. It 
shouldn't come as a surprise to us, in other words. There is a 
reason that it wasn't horse and buggy manufacturers who came up 
with the automobile.
    Ensuring that competition thrives and results in useful 
innovation depends mostly on the competitors and innovators 
themselves, but it also requires two important things from 
Government. One, is to protect the free market by vigorously 
enforcing antitrust laws, to prevent harmful consolidation and 
anticompetitive conduct. Two, to step back and refrain from 
regulation and market interference of the sort that tends to 
disrupt the competitive process and make innovation harder. In 
fact, when the antitrust laws are properly enforced, the need 
for Government regulatory intrusions elsewhere diminishes.
    My own State of Utah has been particularly successful at 
this, which is one of the reasons why U.S. News and World 
Report rated Utah's economy as the strongest out of the 50 
states this year. Utah is at the forefront of protecting 
consumers from anticompetitive conduct, including by joining 
antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook. And I commend 
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes for joining in that and 
commend the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice for 
its actions, and also the Federal Trade Commission insofar as 
they have undertaken steps in these areas. I commend them for 
that.
    Our State has seen its pro-free market regulatory approach 
attract businesses and investors from around the country, 
resulting in a growing tech community and a vibrant startup 
ecosystem. This has occurred in part because of Utah's historic 
approach toward regulation, which is a light touch one. It's 
been accelerated of late with the regulatory sandbox initiative 
that's been adopted by our State legislature at the behest of a 
number of zealous proponents, including the original proponents 
at the Libertas Institute in Utah.
    In 2020, Utah startups racked up over $30 billion of 
liquidity events, just in 2020 alone. This is a massive vote of 
confidence in the innovation that's happening in the Beehive 
State. This year has seen an additional $14 billion in 
investments so far, including seven IPOs of Utah companies like 
Owlet and Recursion Pharmaceuticals.
    Owlet is a company started by a Brigham Young University 
graduate who started it out of their garage. In this garage, 
they developed a baby sock that monitors blood oxygenation and 
alerts parents to any problems.
    Recursion was founded in 2013 and incubated at the 
University of Utah, where it developed technology to 
significantly accelerate drug development. Utah is quickly 
becoming the face of competition and innovation. I do worry, 
however, that DC bureaucrats may spoil the party for everyone. 
Antitrust enforcement goes beyond stopping mergers and conduct 
presenting harm to consumers, and instead seeks to punish 
anything and everything that displeases progressives, 
displeases whatever administration happens to be in power, or 
looks solely at what is big at the moment--is looking too big 
in the eyes of antitrust regulators. These are all things that 
threaten to do more harm than good. So, too, do regulations 
that entrench incumbents and create barriers to entry and 
stifle innovation.
    Owlet, for example, the company I mentioned a moment ago 
that was started in a garage by some BYU graduates, has been 
hampered by over-regulation and ineptitude at the FDA. Meaning 
that Owlet's products will temporarily be unavailable in the 
United States. That in turn means fewer moms will rest easy at 
night. Fewer jobs will be created in my home State, and less 
money will be reinvested in research and development for 
American consumers. All of this because of regulatory 
overreach. Regulatory overreach protecting no one except market 
incumbents elsewhere.
    When I hear stories like this, it makes me angry. It makes 
me sad. It also makes me wonder about how many startups Federal 
agencies kill that we never even hear about. I look forward to 
discussing with today's witnesses some of these issues, 
including issues about how the Federal Government can follow in 
the footsteps of Utah by enforcing the antitrust laws to the 
benefit of consumers and ensuring along the way that regulatory 
overreach doesn't stifle innovation and offset the gains we 
make with antitrust laws. Thanks.
    Chair Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Senator Lee. I didn't 
know that about your great State of Utah, where I spent some 
time this summer. Then of course, like many Senators, I looked 
up where my State ranked, and you are correct that Utah ranks 
number one for economy in that U.S.--and you rank number three 
for best State overall. Guess what State ranks number two, 
Minnesota.
    Senator Lee. Oh. Spoiled again.
    Chair Klobuchar. With that, I will--and Washington State is 
number one with a number of factors, but a point of great 
pride. I think it's interesting. There's maybe a reason the two 
of us unite on this issue of innovation, because it drives a 
lot of what's great about our states. With that, I turn it over 
to Senator Durbin.

              STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD J. DURBIN,

            U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

    Chair Durbin. Thanks very much, Senator Klobuchar for your 
leadership. Thanks, Senator Lee for making it a bipartisan 
effort. This is the seventh hearing of this Subcommittee on 
competition and continues to illustrate the need to promote 
competition and protect consumers. It's an article of faith for 
most people that competition leads to innovation, and 
competition and innovation lead to lower prices for consumers 
and improve product lines. I believe that. That's why I'm 
cosponsoring the Klobuchar legislation.
    If you look at the reality of the marketplace, one of the 
things you see right away is pharma. Pharma of course, with the 
patent protections, has virtual monopoly on the sales of 
certain products. When that protection expires, there are 
supposed to be competitors emerging who will then make the 
product cheaply and give the consumers a break in the process. 
It's kind of an interesting balance. A protected monopoly that 
then evolves into a competitive marketplace. We look at the 
lengths that pharma goes to protect the drugs that they 
developed and to extend this patent protection over and over 
and over again through a variety of different ways, and we 
realize there's money to be made by stifling this competition 
and protecting their property rights. Ms. Hein, who is I 
believe going to join us from Switzerland--is that right?
    Chair Klobuchar. I think, yes.
    Chair Durbin. She is. That's what I read.
    Ms. Hein. Yes.
    Chair Durbin. Yes. I read your testimony, and she takes 
exception to several of the things that I just said. She 
believes that--I think. I don't want to put words in her mouth, 
but what I read her testimony to say is that people are 
developing these products and companies to build them, not for 
the purpose of going public and making a competitor, but for 
the purpose of being acquired by an even larger company.
    According to her, acquisitions are 10 times more likely 
than any of these new firms going public. I'll let her develop 
her line of thinking there, but it seemed to be that having 
some large corporation that's going to pay a premium to take 
over your fledgling business is more enticing to most 
innovative entrepreneurs than hanging around and watching your 
next Google emerge. It will be interesting to see what her 
argument may be.
    I think the bottom line--and it has been since a Senator 
named Sherman back in 1890 put together an Antitrust Act--is 
that we believe in the marketplace, but we believe in a fair 
marketplace with real competition is in the best interest of 
innovation and consumer cost. I hope we can pursue that thought 
here today and see if there are any dissenters.
    Chair Klobuchar. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, 
Senator Durbin, for being the cosponsor of the bill and your 
devotion to competition issues. I think we'll introduce our 
witnesses now.
    We'll start with Dr. Moss, who is the president of the 
American Antitrust Institute. As an economist, Dr. Moss has 
studied antitrust issues affecting markets across the economy, 
especially in digital technologies and healthcare. She 
previously worked at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 
on the agency's competition analysis for electricity mergers.
    Alex Harman--Mr. Harman is the competition policy advocate 
at Public Citizen, where he works to address concentration in 
market power across industries, especially in the tech 
industry. Previously, he worked in the Obama administration, 
including--also worked in Congress, where he was chief counsel 
to Senator Hirono, a beloved Member of this Committee.
    We also have with us Eric Migicovsky. I like long names 
with a lot of vowels, so we welcome you. Mr. Migicovsky is the 
founder of Beeper, a startup that allows users to access their 
messages from multiple services in a single application. 
Previously, he worked for Y Combinator, a startup tech 
accelerator, and founded another startup that developed smart 
watches. It's kind of exactly what we're talking about here 
with startups.
    Next, as noted by Senator Durbin, Bettina Hein is with us. 
Ms. Hein is a software entrepreneur who has built technology 
companies in both the United States and Europe. She is most 
recently the founder of a digital health startup, and she 
previously founded startups focused on speech technology and 
video advertising.
    Finally, Roger Alford is a professor of law at Notre Dame 
Law School, where his teaching includes international trade, 
international antitrust, and comparative law. Previously, he 
served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for 
International Affairs with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. 
Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019.
    If the witnesses could please stand and raise your right 
hands, including the witness who is remote.
    [Witnesses are sworn in.]
    Thank you. You can be seated, and I will now recognize the 
witnesses for five minutes of testimony each. Dr. Moss, you can 
proceed.

              STATEMENT OF DIANA MOSS, PRESIDENT,

         AMERICAN ANTITRUST INSTITUTE, DENVER, COLORADO

    Dr. Moss. Thank you, Senator Klobuchar and Chair, Ranking 
Member Lee, and Members of the Subcommittee. It is an honor to 
be here today. I'll start by saying that competition drives 
innovation, and innovation drives productivity and economic 
growth. Therefore, competition drives economic growth, the 
backbone of the U.S. economy.
    Evidence shows that innovation in the U.S. may be slowing. 
A number of reasons might account for these changes. One is the 
financial community's laser focus on shareholder returns, which 
diverts attention away from growing value through R&D, and 
toward short-term profits. Another reason is weaker antitrust 
enforcement over the last 40 years, which has spurred 
businesses to acquire R&D versus developing it organically.
    A likely by-product of rising concentration has been a loss 
of innovation competition. Policymakers should be deeply 
skeptical of arguments that bigness generates innovation. 
Because dominant firms and oligopolies do not fear losing to an 
innovative rival, they have weak incentives to stay ahead of 
the innovation curve. To be sure, they do engage in some 
innovation, but it is very different than what we would get 
through robust competition.
    For example, less competition means dominant firms and 
oligopolies avoid developing products that cannibalize their 
own product lines. Instead, they focus on innovation that 
protects their market positions. Oligopolies can also collude 
on technology decisions. They can divide up R&D markets and 
strike anticompetitive licensing agreements. All of this limits 
innovations and keeps prices high.
    Here are some leading examples of innovation competition 
concerns. First, the digital business ecosystems are defined by 
a growth by acquisition model, whereby they acquire rival 
disruptors to fortify their platforms or expand cloud 
infrastructure. Many of these deals are so-called killer 
acquisitions, which neutralize disruptive innovators. For those 
innovators that do operate on platforms and networks are often 
the target of discriminatory conduct, which harms innovation.
    A second example is horizontal and vertical integration 
that has created firms with massive wingspans that cover 
multiple levels in a supply chain. Innovation competition 
concerns were featured in Government complaints in deals like 
Bayer-Monsanto and AT&T-Time Warner. Not enough attention is 
given to the higher barriers created for smaller rivals to 
enter and get a foothold in those markets.
    Finally, we know that market wide, probability of invention 
in pharmaceutical R&D increases with the number of competing 
firms. That competition between R&D pipelines is essential for 
innovation. But over the last 25 years, the FTC has allowed 66 
mergers worth $1 trillion of branded and generic pharmaceutical 
firms. Most were in highly concentrated markets and settled 
with targeted divestitures, leading to assets changing hands 
within a shrinking group of drug manufacturers. Many of those 
very firms are defendants in antitrust litigations and criminal 
price-fixing conspiracies.
    I'll conclude my remarks with three policy priorities. 
First, we need antitrust enforcers to bring what I call more 
standalone innovation competition cases. That means innovation 
plays the starring role in the case and is not simply tacked on 
to concerns over higher prices. To be sure, we have seen those 
cases in Facebook and Google, Visa-Plaid, John Deere-Precision 
Planting, and Nvidia-ARM, but we need more.
    Second, enforcers may be reluctant to bring innovation 
competition cases because they perceive high litigation risk. 
This risk is amplified by the court's deference to claimed 
merger benefits, which stack the deck against plaintiffs. Yet 
we know from business research that few merger benefits are 
ever achieved, as illustrated most recently by AT&T's post-
merger spinoff of Warner Media less than three years later. 
Discounting efficiencies claim, especially in mega-mergers, 
could spark more innovation competition cases.
    Third, current approaches to showing harm from acquisitions 
of smaller disruptors are inadequate. Aside from a high 
evidentiary standard, little attention is paid to evidence of 
intent, or that dominant firms take out innovative rivals to 
maintain their market positions. Stronger or different 
standards are needed.
    Antitrust has a way to go on innovation competition. 
Invigorating enforcement will require support from Congress, 
including shifting the burden to defendants to justify mega-
mergers, stronger standards for acquisitions that neutralize 
disruptors, and perhaps even lowering the HSR thresholds for 
acquisitions by the fast-growing digital players.
    Finally, I would like to say that the problem of fear and 
intimidation in our markets is growing at an alarming rate. 
Smaller rivals fear retaliation from dominant firms and 
oligopolies if they complain to public or private enforcers 
about abusive conduct. This hamstrings their essential role in 
antitrust enforcement and has a direct adverse effect on 
innovation competition. Thank you, and I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Moss appears as a submission 
for the record.]
    Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very, very much. Next up, Mr. 
Harman.

             STATEMENT OF ALEX HARMAN, COMPETITION

        POLICY ADVOCATE, PUBLIC CITIZEN, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Harman. Thank you, Chairwoman Klobuchar, Ranking Member 
Lee, Chairman Durbin, and other Members of the Subcommittee for 
the opportunity to testify today. I'm Alex Harman, competition 
policy advocate for Public Citizen's Congress Watch division. 
We're a national nonprofit organization with more than 500,000 
members and supporters. For the past 50 years, we've 
represented the public interest on a broad range of issues, 
including competition and consolidation of corporate power.
    Thank you for your leadership in continuing to examine one 
of the most critical issues of our time: the harms to consumers 
and our economy that result from the failure of our antitrust 
laws to meet the challenges of the day. For decades, we have 
seen the rise of market power of big tech companies and an 
alarming increase in consolidation throughout the economy, 
which has stifled innovation.
    We appreciate the thoughtful work of the Subcommittee to 
address this serious problem through today's hearing and its 
prior work.
    I would like to dispel the myth that large, consolidated 
industries, particularly big tech companies, somehow foster 
innovation and American competitiveness. Or even more absurd, 
that addressing the problem of runaway consolidation and 
anticompetitive conduct would stifle innovation.
    Empirical evidence and common sense show us that the 
opposite is true. When companies face less competition, they 
invest less in R&D. They are in turn less likely to innovate in 
ways that benefit consumers and the economy. All too often, 
companies that depend on these gatekeeping firms to reach the 
marketplace slash jobs and cut back on developing new products 
and services, because they must pay steep monopoly rents as a 
cost of doing business. As the founder of one business said, 
``It feels like we are treading water with cement blocks around 
our feet.''
    This point bears repeating. Less competition leads to less 
innovation. Less innovation hurts consumers and the entire 
economy. In the highly consolidated tech sector, this means we 
get only marginal incremental enhancements instead of 
breakthrough products and services that once defined the big 
tech companies.
    Although I'll focus my testimony big tech's widespread 
dominance and abuse, the harmful effects of monopoly power on 
innovation are not limited to digital platforms. Studies of the 
agriculture and pharmaceutical industries also show that more 
consolidation leads to less R&D.
    Decades ago, these companies sought to disrupt stagnant 
industries and succeed where incumbents failed. These once 
scrappy disruptors have grown to be some of the largest and 
most valuable companies on the planet. Their businesses are 
focused on maintaining or building their dominance instead of 
building new products or services, ensuring that they cannot be 
displaced or disrupted by the next generation of startups.
    Tech startups often cannot get funding if they are in the 
so-called ``kill-zone'' that surrounds big tech. If a startup 
attempts to operate in an area that is seen as too close or a 
threat to one of the companies, investors assume that they will 
fail because of the likelihood that the big tech companies will 
crush such threats.
    A recent report by the FTC confirmed what we largely 
already knew. These firms have acquired more than 600 companies 
in the last decade. This innovation by acquisition has the 
insidious effect of displacing internal R&D and locking up 
innovative technologies under the control of big tech.
    In the last two years, Facebook--excuse me, Meta--while 
facing an FTC lawsuit over its acquisitions of Instagram and 
WhatsApp, has acquired five different virtual reality 
companies, seeking to cement its dominance in this space for 
years to come. In addition to engaging in hundreds of 
acquisitions, large tech companies have abused their dominance 
to make it so that any business that needs access to their 
platform either cannot compete at all, or can only do so under 
difficult or unfair conditions.
    These problems must be addresses--addressed immediately. 
Not five years from now. Not even a year from now. Across the 
political spectrum, Americans overwhelmingly agree that big 
tech must be reined in and demand action. Bipartisan 
legislation introduced earlier this year in the U.S. House of 
Representatives, as well as the other bills introduced by 
Members of this Subcommittee would help address the problems 
I've laid out.
    These bipartisan bills include the American Innovation 
Choice Online Act, introduced by Chairwoman Klobuchar and 
Ranking Member Grassley, which would establish fair rules for 
competition online. The Platform and Competition and 
Opportunity Act, introduced by Chairwoman Klobuchar and Senator 
Cotton, would prohibit certain anticompetitive mergers by the 
big tech companies. The Open App Markets Act, introduced by 
Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn, would ensure more 
opportunity for competition in the mobile app markets.
    Public Citizen supports all of this legislation. These 
bills would help unleash innovation. The promise of new, 
faster, and better products and services has hit a wall of big 
tech monopolies and their monopolistic market distortions. It 
is time to meet this challenge and correct the failure of our 
antitrust laws.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this 
important topic, and I look forward to any questions you might 
have.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Harman appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Thank you. Mr. Migicovsky.

             STATEMENT OF ERIC MIGICOVSKY, FOUNDER

          AND CEO, BEEPER INC., PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Migicovsky. Chairwoman Klobuchar, Ranking Member Lee, 
and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
testify. My name is Eric Migicovsky, and I am the founder of 
Beeper. We are a one-year-old startup with 20 employees. Beeper 
is a new chat messaging app that enables you to chat on 15 
different chat networks. It's a simple and efficient way to 
communicate with your friends, family, and colleagues.
    Beeper is actually my second startup. Previously, I founded 
Pebble, where we invented the smartwatch and did over $200 
million in sales. After trying to compete with the Apple Watch 
on an uneven playing ground, we were forced to sell the company 
to Fitbit in 2016. This hearing represents a rare opportunity 
to examine issues at the heart of innovation. Whether new ideas 
can compete fairly in markets distorted by big tech companies. 
I started building Beeper because I was tired of having to keep 
track of which apps my friends were on. I wanted one single 
place where I could message anyone I knew.
    Another motivating factor for us is security and privacy. 
Eighty percent of chat apps today do not offer encryption to 
their users. We're building Beeper as an alternative to chat 
apps run by large social networks that exist solely to capture 
more user data. Today, we have several thousand people beta 
testing Beeper, but we're finding it increasingly hard to 
connect Beeper to chat networks run by big tech companies.
    Our concerns over a level playing field are not simply 
theoretical. In particular, we are worried about Facebook. 
They've taken aggressive actions against companies in the past 
that have tried to interoperate with their network, including 
suing new entrants over CFAA violations, copyright, and other 
claims.
    My goal here today is to support legislation like Senator 
Klobuchar and Senator Grassley's American Innovation and Choice 
Online Act and Senator Blumenthal and Senator Blackburn's Open 
App Markets Act. I believe increased innovation in the chat 
market would result if these bills are passed.
    Chat is now the dominant form of communication. Just ask 
any teenager if they've sent an email or made a phone call in 
the last week. Today, almost all major chat apps are controlled 
by big tech companies, and most were created over 10 years ago. 
They're old, tired, and lacking in new ideas. For example, 
WhatsApp's most recent new feature was Status, which they 
copied from Snapchat.
    The reason why little innovation happens in chat is because 
of lock-in network effects. Over three billion people use chat 
every day, but on most major chat apps, you can only chat with 
people who are on the same app. Most users do not use these 
apps because of specific features. They use them because their 
friends are on the app. This lock-in network effect prevents 
new competitors with innovative ideas from getting off the 
ground.
    Big tech companies also stifle users' freedom by making it 
practically impossible to switch networks. For example, when 
WhatsApp changed its privacy policy earlier this year, many 
people tried to leave the platform. It's very difficult to move 
group chats and chat history from WhatsApp, so most people 
stayed put.
    Big tech companies also do not transparently explain to 
users what happens with their personal data. For example, Apple 
backs up users' encryption keys to their iCloud servers by 
default. Just last week it was reported that Tim Cook did a 
secret $275 billion deal with the Chinese government, which may 
have included moving certain iCloud servers to China.
    Finally, the chat market itself is distorted. Big tech 
companies give away their chat products for free, because chat 
is a reliable way to lock users into social platforms that then 
mine their user data. At Beeper, we have somewhat of a 
revolutionary business model. We charge users money in exchange 
for a service. Luckily, this Committee is currently considering 
legislation that provides straightforward solutions to these 
problems.
    First, big tech companies need to provide interoperability 
on their chat networks. Interoperability will give users the 
freedom to communicate with friends and family who are on 
different platforms. This is not a radical concept. Email is 
interoperable. Gmail users can send email to Outlook or Yahoo, 
no problem.
    Second, in order to have the freedom to switch networks, 
users need to be able to exert control over their own accounts 
and personal data. I firmly believe that the bills this 
Subcommittee is considering represent a critical step forward 
toward ensuring a competitive playing field for new startups.
    Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering any 
questions you have.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Migicovsky appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Klobuchar. Okay. Thank you very much. Remotely with 
us, Ms. Hein.

             STATEMENT OF BETTINA HEIN, CO-FOUNDER

              AND CEO, JULI, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

    Ms. Hein. Thank you so much. Chair Klobuchar, Ranking 
Member Lee, Chairman Durbin, and Members of the Subcommittee, 
thank you for your invitation to me to testify today. I'd like 
to begin by thanking you, Madam Chair, for your leadership 
regarding entrepreneurship and innovation issues as the co-
chair of the Senate Entrepreneurship Caucus. In particular, 
your work regarding the unique challenges that confront women 
entrepreneurs--and there are many--is especially appreciated.
    I want to begin by emphasizing that I am not a policymaker 
or an antitrust attorney. I'm a career long startup 
entrepreneur. I'm currently building my third company, and it 
has 15 people right now. I'm here to share with you my 
perspective the likely impact of acquisition restrictions and 
other market interventions on entrepreneurs like me.
    Thriving entrepreneurship is critical to a strong and 
growing economy. You all have mentioned that. Entrepreneurship 
is also risky. A third of new businesses fail by their second 
year. Half by their fifth. For fragile startups, there are 
three principal outcomes: fail, go public, or be acquired. 
Failure is the most common outcome. Many entrepreneurs dream of 
taking their company public, but most startups never achieve 
the scale that going public requires.
    Acquisition, therefore, is by far the most likely avenue 
for entrepreneurs and their employees to realize the value of 
what they've created through years of hard work and sacrifice. 
In a typical year, 10 times as many startups are acquired as go 
public.
    Importantly, acquisitions also enable startup investors, 
which I actually myself do as well. I invest in startups with 
the money that I've earned before. Acquisitions enable startup 
investors to reclaim their invested capital, realize any gains, 
and recycle their capital into the next generation of startups.
    My principle concern here today is that the Platform 
Competition and Opportunity Act, and those like it that 
restrict acquisition of startups by larger companies, will 
profoundly undermine the incentive for entrepreneurs to take 
the personal and financial risk of launching a new company. If 
investors are unable to liquidate their investment to reclaim 
capital and potential gains, they won't risk their capital by 
investing it in companies like mine in the first place. Without 
investors, there is no Juli. There is no startup ecosystem.
    I'm also concerned that the bill will likely accomplish 
exactly the opposite of what it intends by tilting regulatory 
circumstances in favor of the larger companies it targets. The 
risk of this unintended effect is very real because it has 
happened before. In the six years following the enactment of 
Sarbanes-Oxley, small company IPOs valued at $50 million or 
less plummeted by 92 percent, and that would have included 
Apple, Microsoft, etc. in their infancy.
    For me personally, Sarbanes-Oxley, at the time, meant 
giving up on my girlhood dream of running a public company. 
Similarly, 10 years after the enactment of Dodd-Frank, large 
banks are bigger and more profitable than ever, while more than 
2,000 community banks have disappeared and lending to small 
businesses has decreased significantly.
    The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act risks similar 
unintended consequences. By dramatically increasing the 
regulatory hurdle and compliance costs of acquisition, the Act 
would likely advantage large incumbent companies who have the 
money and teams of lawyers to navigate the new legal landscape. 
Many smaller acquirers would be shut out. Additionally, large 
acquirers will pay for the costs of the new requirements by 
simply reducing the value of transactions. In other words, 
reducing what they're willing to pay for companies like mine.
    Large technology companies won't be hurt by this 
legislation. Entrepreneurs like me will be. American 
households, consumers, and investors who rely on innovations 
entrepreneurs contribute will also be hurt.
    Madam Chair, Ranking Member Lee, to protect competition and 
innovation, we don't need the blunt sledgehammer of sweeping 
legislation with all of the risks of unintended consequences. 
Rather, we need a surgeon's scalpel to carefully dissect, 
understand, and address the unique circumstances of each 
proposed acquisition, and that scalpel resides with the 
regulators.
    As you said at a recent Center for American Progress event, 
Madam Chair, ``Put the right people in those agencies, and give 
them the resources they need to do their job.'' Thank you very 
much for this opportunity, and I'm looking forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Hein appears as a submission 
for the record.]
    Chair Klobuchar. All right. Thank you very much. Next up--
but I will note the number of the people that are in the 
agencies doing their jobs or have done their jobs, including 
the former head of the Antitrust Division, Makan Delrahim, 
under President Trump, believed that we need to make some 
changes to the laws so they can actually do their jobs to 
enforce the laws. With that, I will turn it over to Professor 
Alford.

             STATEMENT OF ROGER ALFORD, PROFESSOR,

           NOTRE DAME LAW SCHOOL, NOTRE DAME, INDIANA

    Professor Alford. Thank you, Chairman Klobuchar, Ranking 
Member Lee, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for 
inviting me for the opportunity to be here. You have my written 
testimony, so I'm just going to raise a few key points in my 
opening remarks, and hopefully we can go into more detail in 
the Q and A.
    I was going to begin by talking about the consumer welfare 
standard, but my position is very similar to what Senator Lee 
said, so I will skip my comments with respect to the consumer 
welfare standard. Let me begin by discussing innovation and 
quality-fixing.
    Harm to innovation raises the issue of powerful market 
actors engaging in what may be called ``quality-fixing.'' Why 
do we focus so much attention on price-fixing, but we almost 
never discuss quality-fixing? Why are we not more concerned 
about big tech companies working through trade associations to 
collude on quality, such as a diluted common privacy standard? 
Why have there been no subpoenas from Congress or Government 
enforcers investigating collusion on quality? Rare are the 
cases such as the European Commission and its $1 billion fine 
against five European automakers for colluding with one another 
to delay introducing clean energy innovations.
    Second, antitrust law should be more particular about 
innovation involving startups. We should embrace the fact that 
a common exit strategy for startups is to be acquired. At the 
same time, we should recognize that VC money is often 
unavailable to a startup that tries to compete with a dominant 
firm. If it does try to compete, that dominant firm may seek to 
acquire to eliminate a competitor. The DOJ's challenge of 
Visa's attempt to acquire Plaid is on recent example, and so 
too is the FDA's complaint against Facebook regarding the 
Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions.
    Third, innovation is of particular concern in the context 
of mergers, and sometimes requires innovation divestitures. To 
address innovation concerns in the Bayer-Monsanto merger for 
example, the DOJ required emerging parties to divest certain 
intellectual property and research capabilities, including 
pipeline R&D projects. This structural remedy was necessary to 
maintain competition in emerging product lines.
    Fourth, sometimes incumbents seek to forestall innovation 
to keep prices high and to reduce output. The real estate 
market is a quintessential example. It is dominated by the 
National Association of Realtors, which imposes mandatory rules 
that keep prices high and reduces innovation.
    As a result of NAR, rules that require a seller to pay a 
buyer broker's commissions, brokerage fees for the sale of an 
average home in the Unites States are between $20,000 and 
$24,000, compared to $14,000 for the same priced home in other 
developed countries. Imagine the impact on the average American 
if they could purchase homes more efficiently, enhance their 
job mobility and build home equity easier and earlier. Online 
listing services such as Zillow have offered some innovation in 
searching for homes, and discount brokers such as Redfin and 
REX offer technological solutions.
    None of these innovations allow consumers to buy and sell 
homes with the kind of transparency, functionality, and 
efficiency commonplace in other online marketplaces. There is 
nothing like Robinhood or E-Trade in the real estate market. 
This is all because of NAR's mandatory rules that forestall 
innovation.
    Finally, let me briefly discuss exclusionary innovation. 
Innovation is not always good. Sometimes innovation excludes 
competition. With respect to online platforms, search 
algorithms often are designed to self-preference. Technologies 
often are not interoperable. Data portability raises similar 
concerns. Big tech frequently introduces, quote, ``innovations 
to degrade the quality of competing products and services.''
    Let me offer a concrete example from the Texas v. Google 
complaint. Google uses its power in the online digital 
advertising marketplace to force publishers to use Google's 
exchange, which charges extremely high transaction fees. These 
fees hurt publishers' revenue, so publishers developed some 
code to allow them to reduce fees and route their inventory to 
multiple exchanges. Google was upset by this. They called is an 
existential threat, so they introduced a series of innovations 
to make it slower and harder for publishers to use competing 
exchanges. In short, Google introduced numerous innovations for 
the express purpose and result of excluding competition.
    Let me close by saying that one certainly has the 
impression that there is a growing bipartisan consensus that 
big tech companies have abused their market power in excluding 
innovation and that something must be done about it. That is 
reflected in various lawsuits filed and prosecuted by the Trump 
and Biden administrations, as well as almost every State 
attorney general. It is also reflected in the various 
bipartisan legislation that has been introduced in the Senate 
and in the House.
    Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Professor Alford appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Thank you all of you. I think 
I'll start with you, Mr. Migicovsky because I was struck by 
your testimony about how innovative developers like yourself, 
you can come up with a product, you can get it to market, you 
start a new business, bright and shiny, and then you always 
come up against some kind of a wall. Could you talk about what 
your experience has been interacting with dominant platforms in 
more depth, like Apple, Google, and Facebook?
    One of the things I was thinking about, which maybe you can 
comment on, when you talked about how when you do emails, you 
can--you don't know that you're dealing with a different 
company or whatever it is. Then I was thinking about how when 
you do chats, it comes up in different colors. It would be like 
with the emails, you had 10 different colors and it would come 
up in different ways, whereas Apple has to point out it's not 
their phone you're dealing with, and that often some of these 
are harder to read for non-iPhone users, and I was just 
thinking how ridiculous that is compared to email or other 
forms of telephones, for instance, or cell phones. You don't 
have a buzz in the background when you try to call someone from 
a different cell phone company. Or a little bing goes on--
``You're not on our network, sorry. Good luck.'' Could you talk 
about this?
    Mr. Migicovsky. Thanks for the question, Senator. I'll 
answer the last one first and then move to the first one. I 
think what you're referring to is the iMessage green bubble 
versus blue bubble situation you probably have experienced. 
When you're sending a message from and iPhone to an Android 
user, it shows up as a green bubble. Yes, this is a real thing.
    While I was doing research for this, I actually found that 
the color differentiation between the text on a green bubble 
actually fails Apple's accessibility standards, which means 
that it's technically harder to read a message to someone who 
has an Android phone than iPhone. These little things add up to 
make it more difficult to communicate.
    You may recall 20 years ago when cell carriers used to 
limit or limit SMS or text messaging between carriers. For 
example, if you had an AT&T phone, you couldn't send a text 
message to someone who had Verizon. That's kind of the world 
that we're living in today, and it feels a little bit weird to 
be in 2021 and still have these barriers between us as we 
communicate.
    Regarding your question about the walls that have been 
thrown up, my fist company, Pebble, we made smart watches. We 
were building a product that competed squarely with Apple's 
Apple Watch. On Android, we were able to get access to the 
system features that we needed to deliver a good user 
experience, but on Apple products, we simply weren't able to 
get the same level of access that products like the Apple Watch 
enjoyed. This made it really hard to compete, and since Apple 
controls both the app store as well as the operating system, it 
was hard to build an accessory that worked with iPhone.
    Chair Klobuchar. Could you talk a little bit--and maybe Ms. 
Moss, Mr. Harman, you can join in on how that bill--the bill 
that Senator Grassley and I have introduced, which I see 
Senator Hawley here is supporting it, as well as Senator 
Durbin--how that would help with some of this conduct because 
you can't put your stuff above everyone else. You can't rip off 
other products and then put it up against the product you're 
ripped off, and that you can't use data and other things. Any 
of you can comment on it, but the difference that it would 
make. Ms. Moss.
    Dr. Moss. Thank you. I'm happy to respond to that question. 
I think competition in this country has risen to the level of a 
public policy problem, and innovation competition is a big part 
of that, obviously. That means, I think, we need to use all of 
the tools in the public policy toolkit to address the concern 
over waning competition through discriminatory conduct or other 
harmful types of behaviors. I would say that using multiple 
tools in the toolkit, strengthening antitrust regulation is a 
really important way to remove incentives to engage in 
discriminatory conduct, or put constraints on it. That will 
absolutely level the playing field for smaller rivals--
innovative disruptors operating on platforms, in terms of 
operability, in terms of access, in terms of the ability to 
reach consumers with their products and services.
    I would say one more thing very briefly. The tech sector 
moves very, very quickly, extremely quickly, and we are--the 
big five are on the downside of an acquisition cycle. We are 
now studying, at the American Antitrust Institute, the 
companies that are what we call up-and-comers. These are 
companies who are acquiring cloud infrastructure, they are 
building out and fortifying platforms, and I worry about this 
next gen of up-and-coming digital techs that are going to be--
the powerful platforms in three to five years. I think we want 
to think broadly about public policy initiatives and 
legislative reforms like the anti-discrimination bill so that 
we are throwing our umbrella over all of the potential firms 
who could grow to be dominant platforms and who would engage in 
discriminatory conduct.
    Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Anything you want to add, and 
then I'll turn it over to Senator Lee. Mr. Harmon.
    Mr. Harmon. Yes. I think the question you're asking about 
how would your bill specifically make it easier? I think if you 
are in the situation of a startup, as Pebble was, and you look 
at how Pebble was treated in a situation in which Apple would 
have to make their platform available for you to plug into, or 
would not be able to preference their product above yours, it's 
going to change your calculus in terms of how you approach 
developing a potential competitor.
    Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Thank you very much. Senator 
Lee.
    Senator Lee. Thank you. Professor, I want to start with 
you, if that's all right. I saw you mentioned in your written 
testimony something we looked at at a hearing that we held last 
year, on that I called back when I was the Chairman of the 
Committee still. Among other things, we looked at competition 
and the state of competition in areas where consumers suffer as 
a result of two firms having control of every part of the ad 
tech space, and my office is currently working on legislation 
on this issue to address some of these problems: the conflicts 
of interest in competition that arise in digital advertising. 
Do you think this is an area where Congress could step in and 
solve the problem?
    Professor Alford. Yes, thank you for the question. As I 
mentioned in my bio, I've been consulting with the State of 
Texas since August 2019 on the Texas v. Google litigation, so I 
know firsthand, having followed this issue extremely closely, 
how real the problem is. So yes, I think the answer--litigation 
obviously is one possible solution. It's extraordinarily 
expensive. It takes an extremely long time. There are 
inordinate delay efforts on the part of Google with respect to 
that.
    You have introduced a venue legislation that will try to 
help expedite the process with respect to litigation, which I 
think is a great idea. To answer your question, I think there's 
no regulatory context whatsoever here to deal with the online 
display advertising market. It is--right now, antitrust is 
doing all of the work, right? One possible solution that one 
could think about would be to think about how the similar 
conflicts of interest have been adjusted in financial markets 
and how we could impose similar conflict of interest concerns 
and limitations in the online display advertising markets.
    For example, you cannot own the New York Stock Exchange, 
right, and then be a monopoly player on the stock exchange as a 
broker, right? You cannot basically funnel all of the trades 
that happen on your brokerage firm into your preferred 
exchange, right?
    Right now, Google has exactly that issue, so there is no 
best interest duty, there is no duty of best execution, there's 
no limitations on insider trading, all of those kinds of things 
happen. If you had a strict requirement that if you're going to 
own an exchange, you can't be a broker on either the ad or the 
sell side, that would be a useful addition, I think.
    Senator Lee. Yet, currently, they are.
    Professor Alford. They are definitely----
    Senator Lee. They run the exchange----
    Professor Alford. Yes, exactly.
    Senator Lee [continuing]. And they're a broker of both 
sides.
    Professor Alford. Just to give you an example, the NYSE is 
owned by Intercontinental Exchange, and they earn $3.6 billion 
from revenue from their exchanges. Google earns that in five 
days.
    Senator Lee. Right. My concern is not with how much money 
they earn or how they do it. It's not unlawful to be a 
monopolist in this country, but it is unlawful to acquire or 
maintain monopoly status through anticompetitive conduct.
    Professor Alford. Right.
    Senator Lee. It's hard to me to imagine a circumstance in 
which one can own the exchange platform and also be a buyer, 
seller, broker, dealer and whatever other positions they might 
occupy in the meantime. It's hard for me to imagine how one 
firm can maintain all of those positions without something 
anticompetitive going on in purpose and effect.
    Ms. Hein, I'd like to turn to you next. You and your 
colleagues decided to sell your first company to an acquirer. 
Can you explain to my colleagues and to me why any entrepreneur 
would choose to sell their company rather than to continue to 
build it with an eye toward going eventually public?
    Ms. Hein. Yes, I can do that, Senator. Thank you for your 
question. The circumstances of each company are unique, and it 
depends on how strong of a position one can build in the 
market, as we're discussing here, depends on the technology and 
how market access works. Oftentimes, there are also hurdles 
like I spoke about in my testimony, Sarbanes-Oxley, for 
example. What that kind of regulation does is that it requires 
a significant amount of capital even to access the capital 
markets, so currently, startups that want to go public, 
typically, before they go public, raise an additional $20 
million in order to then be able to get over those hurdles 
everything that they need to do.
    With startup companies, it's very unique where they go, and 
I think that it should not be regulation that determines who I 
sell the company to or whether I could go public with it.
    Senator Lee. Can I ask one follow-up there?
    Chair Klobuchar. Of course.
    Senator Lee. It does sound like a somewhat similar 
situation to where you see a lot of pharmaceutical startups 
heading. As a result of FDA regulations and the capital demands 
competing--on starting and finishing clinical trials, most 
small innovators have to get acquired in order to scale up. It 
sounds like you're describing a similar phenomenon.
    Ms. Hein. Yes. Definitely. There are a lot of regulatory 
hurdles, and obviously, there is reason for a lot of these, but 
my point here is that there are a lot of unintended 
consequences, and I am afraid that my livelihood, which exists 
in creating innovative companies, will be impacted by 
regulations that I have to abide by and I can't do anything to 
control. The different thresholds, for example, is the $600 
billion going to stay in place or be lowered, as Dr. Moss 
suggests. That all makes it very scary for people like me.
    Senator Lee. Thank you.
    Chair Klobuchar. Senator Durbin.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you. I'm trying to work through in my 
mind some historic analogies that will help me understand where 
we are today, and I guess the most profound evidence of 
Government intervention in the marketplace in my lifetime that 
destroyed a monopoly and created innovation and 
entrepreneurship to a level that was unimaginable was AT&T, 
almost 40 years ago. It busted up into regional companies and 
then spun off in many, many different directions.
    The mothership, AT&T, kept the production of telephones in 
Western Electric, which was an important part of the economy in 
the Chicagoland area, but now, they're virtually nonexistent. 
It isn't as if the iPhone people had to go to Western Electric 
to get permission for a new invention. Innovation just raced 
right past that model, that AT&T model that we had accepted as 
being virtually a public utility for so long in the United 
States.
    It really gets down, Mr. Migicovsky and Ms. Hein, to a 
question which I'm still hanging onto, and that is what is your 
ambition as an entrepreneur and an innovator? Is it to be 
acquired at some early point in the process and to make out 
like a bandit, and then look to invest in others who are doing 
the same, or is it to build the next iPhone or whatever it 
happens to be, some variation. Which will take a lot of time 
and patience and investment to happen. According to Ms. Hein, 
the numbers are 10 to 1 that it's just to be acquired and move 
along to something else.
    Of course, the acquiring entity may have the best of 
intentions or the worst of intentions. It's hard for us to say. 
They may want to get you out of the competitive mode because 
you look menacing to them, or they may think this is such a 
great idea, we want to own it. We want to develop it.
    Mr. Migicovsky, before Ms. Hein, would you comment on that?
    Mr. Migicovsky. Thanks very much for the question, Senator. 
Over the last four years, before I started Beeper, I was a 
venture capitalist at an early stage firm called Y Combinator. 
There, I helped invest in 400 companies over the span of four 
years. I will say that the best founders that I met at Y 
Combinator started their company to beat Google, not to sell to 
it. I think that the limitations that are put on competition 
right now by some of these extremely large tech platforms are 
reminiscent of the AT&T days, especially for their earliest--
companies at their earliest stage.
    There's a story from the 1950's about a company that made 
an addition to an AT&T telephone called the Hush-A-Phone, which 
was a silencer that you would put around the phone, and they 
were banned from making it because AT&T had, you know, monopoly 
across the entire stack. That is very similar to companies like 
Apple, which makes the phone and also makes the app store that 
distributes software. That's one of the reasons why we're 
supportive of Senator Blumenthal and Senator Blackburn's Open 
App Markets Act, which would go very far to leveling the 
playing ground for startups to compete on the app store.
    Chair Durbin. Give me your reaction to Ms. Hein's 10 to 1 
number. It isn't even close. It's like 10 times as many are 
looking for acquisition as opposed to public offering.
    Mr. Migicovsky. When companies start out, they're 
definitely--at least the best founders that I know, are not 
looking for an acquisition. They're looking to build a product 
that could potentially change the world. That's one of the 
unifying factors, I think, among most startup founders. I 
think--I could speak to my case. In our case, our company, 
Pebble, we ran out of money, and so we had to sell the company 
as the only kind of exit. That was definitely not our intention 
when we started out. We had, you know, very large and high 
goals. Having an exit route is, you know, useful. It's 
definitely not the thing that we set out to do.
    Chair Durbin. I might say to Ms. Hein, if she's still 
following. I hope that she still is. I voted for Sarbanes-Oxley 
and if you would go back to that moment in time when we had 
that debate, we were dealing with corporations that weren't 
shooting straight. They weren't leveling with people in terms 
of the actual books, and people were losing a lot of money from 
misrepresentations. It's true that there was--will be a 
difference of opinion, even on this panel, about what I have to 
say here--true that there were more regulations imposed, but 
the goal of those was similar to a goal of antitrust 
operations, so that we can have more honest dealings with the 
public than we did before.
    We had some terrible instances--I could go through the long 
list. Sure, it cost more for corporations to provide 
information that was reliable and trustworthy for consumers as 
well as investors, but if you want the integrity of the 
marketplace, which I think distinguishes the United States from 
many other countries, there's a price to be paid for it, and I 
just say that in defense of Sarbanes-Oxley.
    Senator Lee. [Presiding.] Senator Grassley.
    Senator Grassley. I'm just going to make a statement and 
ask one question in my five minutes. I'm a Republican, and 
everybody thinks Republicans should leave the free market 
alone, and I believe that it is the best source of innovation 
and competition. Where markets aren't working, antitrust 
enforcers should be able to take swift and decisive action to 
prevent anticompetitive activity. If our laws need updating to 
provide better authority, then that's something that Congress 
should consider.
    I have strong concerns about competition in some sectors. 
That's why I've introduced several bills addressing concerns 
with competition in the pharmaceutical marketplace. A lot of 
those have been bipartisan with Senator Klobuchar. Similarly, 
agriculture is an area where I've expressed concern for many 
years and introduced several pieces of legislation, including 
increasing transparency in livestock markets. I've been 
increasingly concerned with the dominance of the big tech 
companies and how that impacts competitors and consumers.
    Right now, there are only a handful of companies that 
control American's everyday lives, from what they see and read, 
how they interact online, how they purchase goods. These big 
tech companies are using their dominant monopoly power to favor 
themselves, and that monopoly power harms small businesses. 
It's not only preferencing and discrimination that's happening, 
but they also are using their power in the market to silence 
conservative voices.
    There must be a level playing field and fair competition. 
That's why I earlier joined the bill that Senator Klobuchar has 
already talked about, the American Innovation and Choice Online 
Act to address competition concerns with big tech. This bill 
provides common sense rules to ensure that dominant online 
platforms don't unfairly preference their own products or 
discriminate against business users on their platforms. It will 
help ensure greater competition and more opportunities for 
small business and better results for consumers.
    This bill isn't about punishing successful companies. I 
strongly applaud American ingenuity and success, but we must 
ensure that there is a fair and even playing field for everyone 
on dominant platforms and that consumers aren't harmed. The 
American Innovation and Choice Online Act is about targeting 
harmful conduct while ensuring that pro-consumer innovations 
are protected.
    My question to Ms. Moss and Professor Alford, how do you--
let me--I want to go back to one of the bills that I said I 
introduced. Over the past few decades, we've seen increased 
competition and anticompetitive activity in the agriculture 
industry, including in meatpacking, the seed market, and 
fertilizers. So, to you two, how do you think that this has 
negatively impacted competition in consumers of agricultural 
products?
    Dr. Moss. Thank you, Senator Grassley. To your question 
about competition in the ag biotech industry, we've--AAI has 
done a tremendous amount of work on this. We now have the 
creation of multi-level, massive, behemoth platforms in traits, 
seeds, agri-chemicals, and now digital farming. I spoke in my 
remarks earlier about the massive wingspan of these companies. 
Not to say that there aren't necessarily some efficiencies that 
might come out of integration. These companies are so large 
that smaller innovative rivals have virtually no chance of 
getting a foothold in the market because they are faced with a 
company that dominates multiple levels.
    To your question about the role of Congress, I applaud all 
of you for thinking hard and seriously about the role of 
Congress in strengthening, clarifying, modernizing, and 
updating our antitrust laws to address the types of endemic 
problems that we see in large companies. Exclusionary conduct 
through discrimination on platforms, cartels that slow down 
innovation and harm consumers, all of these are needed steps 
and bootstrapping for our antitrust laws, I think, in the 
United States. We really are, I believe, at a pivotal-pivotal 
point, excuse me, where we can look to protect our consumers, 
our markets, and our democratic principles, or we can slide 
into a period of very slow economic growth and decline.
    Senator Grassley. Professor.
    Professor Alford. Yes, on agriculture, let me just say that 
I think the biggest problem is you sort of have to pick which 
seeds and seed varieties and chemicals you're going to use 
between the different competitors and then stick with them. You 
don't really have the freedom to pick and choose between some 
seed varieties with some companies and then other chemicals 
with other companies. You sort of have to pick which company 
you're going to go with and do that.
    With respect to your support and sponsorship of S-2992 and 
the various categories of unlawful conduct that you are 
proposing to address, I do want to say that there's a lot of 
good that is happening in this bill. Let me give you, for 
example, section 2 on unlawful conduct of S-2992 prohibits 
conditioning access to cover platforms or preferred status or 
placement on the cover platform on the purchase or use of other 
products or services offered by the covered platform operator 
that are not part of or intrinsic to the covered platform. That 
is exactly the kind of behavior that we're seeing with respect 
to Google and the online advertising market where there is a 
forced tie-in, a forced connection between if you're going to 
use one of their products, say, the buyer broker or the seller 
broker, you also have to use one of their other products. You 
cannot advertise on YouTube without using Google's brokerage 
services. It's impossible to do it. These are the kinds of 
concerns that I think you're proposing in this legislation that 
would be helpful.
    Senator Lee. Senator Blumenthal.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thanks, Senator Lee. Thank you all for 
being here today. This topic is one of tremendous interest and 
importance to this Subcommittee, and in fact, should be, as 
you've said, Ms. Moss, to the whole Congress. I want to begin 
by asking a question about Apple and Google with their total 
control over what apps consumers can discover and install 
around the world. That's why the app stores are called walled 
gardens, as you know. Despite corporate rhetoric about the 
protection of freedom of expression, both Apple and Google have 
proven susceptible to pressure from authoritarian governments, 
which should concern us on both sides of the aisle.
    Apple has caved to pressure from Chinese authorities to 
remove tens of thousands of apps from the app stores in China, 
and they've done it without so much as an explanation as to the 
laws that the Chinese government claim were violated. No real 
protest, no objections. To name a few of those apps, the New 
York Times apps, which Apple removed while the newspaper was 
working on articles critical of the Chinese government, 
abhorrent to our values. Radio Free Asia, as U.S. taxpayer-
funded, nonprofit news service, and one of the most popular 
Koran apps in China.
    Of course, China is not the only country capable of putting 
that kind of pressure on Apple or Google to cave in to their 
terms. This fall, Apple and Google agreed to shut down the 
smart voting app in Russia, which was meant to help opposition 
parties organize the head of parliamentary elections.
    Let me ask you, Mr. Harman, we have an obvious foreign 
policy interest in promoting democracy, free press, and human 
rights. These are core American values. They are the values 
that underly freedom of expression in this country and our 
marketplace that enables Google and Apple to make the money 
that they do. Is it fair to say that Apple's censoring 
protestors in Hong Kong and Russia, even blocking the Voice of 
America service, undermines our national interest?
    Mr. Harman. I think yes, of course. In fact, absolute 
monopoly on how you get to apps gives them the power to do 
that.
    Senator Blumenthal. My time is limited, so I will assume 
that everyone on this panel agrees unless you would like to say 
something to the contrary. Thank you.
    As you all know, two decades ago, the Department of Justice 
and 20 attorneys general sued Microsoft over Windows dominance 
to undermine competitors in a new, important market--then, very 
new--the internet. I was one of the State Attorneys General. In 
fact, I helped to lead that group. One tactic from the 
Microsoft playbook of that time strikes me as particularly apt 
today. Microsoft's desire to collect a vig for online commerce. 
I didn't use the word vig at the time. Actually, it was used by 
a number of outside commentaries. I'm going to put one in the 
record. James Rill, who referred to it at the time as a vig. As 
you know, vig is sort of a slang term; as a former U.S. 
attorney, I know well. Used by bookies. Meaning they take a cut 
when they bring betters together.
    In 1997, the Wall Street Journal, in this article, which 
I'm going to ask to be part of the record, if there is no 
objection?
    Chair Klobuchar. So be it. It will be part of the record.
    [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
    Senator Blumenthal. Thanks. ``They, in effect, collected a 
vig for every transaction over the internet that uses Microsoft 
technology.'' That's actually a quote from the article.
    Microsoft actually was never successful in that effort 
because of antitrust enforcement against the company by those 
State attorneys general and the Department of Justice. Since 
then, there have been years of lax antitrust enforcement, and 
so Apple and Google have managed to do what Microsoft wasn't 
able to accomplish at the peak of its monopoly power, which is 
to collect a vig on every transaction in our app economy.
    Today, Apple and Google use their duopoly to take a cut of 
all paid apps and in-app purchases of digital goods and 
services. Typically, it's 30 percent off the top. That vig 
actually has far more profound impact on most consumers than 
the vig collected in those days by the bookies, which was 
rarely felt by the average or ordinary American. This vig 
really stifles innovation and ultimately raises cost for 
consumers. And if developers don't like that vig, there is 
nowhere for them to go. Apple and Google's duopoly gives them 
the power to say, ``Pay our cut or leave behind all mobile 
devices.''
    Because Apple set the standard, this monopoly rent free--
rent fee. I wish it were rent free--is often referred to as the 
Apple tax. The Apple tax. The vig. Every bit as pernicious, 
probably more so, than the vig charged by bookies.
    I think I've accurately summarized the current state of 
play. Let me ask you, Mr. Migicovsky, isn't it the case that 
Apple and Google are doing what Microsoft couldn't get away 
with--essentially charging that vig--and what is the impact on 
consumers?
    Mr. Migicovsky. Thanks for the question, Senator. It has a 
massive impact. Companies that get started have to consider 
both how they price their product for customers--that takes 
into account the Apple tax. Because of the nontransparent rules 
that Apple has set up around getting onto their app store, most 
companies need to spend weeks, if not months, negotiating and 
working through a reviews process with Apple just to get onto 
the store. This is something that every company that wants to 
sell a product available to iPhone users needs to take into 
consideration.
    I think with the bill that you put forward along with 
Senator Blackburn, Open App Markets Bill, puts forward an idea 
that levels the playing field, and it would allow for the 
possibility of sideloading or installing an app outside of the 
store, which opens up many opportunities for new ideas, new 
companies, and new business models, as well, that don't have to 
pay the 30 percent tax.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thanks, Mr. Migicovsky. Mr. Harman, I'm 
assuming you would agree with that. I've overstepped my time, 
so the Chairman may allow you to answer, but----
    Chair Klobuchar. Go ahead. Oh, please go ahead.
    Senator Blumenthal. Mr. Harman.
    Mr. Harman. Yes, I agree, and I think it is important to 
compare. The Microsoft vision pales in comparison to what the 
reality of what 30 percent. I mean, I don't think they imagined 
30 percent with their vig. And Google and Apple have 
successfully put that in place.
    Senator Blumenthal. Even Bill Gates didn't have that 
vision.
    Mr. Harman. Right.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thanks, Madam Chair.
    Chair Klobuchar. Senator Hawley.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you, Madam Chair and thanks to the 
witnesses for being here. Ms. Moss, I want to come back to 
something that you said to Senator Klobuchar at the beginning 
of the hearing. You said--talked about the big five being on 
sort of a downward slope in their acquisitions and then talked 
about that next generation of dominant platforms. You were 
thinking about this, with particular reference to the cloud 
infrastructure.
    I'm really curious about that. Could you just give us a 
sense of--who you--as you look to the future, and you think 
about the next wave here of potential monopolists and the next 
wave of dominant platforms--who are you thinking about? What 
are you looking at? What are you seeing?
    Dr. Moss. Thank you, Senator. That's a fantastic question, 
and very much dovetails with the work that I referenced 
earlier. We at AAI are very interested in the digital business 
ecosystem, sort of as a business model or phenomenon. And what 
we find is they're very unique.
    Typically, a digital business ecosystem is built around a 
platform, whether it's search, or ecommerce, or advertising, 
you name it. To support those platforms and the users that 
engage with them, you need a lot of cloud infrastructure, so 
you need machine learning technologies, cloud computing, 
artificial intelligence plays a really important role, data 
analytics.
    We find that when those two pieces are in place, digital 
ecosystems can really expand infinitum. They can add in apps to 
their ecosystems, whether that's in fintech or health tech, or 
energy tech, or ed tech. Again, you name it. These ecosystems 
have really significant capacities for growth and expansion. 
What we've seen with the top five, is they have grown 
monumentally over the last 25 years. Seven hundred 
transactions, 200 reportable under the HSR requirements, only 1 
challenged Google ITA by the Department of Justice.
    We are very worried about the activity that we see from an 
antitrust standpoint, obviously. New players who are quietly 
engaging in massive levels of acquisitions--these are folks 
that really fly under the radar screen--who have that cloud 
technology and capability. They have their platforms in place. 
And they really are poised to expand dramatically in the next, 
I would say, three to five years, whereas the big five have 
really slowed down significantly on acquisitions.
    We have this new generation coming up of highly acquisitive 
companies with tremendous cloud capability, and those are the 
ones I think that are very much worth watching as we move into 
the future. I'm not saying the big five aren't worth watching. 
They are, but it's this new generation, I think, that we need 
to be very keen on monitoring.
    Senator Hawley. Give us a sense of who is in that category.
    Dr. Moss. I would love to do that. There are public and 
private companies. I wish I had my list, my spreadsheet. We 
have companies in there like Sales Force, which has been 
incredibly acquisitive over the last many years. Companies like 
Intuit, with an incredible impact in the fintech space. Zillow 
is building out an incredible platform ecosystem, and these 
companies don't have enormous market caps as you might know, 
but they certainly have the capability to grow, I think, into 
large market cap companies and have all the same features as 
the big digital business ecosystems.
    Just one more quick comment. We worry about these companies 
because they are really rife with what we call market failures 
in economics. There are data externalities. There are network 
effects. There are information asymmetries around the use of 
data. When you have ecosystems or models like that, where there 
are lots of market failures, you're kind of looking at a 
similar situation to your traditional natural monopoly electric 
utility. That does require government oversight to make sure 
that consumers are not ripped off.
    Senator Hawley. Very good. That's very helpful. Thank you 
very much. Mr. Migicovsky, if I could just come to you. I 
wanted to ask you about further action that you think from a 
policy perspective that this body might take. You've mentioned 
about opening up the app store. I've sponsored legislation that 
would mandate data portability and interoperabilities. Is that 
something worth pursuing? Are there other steps that we should 
be thinking about policy wise, in terms of changes to the law 
that would actually promote competition and innovation and 
allow companies like yours to have a chance at succeeding, as 
opposed to being shut out by the dominant players?
    Mr. Migicovsky. Thanks very much for your question, 
Senator. The Access Act, which I think you cosponsored in the 
previous Congress, is a, I think, a very important piece of 
legislation that would support companies like Beeper that are 
aiming to interoperate with some of the largest tech platforms. 
I think one of the things that access does is it enables users 
to have the freedom to switch away from certain platforms if 
they no longer continue to agree with those platforms.
    Right now, most users are locked in because their current 
social graph is contained within some of these free apps. If 
Access were to come to pass, I think that you would see a 
tremendous innovation in terms of new companies that would 
compete with some of these entrenched large tech companies 
because no longer would switching mean giving up on the 
existing relationships that you have with your friends, with 
your family. You would still be able to maintain those, while 
potentially supporting a different competitor in the space.
    Senator Hawley. Very good. That's very helpful. Thank you. 
My time has expired, so I will leave it at that. I just want to 
say, Madam Chair, that I happened to see Mr. Migicovsky earlier 
today, and I think this is your first time testifying, right? I 
told him this Committee is so friendly that he had nothing to 
fear. There you are.
    Chair Klobuchar. Exactly. Except for certain people, but 
yes, it is very very friendly. Very friendly. Okay. Next up, 
Senator Blackburn.
    Senator Blackburn. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you 
all for the hearing today. I had the opportunity to visit with 
Mr. Migicovsky yesterday and had a great competition. I 
represent Tennessee, and in our State, I think we have the most 
amazing, creative community. When you look at Nashville and all 
the songwriters, the TV, the movie production, we have a lot of 
people that are constantly innovated--innovating. Their 
intellectual property is their stock and trade.
    One of the things we hear a good bit about is access to 
capital for startups, and this is something that many times 
what I hear--and a lot of this is people that are innovating in 
health IT, or in predictive diagnostic systems, or in the 
financial service sector.
    Then people will say well, they don't want to invest 
because they're afraid that you're going to have a Google or an 
Apple or somebody come in and cut the legs out from under you, 
and you're not going to be able to actually reap that benefit. 
Ms. Hein, I want to come to you for about 30 seconds on this, 
and then Mr. Migicovsky, you. Talk about the problem with 
access to capital when you have these innovators that are 
facing these people that are scooping up rather than allowing 
companies to grow. Go ahead, please.
    Ms. Hein. Yes. Thank you, Senator. It is a problem that 
access to capital is limited, especially for female 
entrepreneurs. I think you know that, and those in regions that 
are not the supercenters of venture capital. What big companies 
do do is that they not only buy companies, but they also just 
copy the features that we bring out, and that does stifle 
competition. I don't think, therefore, that just limiting 
acquisitions will be the answer to this. I agree with my other 
panelists that open API access, for example, is very important. 
Interoperability are part of the solutions that you could 
enact.
    Senator Blackburn. Thanks. Go ahead.
    Mr. Migicovsky. Thanks for the question, Senator. I think 
to echo one of the points that Alex was making earlier today--
as an investor, we decided to invest in many early stage 
companies, usually at the stage where it's one or two people 
and an idea. There were certain areas that we had to think 
twice before we invested in, mostly because of large entrenched 
players. I think one that may come to mind is the music 
industry and the entertainment industry.
    When we looked at startups that attempted to innovate in 
these spaces, we always considered how difficult it was to get 
access to the IP and break into some of these very controlled 
markets. I think that's one of the reasons why it's more rare 
to see startups that attempt to reinvent ways of distributing 
music or content, mostly because of this.
    Senator Blackburn. You know, sometimes when I look at this 
issue on innovation, it reminds me of what we went through 
about 10 years ago with the patent trolls that were looking at 
some of the concepts in the apps that were coming online, and 
it seems to kind of mirror that. Let me have you continue, if I 
can, on chokepoints where the startups have a tough time 
breaking into a market. What would you classify as being these 
chokepoints?
    Mr. Migicovsky. One of the chokepoints that I think we've 
talked about before is the app store. That is the primary 
chokepoint. All roads to the iPhone flow through the app store. 
On top of that, I think the financial sector currently has many 
controls that limit how new startups can begin to interoperate. 
It's getting better. I think there are some startups, like 
Plaid, that have innovated in the space and make it much easier 
for new companies to kind of connect in. Another example is 
Stripe. Other than that, it is still much harder to build a 
financial tech company.
    Senator Blackburn. Thank you. You will notice, Madam 
Chairwoman that he gave the correct answer in talking about the 
app store, and that is why we need the Open App Markets Act.
    Chair Klobuchar. Very good.
    Senator Blackburn. Thank you very much.
    Chair Klobuchar. Nice summary. All right. Next up, Senator 
Cruz.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to each of 
the witnesses. Thank you for being here. The focus of this 
hearing is innovation and ensuring that our competition 
policies drive innovation. It's critical. As Professor Alford 
notes, innovation is just one of the often hidden casualties in 
antitrust law.
    Like him, I support the consumer welfare standard. Too 
often, however, that standard has focused exclusively on price 
and output effects to the exclusion of things like quality and 
innovation. The same anticompetitive forces that can stifle 
technological innovation can also stifle ideas and views that 
the dominant players disagree with and want to root out.
    As I look at it, when we think about how we protect 
innovation, we also need to look more broadly at how we protect 
people and companies who dare to think differently. I want to 
go down the row. Does everyone here agree that it can 
constitute an antitrust and competition harm when dominant 
players use their dominance to censor individuals who think 
differently or just those who disagree with them? Ms. Moss.
    Dr. Moss. Thank you, Senator Cruz, for the question. I 
think the answer to the question, in a nutshell, is antitrust 
is very good at addressing some problems in the digital 
business ecosystems because they are directly related to 
competition or a lack thereof. The problem we see with the 
digital ecosystems is they raise a number of dramatically 
impactful problems. Social problems, political problems, 
economic problems.
    I think free speech on the platforms and censorship is one 
of those problems that may not be that well-addressed by 
antitrust enforcement but should certainly be addressed by 
another appropriate public policy tool.
    Senator Cruz. Mr. Harman.
    Mr. Harman. I think I generally agree with that. I think it 
depends on the situation and the financial interests of the 
platform.
    Senator Cruz. Mr. Migicovsky.
    Mr. Migicovsky. I think the central problem here is that 
there is a lack of user freedom. Users do not have the ability 
to switch platforms if they no longer agree with the platform 
or if they want to try a new service. There's a lack of 
interoperability and data portability. I think that the 
American Innovation and Choice Online Act goes to great lengths 
to make this a much more level playing field.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you. Professor Alford.
    Professor Alford. I mean, I will echo some of the previous 
comments. I think there's a lot of things that are happening 
with respect to these big tech companies and only some of them 
relate to antitrust law.
    For example, issues of censorship, issues of addiction, 
issues of mental health and wellness. A lot of those issues 
don't directly relate to antitrust issues. They are very 
serious concerns, but it's difficult to fit those square pegs 
into the round hole of antitrust. I do think that you can say 
that to the extent that censorship constitutes harm to the 
quality of the experience of the consumer, then it would be a 
colorable claim that you could make under the antitrust laws.
    I would also add that to the extent these big tech 
companies say that they do not discriminate against 
conservatives, and they can show that that's a 
misrepresentation, then they also could be liable under the 
consumer protection laws.
    Senator Cruz. Ms. Hein.
    Ms. Hein. I have to agree with most of the other panelists 
that antitrust is probably not the right thing to address 
freedom of speech and censorship. I do think though, that 
critical voices and new ideas are the lifeblood of innovation 
and that should not be stifled.
    Senator Cruz. Again to each of you. When we tackle issues 
of competition and innovation, should we think broadly about 
what it means to innovate? That is, think beyond simply 
technological innovation, and look more broadly at innovation 
that serves a clear market demand, a consumer demand.
    Mr. Migicovsky talked about consumer freedom. One example 
of innovation to serve a market demand is Parler, which was 
created to serve a demand in the face of widespread censorship 
of conservatives. Parler was created, and then Google and Apple 
and Amazon all used market power to coordinate to block the 
competitor and drive them out of business. Ms. Moss.
    Dr. Moss. Thank you. I think where competition becomes very 
important in this particular debate--and certainly free speech 
is a backbone of democratic--underlying democratic principles 
which support a market-based system--is to encourage 
competition and entry by smaller innovative rivals in spaces 
that are dominated by large platforms. Regardless of their 
political inclinations or not, the mechanics are such that 
kicking off smaller rivals for whatever reason, limiting users' 
ability to switch and not be locked into a particular system, 
all contribute to a diminution in the number of voices that are 
out there in the free speech context.
    As Roger pointed out as well and others have said, 
antitrust would have a hard time getting at that problem 
through methods of deterrence and how to remedy that type of 
issue. Certainly, more competition is always better in that 
context. I think, as I said earlier, we need other public 
policy tools to address some of these stickier issues.
    Senator Cruz. Mr. Harman.
    Mr. Harman. Yes. I think we should be thinking about 
innovation as removing the barriers--especially in the big tech 
space--removing the barriers that the dominant platforms have 
put in place to protect themselves, so that innovators, as they 
are at the very first stage--at the finance stage, at a mature 
stage--they are not bound by the strictures that these 
companies put in place.
    Senator Cruz. Mr. Migicovsky.
    Mr. Migicovsky. Senator Blumenthal mentioned earlier that 
there are not just considerations in the app store here in the 
United States, but also internationally, that foreign 
governments have taken action in removing apps from the app 
store there. I think it all comes down to the ability for 
people to decide for themselves which apps they would like to 
use. And as of right now, people do not have that freedom to 
choose on platforms like the iPhone.
    Senator Cruz. Mr. Alford.
    Professor Alford. Yes. In my prepared remarks, I discussed 
quality-fixing in addition to price-fixing, and you and Senator 
Lee have both talked about the Parler example in which Google, 
Apple and Amazon have kicked off Parler. To the extent that one 
could show an agreement between Google, Apple and Amazon to 
raise the same identical quality concerns with respect to the 
reasons for why they decided to kick Parler off of their 
platforms, I think there could be a quality-fixing argument.
    As I suggested in my opening remarks, I am surprised that 
there's not more subpoenas or investigations with respect to 
big tech companies when they are engaging in quality-fixing, 
such as, ``Let's develop a common position. Let's get on the 
same page,'' about this privacy concern or this desire and 
effort to squelch conservative voices. To the extent there is 
potential evidence of quality-fixing, then I think there should 
be investigations of that.
    Senator Cruz. Ms. Hein.
    Ms. Hein. I think the other panelists have given you good 
input on that. I'm not an expert on which apps to remove from 
the app store or not.
    Senator Cruz. Okay. Thank you.
    Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Thank you, Senator Cruz. I have 
a few additional questions here. I guess I'll go to you, Mr. 
Harman. We have heard a lot of misleading claims on TV. Senator 
Grassley has had to deal with these, that we are somehow going 
to get rid of Amazon Prime. That's one of my favorite ones, 
when if you look at the bill it would not do that by any means. 
Could you talk about what the bill actually does, which is to 
prohibit platforms from abusing their gatekeeper power? Would 
these type of rules help or harm businesses that rely on Apple, 
Google, and Amazon to reach their customers?
    Mr. Harman. Thank you, Senator. Yes, these are misleading 
claims. I think the starting point is, what is a platform? 
Amazon Prime is not a platform. If you are a business user of 
these platforms, you are at the mercy of those platforms to get 
access to their users--to their customers, to your customers. 
You are at their mercy on their terms of service that are 
totally subjective to their whim to change. This bill gives you 
the ability, as a business user, to have a fair playing field 
so you that you're not going to be unfairly discriminated 
against because of your potential threat to their platform 
dominance.
    Chair Klobuchar. Would Amazon be forced to cancel Prime or 
free shipping because of this bill?
    Mr. Harman. Absolutely not.
    Chair Klobuchar. Okay. Also, numerous recent reports have 
suggested that Amazon creates knockoffs of third-party sellers' 
products and uses its algorithms to give its own brands an 
advantage. Part of this was reporting in Wall Street Journal 
and other places. How does this practice affect competition and 
the incentives of small businesses to create new innovative 
products?
    Mr. Harman. Yes. I think this is an example of--I mean, 
it's patently unfair, right? It makes all of us upset. It's 
also an example of--in this case Amazon--the dominance of 
demonstrating to your users that if they don't fall in line, 
this is what can happen. They are at your whim. You want to 
sell your product? You have to do everything they do and not 
upset them and not be too successful, because then they might 
step in and remove you.
    Chair Klobuchar. Very good. I think that's a lot of people, 
and sometimes I wonder if--Members around here--people are 
very--when you've got monopolies and they have a lot of power, 
you don't want to piss them off. That's the problem with the 
monopoly. I hope people take this to heart, because one of our 
jobs is to look out for the public interest and to look at 
what's really happening, and it's right in front of our eyes.
    Whether it's what you heard from the whistleblower on 
Facebook, whether it is what we are hearing from companies as 
big as Spotify, and Tile, and Match.com about what's going on 
in the app stores, or whether it is what we are hearing from 
small businesses and startups like Mr. Migicovsky's, who are 
simply trying to compete with some really good ideas.
    Or it's whether we heard what we hear from the companies 
themselves. I think it was Mark Zuckerberg's infamous words in 
an email where he said, ``I'd rather buy than compete.'' I 
think that's about as clear as we can get.
    Professor Alford, you previously worked in the Antitrust 
Division of the Department of Justice. We consider that a badge 
of honor around here. Where you were at the Department, how did 
you handle questions around innovation when pursuing cases?
    Professor Alford. They would always--typically, in the 
merger context, they would always be part of the analysis. They 
would be part of the questions that would arise. There would be 
requests on document production related to issues concerning 
innovation. To the extent that there was a potential risk to 
innovation as part of the merger, then they would address that 
appropriately.
    In some cases, it meant, as I suggested in my written 
testimony, it meant that there had to be a divestiture of 
certain assets to maintain R&D or to maintain intellectual 
property. In some cases, the harm to innovation led to a 
decision to block the merger altogether. As I mentioned, the 
example of that would be Visa's attempted acquisition of Plaid. 
I think in the context of conduct cases, I think I did not see 
specific cases during my time there where harm to innovation 
was part of the specific conduct cases, because----
    Chair Klobuchar. Why do you think that is? Because the 
horizontal merger guidelines explicitly reference innovation, 
including considerations of whether a merger is, quote, 
``likely to diminish innovation competition.''
    Professor Alford. I think there's a variety of answers to 
that. I think there is a tendency at the enforcement agencies 
to focus on price and output. There's not a sufficient 
attention on issues related to quality or harm to innovation, 
and there is a reluctance in some cases to bring innovative 
litigation that has less likelihood of success. There is, I 
guess, error cost analysis, you could say, where I'd rather be 
safe and not bring a case unless I have a high degree of 
confidence.
    I think there is a movement afoot--bipartisan movement 
afoot, to bring more cases and recognize that as long as a case 
is plausible under the existing antitrust laws, it's better to 
be slightly more aggressive than conservative with respect to 
bringing litigation. I think that's a relatively recent 
development.
    Chair Klobuchar. Right.
    Professor Alford. When I was there, the overwhelming 
majority of the time the concern was, ``Europe is focusing on 
these companies. Where is America? Where are the United 
States?''
    Chair Klobuchar. Yes.
    Professor Alford. It wasn't until, as you know, the very, 
very end of the Trump administration, and now with the Biden 
administration, that we are really I think focusing on these 
issues.
    Chair Klobuchar. I've appreciated that, that it's gone 
between two very different administrations----
    Professor Alford. Right.
    Chair Klobuchar [continuing]. With different leaders in the 
agencies. I think it shows, and some of the more successful 
antitrust suits have been like that. They have crossed 
political party lines. One of the things I talked about at 
length, and he was helpful on, is your former boss, Makan 
Delrahim, was about the resources for the agency. Do you think 
the agencies need more resources?
    Professor Alford. Yes. I love section 15 of your bill where 
you're proposing--what is it--$300 million extra for the 
Department of Justice and something even greater than that for 
the Federal Trade Commission. I don't think anyone in the DOJ 
or the FTC will be opposed to that.
    Chair Klobuchar. Yes. There's two things going on. One is 
the bill that Senator Grassley and I passed through this 
Committee, and it's now over in the House actually. It got 
through the U.S. Senate to change the merger fee standards 
which was supported by this Committee. It's over $100 million 
long term. Go ahead.
    Professor Alford. I was going to say that of all of the 
antitrust bills that have been for proposed in the House and in 
the Senate, I think the merger filing fees and the reforms with 
respect to that, as well as the Venue Act that you also have 
cosponsored. Or I believe----
    Chair Klobuchar. That Senator Lee is the lead on, yes.
    Professor Alford. Exactly. That Senator Lee is the lead on. 
Exactly.
    Chair Klobuchar. Okay. Then the other thing is, we also 
have additional funding. Well, there's the budget, but also in 
the bill we're considering right now--in the Build Back Better 
bill.
    I was going to ask you, Ms. Moss, just about pharma here at 
the end, because we have been focused on tech. As you know, 
many of my bills are actually more generic, not to use the 
pharma--a little play on words. They are not just about tech. 
They are about changing the standards in some limited cases, 
but important big cases, as well as looking at all industries.
    Because I think that tech is unique in that we have done 
nothing for it since it started, and now Federal law. We've 
done nothing on Federal privacy. We've done nothing on updating 
many of our laws when it comes to tech, because they've said 
leave us alone and everyone said, ``Okay,'' and now look where 
we are.
    I do want to give you that opportunity because there's been 
a lot of support on this Committee, including many Republicans, 
on taking on some of the pharmaceutical issues. We just 
recently passed two or three bills out of this Committee 
related to patents and the like, so talk about what you are 
seeing in pharma consolidation.
    Dr. Moss. Sure. Thank you. Pharmaceuticals and healthcare 
more generally are some of the most consumer-facing sectors we 
have. Prices matter to consumers. Drug costs are high in this 
country. They're a major part of total healthcare spend. We 
count on innovation--robust innovation--amongst the branded 
pharmaceutical companies to have parallel path R&D 
competition--head to head R&D competition--to produce new 
branded drugs that make it through to the commercialization 
process.
    We count on the generics to be first to file. Racing to the 
finish line to get to that abbreviated new drug application. 
That's almost a form of innovation in terms of lowering costs 
to consumers. We see generics now innovating in the super 
generic space because of the defense patents that are put out 
by the branded drug companies.
    This is all on the decline. If you look at the return on 
R&D in pharmaceuticals, it is absolutely in decline, and we 
have strong research, as I noted in my testimony, that says the 
more competitors you have in the market, the more productivity 
you will get out of the R&D process itself.
    I don't think the FTC's merger policy on pharma has been 
very helpful. The study we did back in the spring is a real eye 
popper. Sixty-seven companies allowed to merge with very 
targeted divestitures. I mean, we're talking about therapeutic 
value, or even molecule-defined markets, so we need to revisit 
how we look at pharmaceutical mergers--pharmaceutical markets 
in the antitrust context.
    Remedies are beginning to have a bad name. The larger the 
company, the more concentrated the merger, the more pressure 
there is on remedy to restore competition. That goes for price 
competition, quality competition, innovation competition. We 
are seeing a growing list of failed remedies in all sectors and 
including in the pharmaceutical sector specifically.
    To revitalize competition and innovation competition in 
pharma I think is going to take some major changes in how 
antitrust enforcers look at those mergers and the policies they 
pursue, but we strongly need support from Congress. The bills 
that you have put out, which would be designed to support 
stronger enforcement but to also address some of the issues 
that we have elsewhere in the intellectual property space, in 
the FDA drug approval space, and opening up possibilities for 
innovative products like biosimilars and super generics.
    Chair Klobuchar. Okay. Just two follow-ups not on pharma, 
just because these are things that we keep getting, and I 
really want to get on the record some answers to these.
    Mr. Harman, last week in the Commerce Committee, I 
questioned the head of Instagram about how aggressively his 
company is targeting teenagers. In fact, there was a document 
that showed one of the people that worked there said the 
existential threat to the company if they lost teenagers. It 
showed marketing increases to their budget. This all came out 
of the Facebook whistleblower document. Is it possible that 
Instagram might have developed better features to promote user 
privacy, safety, and security if it had not been bought by 
Facebook, now Meta?
    Mr. Harman. Absolutely, and other apps could have developed 
as well that wouldn't have had to face the dominant Facebook, 
Instagram, WhatsApp monopoly.
    Chair Klobuchar. How does the consolidation of the tech 
industry deprive consumers of real choice in innovations? It 
could solve issues. I think everyone always thinks price. Very 
important, right? There's other things. There's bells and 
whistles about misinformation, privacy violations, harmful 
content.
    Mr. Harman. Yes. I like to think of it as the things we 
don't know are missing. The innovations that didn't get off the 
ground because people didn't want to take on--or were crushed--
but didn't want to take on what was an insurmountable threat to 
Facebook or to Google or to Apple.
    Chair Klobuchar. Yes. I think in the case of the Instagram 
and kids, I think a lot of parents know something is missing, 
though. I will say.
    Mr. Harman. Yes. Absolutely.
    Chair Klobuchar. Their kids are seeing all this crap they 
don't want them to see. They can't--get addicted to their 
phones at age 10, and yet these companies are the biggest 
companies the world's ever known, and they could find out who 
is using their phones and create some limits on it. It's not in 
their best interest because I think it's--or as I said the 
other day--they're diametrically opposed to the interests of 
the parents because they want them on those phones, because 
they want to get the marketing revenue.
    Last question, Mr. Migicovsky. In recent weeks, we've heard 
a lot of misleading claims from groups funded by big tech. 
There are a lot of groups funded by big tech that have really 
nice sounding names, as you know. One claim I've heard is that 
this bill would force Apple to allow unsafe apps on consumer 
devices. We don't believe that's true because of the standards 
in the bill, and our bill has a specific provision enabling 
platforms like Apple and Google to take action to protect 
safety, user privacy, and security. We'll continue to work with 
the on this. Not much longer, because as noted, I think we need 
a little less talk and a lot more action around this place when 
it comes to--someone was complaining about the timeline. I'm 
like, ``What do you mean? Twenty-five years that we haven't 
done anything?''
    Apple does not allow consumers to download apps on their 
iPhones outside the app store, and they say allowing 
sideloading would expose consumers to unsafe apps. As you know, 
Google does allow other apps on there. In your knowledge as an 
entrepreneur and engineer, can Apple allow users to sideload 
apps on their iPhones and still protect their privacy and 
security? Just one little clue, iMacs allow others on there, 
but continue on.
    Mr. Migicovsky. I think the simplest answer is that Google 
currently allows other applications on the Android operating 
system, and the sky has not fallen. The same should----
    Chair Klobuchar. Also, I meant Macs, not iMacs. But Macs, 
their own product, allow----
    Mr. Migicovsky. Any sort of application to be installed. I 
mean, that was the core foundation of computing 30, 40 years 
ago when computers started becoming multipurpose devices. It 
was hackers and innovators creating new experiences that no one 
ever thought of before. Part of the way that we can do that is 
by quickly iterating and building new ideas. That is definitely 
not the case on iPhone.
    Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Senator Lee.
    Senator Lee. Okay. First, I want to go back to Ms. Hein. I 
want to give you a chance to respond to some of Senator 
Durbin's comments a little while ago. The quote that you shared 
in your written testimony about Sarbanes-Oxley is one that I've 
seen in a number of contexts, and it is haunting. It's haunting 
to me not just as a Member of this Subcommittee in particular, 
but it's a signal to me that we ought to be careful. We ought 
to be cautious always when wielding Government authority that 
by purporting to solve one problem, we not create a lot of 
other problems, and that we not thwart innovation and 
competition. Do you want to respond to that?
    Ms. Hein. That's exactly my point, Senator that I've been 
trying to make. All of this legislation, Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-
Frank, very well-intentioned, but as economists say, there are 
distortions and unintended consequences of this. Therefore, I 
am critical of things where we don't know how they will play 
out. Therefore, I think that specifically the point I have been 
making is around acquisitions, that there is no real reasoning 
right now why a certain number of companies cannot have larger 
hurdles to acquisitions.
    Senator Lee. Right. Still using Sarbanes-Oxley as a model 
then, as Senator Durbin points out, there were issues that led 
to that. I happen to not agree that Sarbanes-Oxley was the only 
answer that could have been concluded. I don't think that was 
the case.
    The fact that there are legitimate reasons that caused 
Congress to be considered, and then actions taken by Congress 
through a change in law to create additional obligations that 
can be put in place by the overpowering force of the Federal 
Government, the fact that there--somewhere along that chain, 
legitimate concerns animating those does not obviate the need 
to look for negative unintended consequences on competition. Do 
you agree with that?
    Ms. Hein. Yes, Senator, I agree with that. As I mentioned, 
I don't think that the sledgehammer of legislation is necessary 
here but actually adding those resources to the FTC and the 
Department of Justice to look at these things very individually 
and figure out what are actually the aspects of that 
anticompetitive behavior that need to be stopped.
    You gave a good example there with advertising technologies 
and being on the buy side and the sell side. Those are exactly 
areas where action is needed, and that has nothing to do with 
acquisitions.
    Senator Lee. Thank you. Professor Alford, a few months ago 
we saw actions taken by three tech giants, Apple, Google and 
Amazon over about a 48-hour period to take down what was then a 
new and budding and somewhat promising social media platforms 
called Parler. I don't know to what degree they were 
coordinating that, or they were colluding in doing that.
    What I do know is that all three of them took action at 
almost exactly the same time with near surgical precision in 
order to take down a much smaller company, one that, as best I 
can tell, didn't compete with any of them. This is concerning 
to me. Since then, Parler has been able to get up and operate 
again, but they were badly wounded in the process, and the 
astronomical growth that they had seen up until that point 
halted.
    When you halt that kind of growth, it tends to lose its 
momentum. I am not sure where they are now growthwise, but this 
is concerning. It raises questions in my mind. Do you want to 
help me understand? How do we distinguish between legitimate 
standard-setting and the collusive quality-fixing that you 
mentioned in your testimony?
    Professor Alford. Yes. I mean, you've raised this issue 
numerous times, and I think it's an incredibly important issue 
to think about. If you think about alternative platforms that 
might be able to compete with Facebook, one can well imagine 
the network effects that would result from a mass migration of 
essentially conservative-minded people wanting to go to another 
network, just as one can think of TikTok as a mass migration of 
really, really young people wanting to go and migrate toward a 
really young platform.
    You can certainly imagine a world where there would be a 
plurality of platforms, and they could break off on a whole 
variety of different lines, including regarding political 
alignment. I think that they viewed Parler as a very serious 
threat. As you said, you would have to show--to the extent that 
Google, Apple and Amazon colluded with one other and coordinate 
with one another to say, ``Yes. Let's use the same arguments 
together at the same time to take down the app,'' and do it, as 
you said, within a 48-hour period, that definitely should raise 
alarm bells. I don't know why there has not been CIDs issued to 
these companies with respect to quality-fixing like that.
    I think the larger point that you raise though, is that the 
fact that they feel that they can do this suggests that these 
companies themselves know that they are monopolies, right? As 
you put it in your speech to NetChoice, ``Conservative anger at 
big tech is real, and it's entirely justified. No business 
would treat its customers with the prejudice and disdain shown 
toward conservatives by big tech, unless that business were 
confident that it was the only game in town.'' I think at a 
minimum, it reflects the power that they feel.
    Senator Lee. While not independently a violation of 
antitrust laws, perhaps, it certainly is not the kind of 
activity--in other words, if you aim your audience insofar as 
you're talking about a marketplace consisting of the American 
people, it would cause one to wonder why, and under what 
circumstancesc, a company would deliberately alienate roughly 
half of its potential user base or customer base.
    Professor Alford. Exactly.
    Senator Lee. That in turn suggests, perhaps, a need for 
another look.
    Professor Alford. Exactly.
    Senator Lee. Dr. Moss, we talked a little bit earlier, and 
you have spoken with some of my colleagues about the 
pharmaceutical industry. I think this is an interesting one. 
It's an interesting angle from which to view competition, 
because you have such a highly regulated industry, one in which 
you can't do anything without--not just without being regulated 
once you produce something, but long before you get into the 
regular--production pipeline you have to go through a million 
steps costing an enormous amount of money in order to get 
there.
    As a result of this, you have a lot of companies that never 
really can make it to production. They will always be acquired. 
That's part of their business plan is to be acquired, because 
they don't have all the resources to make it through two and 
then through the phase three clinical trials and everything 
else that goes along with it. Getting acquired is not only part 
of the plan, it's the entire plan for many of them.
    How do you solve that kind of regulation-induced 
consolidation? I mean, is it first something that we ought to 
worry about? Is it something we should try to solve? If so, how 
would we go about doing that?
    Dr. Moss. Thank you, Senator Lee. R&D is a risky process 
for sure. I think in pharmaceuticals, the chances of actually 
realizing a fully commercialized drug that has made it through 
clinical trials and into the hands of physicians and other 
healthcare providers is probably one of the highest risks that 
has been experienced.
    I think the crux of the issue with innovation competition 
and its decline in pharmaceuticals lies directly with 
consolidation in the branded drug companies, but also in the 
generic space. This gets back to the elimination of parallel 
path pipelines, racing to be the first to file, entry by 
generics into the super generic spaces, etc.
    What we see, or at least what some good economic analysis 
shows us, is that this level of consolidation has created sort 
of a bulge in the development end of the pipeline where you 
have very, very few companies--fewer and fewer companies--
actually shepherding along that final leg in the process to get 
the drug into a--the commercial zone. That's where the FDA 
comes in and the application processes and that sort of thing. 
More competition to smooth out that bulge in that development 
part of the pipeline would be really, really important.
    As far as the startup model or the nurturing the smaller, 
riskier businesses, I don't have good answers for that, 
unfortunately. The one thing we've learned in the digital tech 
space is that that VC-backed startup model is very, very much 
part of the growth of the big tech ecosystems. I agree with 
you, Senator, that it's also part of the growth in the 
pharmaceutical space. These companies have actually fostered 
the development of a pipeline of new talent in the form of 
startups. Those startups are often, as I said, backed by 
venture capital.
    However, that very model, the existence of that very model, 
and the desire to be acquired as opposed to grow into a fully 
fledged rival like Senator Klobuchar was just saying, that in 
itself is a distortion of competition, because those companies 
are going to be innovating differently if they want to be 
acquired versus if they want to go it on their own and stay 
independent as standalone rivals and challenge the incumbents 
with significant market power.
    I don't know what you do with that model from a public 
policy perspective, but I don't think good policy is protecting 
that model because the digital tech companies say, ``Well, 
these are the people we want to buy. This is how we grow.'' And 
then the small startups want to be acquired and are thus 
directing their R&D in areas that are designed to maximize 
their purchase price. That's why I think we need strong 
antitrust enforcement and stronger standards for acquisitions 
of potential rivals, which are included in the CALERA bill as 
well as other protections.
    Senator Lee. Right. I always think about industries that 
are born into regulatory captivity or born into regulatory 
freedom. You see this elsewhere in other heavily regulated 
industries, some of them by the same regulatory bodies. The 
FDA, for example, also exerts its heavy hand in things that are 
not pharmaceutical products, but things like the Owlet sock 
that I mentioned a minute ago. Where you just have moms and 
dads who want to be able to monitor their baby's heart rate and 
oxygen levels remotely. It's a convenient way of doing this, 
it's not a device that promises or purports to be there for 
diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. They just rest 
a little easier being able to look at a number and say, ``Yes, 
that looks like things are going well in there,'' and they 
don't have to go walk into the room, risking waking up the 
baby.
    There are a whole bunch of people, in Utah and elsewhere in 
this country, who are now very upset that they can't get this 
thing. Word spreads. My daughter-in-law, Claire, was recently 
at a friend's baby shower, and a lot of the moms, they were 
complaining about the fact that you can't find an Owlet. They 
were scrambling about where to find one: on the secondary 
market, or to buy one used. All this because a busybody, 
regulatory agency decided it had to get involved. As a result 
of this, people aren't going to enter in and compete.
    I worry about what that says for so many other industries. 
I think--the FDA has had a nice, long run, but it has been 
given way too much control over our entire economy. I think 
they need to remember that they're not elected to anything. 
They don't have power to make new laws, and they're acting as 
if they were the masters of the universe. I think it harms 
competition. You wouldn't disagree with me that the regulatory 
power of the FDA, and other agencies for that matter, extends 
far beyond the pharmaceutical industry and into other areas 
where it can have all sorts of consequences that are not only 
unintended, but very unpleasant.
    Ms. Hein. As an economist, I have to mention, of course, 
that there is this thing called regulatory capture, which we do 
worry about. I'm a former Federal regulator myself, over the 
FERC for many years during the open access rule, and saw the 
rough-and-tumble of vested interests in large, dominant firms, 
wanting regulation that would actually make their lives easier, 
as opposed to inject oversight and competition into the market.
    We should not forget that regulation--good regulation, 
well-structured regulation that achieves objectives with 
minimal side effects or distortions is really an important 
goal.
    Second, I think it's worth mentioning that if we want to 
stimulate innovation competition for the benefit of consumers, 
and workers, and entrepreneurs, we cannot apply a one-size-
fits-all regulatory model to everybody. Case in point, I did a 
podcast, an AAI podcast, ``Ruled by Reason,'' with two really 
innovative entrepreneurs in the beef sector. These are small, 
independent cattlemen. They have innovative ranching 
operations. They are essentially microprocessors. These guys 
can't compete because the USDA imposes standards on them for 
food inspection--animal inspection that they would impose on a 
large packing facility. It's really expensive and hard for 
these smaller players to be innovative and enter markets when 
they are subject to one-size-fits-all regulation regardless of 
size.
    Senator Lee. Thank you.
    Chair Klobuchar. You kind of lost me at masters of the 
universe. I was thinking that wouldn't be a bad title to have 
right now around this place. Try to get some things done. Okay. 
I just want one follow-up here, I guess, from maybe two of you. 
Ms. Heins testified in just the latest questions from Senator 
Lee that small entrepreneurs would be hurt by legislation to 
limit serial acquisitions by dominant platforms. Do you agree, 
Mr. Harman?
    Mr. Harman. No. I would like to associate myself with the 
comments of Ms. Moss. I think the--it is market distortion that 
everything is focused toward being purchased or not upsetting 
the dominant players, and I think getting the dominant players 
out of that market will cause innovators to be able to--the 
sky's the limit--build what they want and not be afraid of the 
consequences from big, dominant players who control the market.
    Chair Klobuchar. I just always figured out that our laws 
have to be as sophisticated as the economy that we're dealing 
with, and I think it's one of the reasons you've seen 
bipartisan support on the merger issue. Honestly, there are a 
number of people that are supportive on the conservative side, 
including Maken Dellerheim on the taking that merger standard 
of flipping the burden for the biggest deals and extending it 
beyond tech.
    That being said, I think it's very important to note that 
we're dealing with several different bills here. One is on the 
merger issues. I have one that would cover all aspects and 
different players, and not just in tech. Senator Cotton and I 
have one that's focused on tech. Then, we have the bill that 
we've been really--I wanted to focus much of the discussion, 
which it has in this hearing, on some of the exclusivity 
content, and this is what Mr. Migicovsky is getting at, where 
these platforms are favoring themselves over others. It 
wouldn't mean the platforms go away anyway, nor do some of 
their very important offerings.
    What it means is you just have some fairness because 
there's been no rules of the game set, and that is the bill, 
just for anyone watching at this late hour, that Senator 
Grassley and I have put together with the Ocean's Eleven of 
sponsors. That was Samantha Bee's line. Then we have App 
Stores, which is a specific focus very related to the 
exclusivity and the non-discrimination bill that we put 
forward.
    Then we have other bills, which Professor Alford was 
focused on with the helping the agencies, and Ms. Heins 
mentioned, as well, the need to have good people in these 
agencies who are doing their jobs in a moment where we're 
seeing more and more consolidation. There's going to be more 
and more mergers coming before these agencies across the board, 
and we have to make sure they have the resources that they 
need. It's another area of focus.
    Then we have bills related to pharma and agriculture 
consolidation that we've had hearings on in this Subcommittee, 
as well as the work being done over on the Commerce side. 
Again, back to tech, but really across the economy, on privacy 
and sharing data. Senator Cantwell is leading the efforts on 
that, as well as some kid-specific legislation on protecting.
    Then we have Section 230, which we blissfully did not 
discuss at length. I say blissfully because we could have a lot 
bigger discussions, and have had on this Committee, as well as 
not just Subcommittee, the Committee, which is something that 
if we--if everything is stalled out here as the tech companies 
put millions and millions of dollars up on TV ads specifically 
targeting my colleagues in the Washington, DC area, I would 
hope that they are smarter than that to realize that's why 
they're getting targeted on late-night TV when they come home 
from work. Or the 2,500 tech lobbyists that have been hired. I 
would hope that they see beyond that because, at some point, 
we're going to have no choice but to make major changes to 
Section 230 because we can't get anything moving, which maybe 
you could describe as the more chisel effect, in terms of going 
after--on the merger side--going after the anti-discrimination 
conduct, or the pro-discrimination conduct that's happening 
right now going after privacy.
    My view is I'm going to get there, too, to wherever my 
colleagues are. It's just getting rid of any immunity at all--
right now, I have targeted immunity bills--if we don't get 
something done here. I'm speaking now to an empty room, but 
it's not because the Senators weren't here. They were here in 
droves, which I really appreciated. In terms of interest of the 
Senate as a whole, that's what we have to see in the next few 
months. We can't wait. An election is upon us. We've got to get 
the markup in January on a few of these bills. I would suggest 
the exclusivity bill, the bill that I have with Senator 
Grassley. I would also put on the record the recent piece he 
wrote for the Des Moines Journal--Des Moines Register, on the 
bill, as well as the number of these other pieces of 
legislation.
    We just have to stop talking about them. I don't want to 
have any more hearings with CEOs and throwing popcorn at them. 
We need to have action and get this done, and that is not for 
you witnesses, who are valiantly stuck through until 5 p.m. at 
this hearing, but it's really for my colleagues and the rest of 
the Senate especially, that it is time to bring these bills up 
for markups. No more hearings; markups, so that we can get them 
to the floor.
    You know that, Professor Alford, two of the bills, one has 
passed the Senate, the merger bill. The other, the venue bill, 
which is now headed to the floor, as well as a few other bills 
that are focused on pharma and other things. That's great, but 
we have to get some of these tech bills to the floor so that we 
can get the floor time to actually pass them. That is my goal. 
Less talk, more action.
    With that, the hearing record will be held open for more 
talk for another week, I believe.
    Chair Klobuchar. With that, the hearing is adjourned. I 
want to thank Senator Lee and all of the Senators that 
participated and been incredibly active on this issue. That 
part of it has been heartwarming, actually, because we are up 
against a lot. We have two lawyers on our staff that do 
antitrust. They're sitting behind me. They're a mighty group. 
It's kind of a ``Saving Private Ryan'' situation, with Avery 
and Mark, and the tech companies have 2,500 lobbyists and 
probably 10,000 lawyers. I believe in the movie, ``Saving 
Private Ryan.'' I believe a small but mighty force can win. 
That's what we are doing. That's what we are up against, but 
we've got the momentum on our side because we've got the people 
of this country on our side. Thank you. Hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 4:57 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
    [Additional material submitted for the record follows.]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]