COLUMBUS — The Ohio Senate on Wednesday announced it will launch hearings into possible antitrust practices by giant Internet technology companies like Google and Facebook.
The announcement follows Attorney General Dave Yost’s recent decision to join nearly all of his counterparts from both sides of the political aisle in supporting a federal investigation of allegations that the Silicon Valley behemoths’ search engines and social media platforms are designed to steer viewers to their advertisers.
The issue is complicated by the fact that Google and Facebook are themselves free services, flying in the face of the more traditional antitrust test of state and federal law of stifled competition leading to higher prices. They also traffic in information gleaned from their users’ activities on their sites.
“The availability is ubiquitous, so in this new economy I’m not sure the traditional analysis is particularly on point,” Mr. Yost said. “The consumers, Bill and Betty Buckeye, I would suggest, to you, are not the consumers. They’re the product, and they don’t know it.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled two hearings — Oct. 17 at Cleveland State University and Oct. 28 at the University of Cincinnati, both at 1 p. m. Sen. John Eklund (R., Chardon), the committee’s chairman, said more hearings could follow.
He said Ohio’s antitrust law, which has not been substantively changed for decades, should be to updated to reflect the unique tests of the Internet age. But whatever the state does cannot fly in the face of the U.S. Constitution’s protections of interstate commerce.
Information gleaned from the hearings also might be used in the national investigation. One potential outcome of such an investigation could be the ordered breakup of such technology behemoths a la what happened decades ago with Ma Bell. But more modest solutions could be ordered divestiture of a line of business or injunctions against certain business practices.
Mr. Yost said the nation faces a modern wave of potential antitrust activity after the more high-profile activities of the railroads, big oil, and the telephone industry of the past.
“It was fundamentally about power,” he said. “Money was the denominator, the means by which power was exercised, but it was fundamentally about power. Today, data is the new money.”
Mr. Eklund said he doesn’t believe the fact that Facebook and Google operate globally and via the nebulous marketplace of the Internet will complicate any state response.
“We deal with big international companies with substantial presence on the Internet in Ohio law all the time, whether it’s the tax code, the real estate tax code,” he said.
The national investigation is looking at whether the practices of Google and Facebook stifle competition, ultimately delivering higher-priced and poorer-quality goods to consumers through rigged search engine results and pop-up ads. There’s also the question of how they use and sell consumers’ private information to boost their own bottom lines.
While the investigation by attorneys general focuses on Google and Facebook, Mr. Eklund said his committee also may hear about other technology giants such as Amazon, against whom similar complaints have been leveled.
The committee counts among its members northwest Ohio’s Sen. Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo), Theresa Gavarone (R., Bowling Green), Rob McColley (R., Napoleon), and Matt Huffman (R., Lima).
First Published September 18, 2019, 4:58 p.m.
