Sonos and Tile execs warn Congress that Amazon, Google, and Apple are killing competition
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/21/21070812/sonos-tile-basecamp-popsocket-congressional-hearing-amazon-google-apple-competition
Reported today in The Verge.
Sonos and Tile execs warn Congress that Amazon, Google, and Apple are killing competition
Big Tech government hearings often devolve into predictable shouting matches, rambling tech support pleas, or a made-up internet legal doctrine. But last week, a congressional antitrust committee called in executives from Sonos, Tile, Basecamp, and PopSockets for a simple, well-defined purpose: to explain how big platform monopolies are hurting the rest of the tech ecosystem.
The "Competitors in the Digital Economy" hearing showcased testimony from Sonos CEO Patrick Spence, PopSockets founder and CEO David Barnett, Basecamp co-founder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson, and Tile vice president and general counsel Kirsten Daru. They explained known public disputes - but in a way that emphasized, under oath, the practical cost of dealing with huge and powerful platforms. And the hearing, because it was held away from Washington at the University of Colorado Law School, was much more focused and direct than you'd expect.
Sonos recently filed a patent lawsuit against Google, for instance, alleging that the company copied its smart speaker design while undercutting it on price, betting that the cost of a lawsuit would be less than the profits of dominating the market - a practice Spence called "efficient infringement." Sonos has fought smaller patent infringement cases before, Spence said, but noted that the problem was Google's size and its interest in owning every market that might touch its central ad business, even if that means temporarily selling products at a loss. "Ultimately the future of competition in the United States depends on this," said Tile's Daru.
Basecamp, for its part, started protesting Google's advertising practices last year. The compa