1/n Spent half my day yesterday watching the CEO's of Amazon(Bezos), Apple(Cook), Facebook(Zuckerberg) and Google(Pichai) testify before Congressional panel on Anti-trust.

2/n I have read books, articles on these organizations and their CEO's. They have all made life exponentially better and bring immense joy and convenience to many of our lives. There is a vast majority that have benefitted from them.

3/n These approx 6 hours showed me the dark side. Competition being crushed by buying them, copying them and then promoting their own copycat version, charging them exorbitantly high commissions, burying them in the search results, not showing them at all..

4/n ..selling similar items below cost as they have deep pockets, stealing proprietary information they have access to it and using it to strengthen themselves.

5/n And we the consumers aren't spared either. Evidences were presented on the tech giants spying over us, not respecting our privacy, collecting our personal data and leveraging it to get more ad revenue

6/n To the credit of the Congressional panel, they were aware of the digital landscape, understood the exact issues and were very precise and pointed in their questioning. Their investigation was relevant and bought out many examples supporting their point.

7/n Bezos seemed the most disingenuous and I felt he was definitely not being honest. Cook was calm, Zuckerberg looked a bit on the edge and Pichai was extremely politically correct.

8/n There was a question to all of them on Whether they believe China steals US technology. Only Zuckerberg mustered the courage to say Yes - definitely earned brownie points for that.

9/n Google threatening to delist Yelp after Yelp asked Google to stop stealing their reviews, Google trying to influence election decisions against Donald Trump clearly shows the power they have and it can be dangerous to the principles of democracy.

10/n There were Facebook emails, memos presented which clearly showed how "digital landgrab" has become a way of business - acquisitions of Instagram, WhatsApp, threatening Spiegel once Snapchat was perceived as a threat...

11/n ...Acquiring a market research firm which violated basic security, pooocy guidelines and got kicked out of Apple store, then built a similar feature - Facebook Research which also got kicked out eventually and is now discontinued

12/n Apple has copied apps that allowed parents to monitor their children's screen time and then kicked out those apps citing privacy and security concerns. And the contract states that they CAN use he data for ANY purpose.

13/n Also, Apple commission can go as high as 30% for providing API's and other services. And they can and do kick out apps as and when they see fit.

14/n There were audio clips and testimonials on how Amazon brutally dealt with suppliers with one comment on how 20-25% to the government, 20-25% to Amazon makes it very difficult for small businesses to make ends meet

15/n Amazon uses third party seller data to understand trends and then demolish them with that very data by building / selling similar products and then just not showing the original ones in searches.

16/n Truly ironic that these tech giants which once started from a garage are now proactively ensuring small businesses can thrive but not to a point they can become a threat.

17/n Would end with this: During COVID-19, Amazon continued to prioritize Amazon fulfilled non-essential items but not from small businesses and third party sellers. Even during a global pandemic, they continued to pursue profits at the cost of others.

P.S. This entire hearing happened using Cisco Webex and not Zoom.