Summary of Tech Monopolies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

00:00:00 - 00:25:00

The video discusses how a few large tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet, have been accused of suppressing competition and monopolizing the internet. The two proposed bills in Congress that could curb this activity are not likely to pass.

• 00:00:00 The video discusses how a few large tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet, have been accused of suppressing competition and monopolizing the internet. The two proposed bills in Congress that could curb this activity are not likely to pass.
• 00:05:00 The three tech monopolies of Apple, Google, and Facebook have been accused of using their power to advantage their own products, skewing search results in their favor. Apple, Google, and Facebook all charge high commissions to developers, taking a large percentage of every dollar spent on their apps and digital purchases. Google is especially infamous for conducting 90% of the world's internet searches.
• 00:10:00 In this video, John Oliver discusses the increasing power of tech monopolies, specifically Google. He points out that the company's search algorithms often favor its own content over that of competitors, leading to a loss of traffic and revenue. He also discusses how Yelp has been forced to remove its content from Google's search results entirely due to this issue.
• 00:15:00 In this video, John Oliver discusses how tech companies, Amazon in particular, are guilty of self-preferencing, or preferencing their own products over those of competitors. Amazon is estimated to control 65-70% of all U.S. online marketplace sales, hosts 2.3 million active third-party sellers, and has close to 100 million prime subscribers. Amazon executives have told the show that there are many other options available to sellers, but most people don't realize this because 80% of Amazon sales happen through the first buy box. This strategy effectively favors Amazon over competitors, and when Peak Design noticed that Amazon was selling a similar product called the Everyday Slings, they made a video response.
• 00:20:00 In this episode of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver," the host discusses the issue of tech monopolies and their negative effects on competition and consumer choice. The two bills currently before Congress that would address some of these issues are S. 1785 and H.R. 6441, and Oliver encourages viewers to contact their representatives and urge them to support them.
• 00:25:00 John Oliver discusses the issue of tech monopolies, highlighting the importance of bills to be passed in order to break up these companies and allow for more innovation. If these bills don't get passed before Congress leaves for their August recess, they may be dead in the fall.