The bill passed the committee on a vote of 21-20.
Representative David Cicilline, chair of the antitrust
subcommittee, said the bill was needed because the tech giants had not played
fairly. "Google, Amazon and Apple each favor their own products in search
results, giving themselves an unfair advantage over competitors," he said.
In other votes on Wednesday and Thursday, the committee
approved bills to prohibit platforms like Amazon.com Inc from disadvantaging
rivals who use their platform and to require big tech companies contemplating
mergers to show that they are legal, rather than requiring antitrust enforcers
to prove that they are not. It also approved a measure to require platforms to
allow users to transfer their data elsewhere
Asked about the package of bills, House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, a California Democrat, said there was concern in both parties about the
tech giants. "This legislation attempts to address that in the interest of
fairness, in the interest of competition, and the interest of meeting the needs
of people whose privacy, whose data and all the rest is at the mercy of these
tech companies," she said.
There has been opposition to the anti-tech measures from the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Amazon, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's
Google, and there is no certainty that any of them will become law.
Lawmakers from both parties have expressed concern about the
toughest legislation in the package.
The committee also voted to increase the budgets of the
agencies enforcing antitrust law. A companion measure has passed the Senate.
And the panel passed a bill to ensure that antitrust cases brought by state
attorneys general remain in the court they select.