WASHINGTON—A Senate panel approved antitrust legislation forbidding the largest tech platforms from favoring their own products and services over competing ones, in an incremental victory for backers of stricter Big Tech regulation.
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act now moves to the Senate floor, where several Senators said they wanted to see additional changes before voting in favor of the measure. Thursday’s vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, 16-6, showed the bill had bipartisan support, but also raised bipartisan concerns.
The bill “is specifically designed to target a small number of specific companies, most of which are headquartered in my home state,” said
Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
who criticized elements of the bill along with fellow California Democratic
Sen. Alex Padilla.
“It’s difficult to see the justification for a bill that regulates the behavior of only a handful of companies while allowing everyone else to continue engaging in that exact same behavior.”
The bill targets dominant tech platforms, including
Amazon.com Inc.’s
AMZN -0.26%
e-commerce site,
Alphabet Inc.’s
GOOG 0.71%
Google search engine,
Apple Inc.’s
AAPL 0.91%
App Store, and
Meta Platforms Inc.’s
FB 1.15%
Facebook. Those companies have been working for months to stop or alter the bill, deploying teams of lobbyists and top executives to Washington. Some have funded advocacy groups that oppose the measure and publicly warned that the bill could disrupt popular services.
Supporters, which include smaller tech companies such as
Yelp Inc.
and
Sonos Inc.,
say the bills will benefit consumers by boosting competition on platforms that are abusing their market power. Senators in favor of the bill say it makes exceptions that will protect features consumers like.
“This bill is not meant to break up Big Tech or destroy the products and services they offer,” said
Sen. Chuck Grassley
(R., Iowa), the top Republican on the judiciary panel. “The goal of the bill is to prevent conduct that stifles competition.”
Nevertheless, lawmakers amended the bill Thursday to address concerns by the industry. One new provision is designed to include large foreign-owned tech platforms such as the popular TikTok app owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd., said Mr. Grassley.
The top Republican on the judiciary panel’s antitrust subcommittee,
Sen. Mike Lee
(R., Utah), said he shared concerns about monopoly power in the tech industry, but worried the bill was written too broadly and could cause “collateral damage.”
“It may actually entrench the very four companies at which it is aimed by creating a strong incentive to simply cease doing any business with third parties,” Mr. Lee said. “This could crush thousands of small businesses and it could actually worsen the state of competition in online markets.”
Write to Ryan Tracy at [email protected]
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