Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, before turning to the bipartisan bill that brings a number of us to the floor this afternoon, we have been listening to a number of my Republican colleagues throw stones at Build Back Better, and I would like to simply state for the record that Democrats are committed to lowering costs for families, such as making childcare more affordable, and home care for seniors. Democrats are committed to lowering taxes for people, such as the child tax credit that, by the way, provides much needed financial support for families, including for the families of over 200,000 children in Hawaii alone-- all by making the richest people in our country, who got the benefit of $1.5 trillion in totally unnecessary tax cuts that the Republicans pushed through--by making the richest people in our country pay for these much needed programs and actually support American families.

Meanwhile, what are the Republicans doing? Nothing. Zero. Nothing for American families. So I would like to set the record straight as to who actually is working hard to help American families, and, believe me, it is not the Republicans. American Innovation and Choice Online Act

Mr. President, turning to the bill that we are talking about today, today's big tech behemoths like to tout their claimed consumer-focused approaches--Amazon, with its ability to deliver seemingly any product to your doorstep within 2 days; Google, with its goal of organizing the world's information and making it accessible to all; Apple, with its mission of bringing the best personal computing products and support to the end user; and Facebook, looking to give users the power to build communities and bring the world closer together. Each claims that their success has been the direct result of their consumer focus, that consumers choose their products and services because they are the best in class.

That may have been true at some point, but it is certainly not true today. Today, consumers have no real choice. Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook have become gatekeepers that too often limit, if not outright squash, competition online. The result is unprecedented market domination that allows these small handful of giant companies to influence the choices and actions of literally billions of people every day.

Think about how many times each of us goes on Google. Multiply that by the billions every day. That is the kind of influence these large companies have.

Take Amazon. Just yesterday, the Judiciary Committee heard from a small business owner who sells his Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty on Amazon's dominant online marketplace. He watched as Amazon leveraged its dominance by using the data it collects from these sales to introduce a knockoff of his product. This is consistent with reporting from Reuters and others that Amazon recruits small businesses to its marketplace and then systematically uses the seller data it collects to develop competing products and preferences those products by placing them at the top of its search results.

Google uses similar tactics to preference its own products and services. The company controls over 90 percent of the search market--90 percent. That might not be such a big deal if Google simply fulfilled the promise of its cofounder, Larry Page, to ``get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible,'' but that simply isn't the case anymore. About two-thirds of searches on Google result in zero clicks; in other words, they start on Google, and they end on Google. That means, for example, that more and more diners looking for the best restaurants don't get directed to Yelp, the site Google's own search criteria identifies as best; rather, they get Google's inferior reviews. It means that travelers looking for travel deals on the top tourist attractions don't get sent to Expedia or Tripadvisor; they are stuck with Google. This is becoming the case for more and more searches.

Apple, likewise, uses its complete control over the iPhone and IOS operating system to give its product a leg up. The company has introduced a number of products, including Apple Music, AirTags, and others, to compete with third-party products--except it is really no competition at all because Apple pushes those third parties into its payment system and then charges a tax of up to 30 percent. Sure, consumers can still use Spotify or Tile, but they all have to pay more to do so. In either case, Apple wins.

These companies have made clear time and again that they are not interested in competing on a level playing field; instead, they are determined to totally control the playing field. Unless the Federal Government steps in, they will continue to do whatever it takes to hold on to their market dominance, competition be damned.

This isn't good for consumers. That is why I cosponsored the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. The bill will put an end to these abusive and anti-competitive practices. Among other things, it will outlaw self-preferencing by the dominant online platforms, prevent these platforms from using a competitor's data to compete against them, and ban the biasing of search results to benefit the company's own products. Unlike the words of the big tech behemoths, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act isn't an empty promise; it will actually put consumers first by restoring competition in the online marketplace.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield to my colleague Senator Blumenthal.

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