Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google could be forced to overhaul their business practices under a new expansive set of antitrust reforms introduced by a bipartisan group of House lawmakers on Friday.
The package of five bills, earlier reported by CNBC and other outlets, would make it harder for dominant platforms to complete mergers and prohibit them from owning businesses that present clear conflicts of interest. The legislation represents the most comprehensive effort to reform century-old antitrust laws in decades.
The bills will need to be voted favorably by the Judiciary Committee before making their way to the full House. They would also need to be approved by the Senate before they could be signed into law by the president.
The measures come in the wake of a lengthy investigation by the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust into the four companies that was completed last year.
The panel found at the time that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google hold monopoly power and that antitrust laws should be revised to better deal with the unique challenges of competition in digital markets.
While Democrats and Republicans diverged on some of the solutions, they mostly agreed on the alleged competitive harm and that reform was necessary to
