Amy Klobuchar: “I rise today, as I will many times, to address my colleagues on the topic of competition policy, especially in our…”

“I rise today, as I will many times, to address my colleagues on the topic of competition policy, especially in our digital markets where we have a situation where a few Big Tech titans have grown into the largest corporations our country has ever seen. Just today, there is new reporting that shows that Google and Amazon have used their gatekeeper power to eliminate their competition for years. I don't think we are surprised by this, but this is new information that I think is important, as we learn new things all the time, that my colleagues know. According to a 2014 memo first obtained by the House Judiciary Committee, a Google executive described--this is what the memo says-- ``grave concerns'' about a new service from a rival ``competing with their core search experience.'' The documents also included an email from 2009 in which Amazon executives discussed ways to stop a company-- that would be Diapers.com, a company it later bought--from advertising on their own platform. This gets to the core of what we are talking about here and why we must take action. This email that was made public today reads: We are under no obligation to allow them to advertise on our site. . . . I'd argue we should block them from buying product ads immediately, or at minimum price those ads so they truly reflect the opportunity costs. What does that mean?…”