Top Execs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook & Google Will Testify Before House Judiciary Committee

The chief executives of Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Google have agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee as it investigates their power over the digital marketplace, according to a spokeswoman for the committee, reported The Wall Street Journal.

The hearing is planned for later this month, the spokeswoman said. Representatives of the companies either declined to comment or didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The technology journalist Kara Swisher earlier reported on plans for the hearing.

The bipartisan House investigation is looking at whether U.S. antitrust laws need to be updated to curb what some lawmakers perceive as excessive power wielded by tech giants over markets such as online advertising, online retail and smartphone apps.

The testimony would be a first for Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos,  who had previously agreed to testify. 

The others—Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai—have all appeared before Congress in the past.

The House panel has been gathering information about large tech companies for about a year, and last September it demanded emails from the CEOs and other top executives of the firms, as well as other documents.