U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committees, spoke on the Senate Floor today to urge Senate passage of bipartisan legislation to stop the tech industry’s self-preferencing.

“Big Tech companies own the railroads of our digital economy, but they also compete with the economies relying on those railroads to get their products to consumers,” said Blumenthal on the Senate Floor.

Blumenthal is a co-sponsor of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would establish commonsense rules preventing dominant digital platforms from harming competition, online businesses, and consumers, and a lead sponsor of the Open App Markets Act, antitrust legislation to promote app store competition.

“The app market is a place where these harms to consumer and competition are starker than anywhere else,” Blumenthal continued. “Two companies, Apple and Google, dictate the terms of this important market. They do it exclusively. And yet they have those dual roles. First as gatekeepers of the dominant mobile operating systems and their app stores, and second as participants on those app stores. And as with the railroad tycoons, Apple and Google abused that gatekeeper status to preference themselves and their business partners, driving up their own profits and consumer costs while shutting down competition and stifling innovation.”

“Congress needs to ensure that new entrants and smaller companies can compete on fair terms,” said Blumenthal. “Today’s digital tycoons need new rules of the road that will protect other businesses like laws protected small farmers and small businesses against the railroad tycoons.”

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