• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, June 16, 2023

Lawmakers have reintroduced an antitrust bill that would broadly prohibit the largest online platforms from giving preferential treatment to their own products or services.

Among other provisions, the bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Online Act would prohibit companies like Amazon from using other businesses' data to compete against them, and would prevent Google or other large search companies from returning results that are biased in their favor.

The bill was put forward late Thursday by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and backed by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina),Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Mark Warner (D-Virginia), and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey).

Public Knowledge and some other consumer advocacy groups are supporting the bill.

“For too long, Big Tech companies have been in the enviable position of choosing who gets to compete against them, in what ways, on a playing field that they own,” Charlotte Slaiman, Public Knowledge competition policy director stated Thursday.

She added that the bill's “fair competition requirements” will help ensure that tech companies “compete for users on the features we care about.

Small Business Rising, a coalition of organizations that represent independent businesses, also endorsed the bill, saying it would “would outlaw some of the most egregious tactics” used by large platforms.

But the lobbying group Connected Commerce Council, which says it represents small business owners but reportedly is backed by Google and Amazon, criticized the bill, arguing it would “make small business digital tools more expensive and harder to use.”

A Senate committee advanced a similar measure last year, but the full Senate never voted on the proposed law.

The prior version of the bill was endorsed by the Justice Department and some smaller tech companies including review site Yelp, search engine Duck Duck Go and browser developer Mozilla.

Larger platforms including Google and Amazon opposed last year's version of the bill, arguing it could prevent them from showing consumers the information they want.

“If you search for a place or an address, we may not be able to show you directions from Google Maps in your results,” Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer, wrote last year in a blog post.