Dick Durbin Asks Witness If Retailers, Consumers Are 'Organized' Enough To Force Google To Change

4/8/2025

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked about what outside factors could coerce Google to change.

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Transcript

00:00Yes, yes, yes, exactly.

00:03Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:05Great panel.

00:07It seems that this committee hearing is all about the elephant in the room, and all we're missing is an elephant.

00:15It's good to see and hear your observations on the state of play with Google at this moment.

00:22I'm trying to analogize this, and maybe I'm way off base, to what happened to AT&T.

00:28And telephone service in my lifetime, traumatic changes brought on by political forces, market forces, and perhaps innovation, all converging at once.

00:43Senator Klobuchar and I have been working together, and she's been a leader on this issue, and we have noted something interesting.

00:51When we went after child sexual abuse and had roll call votes on this Judiciary Committee, with a spectrum of political thought represented, we ended up with unanimous votes for five bills.

01:06Unanimous votes!

01:08Let me tell you, as a politician for life, it was a shock.

01:12What we didn't realize was that wasn't enough to get the votes in this committee.

01:17Moving beyond that point meant taking on big tech, and we weren't very successful in that regard.

01:24So my question, stepping back for a moment, is whether this conversation about Google and its market dominance that was demonstrated by the committee

01:35is one that is subjected to market, political, or innovation forces that are going to lead to a change, even though they may be initially resistant.

01:45Any thoughts on that comparison?

01:48Professor Van Loo?

01:49I'm optimistic right now, in part because the kinds of solutions that we're looking at in the America Act and beyond

02:04are going to help such a broad array of actors, not just consumers, but also small businesses.

02:13You have little tech that wants reform.

02:16You have even some of the CEOs of big tech calling for reform, although I get that that might be, you know,

02:21we can question where that's coming from.

02:23But so I could see, for many of these reforms, a coalition being built with strong political economy.

02:30I think it gets tougher when maybe all businesses are on one side and consumers are on the other.

02:35So let me interrupt you, if I can, for a moment.

02:38I was involved in a battle, and still am, on the credit card side of the world, between MasterCard, Visa, and the rest of the world,

02:50where they dominate when it comes to swipe fees, interchange fees.

02:55What we managed to do was to organize the retailers of America like never before.

03:01They all came together, big and small, and all argued they were being treated unfairly,

03:06and they were.

03:08We managed to engineer reform on the debit side, working on it on the credit side.

03:14Do you think consumers and retailers are sufficient organized force now to be an agent of change in Google?

03:22Consumers, no.

03:24They need to be, or it would be great to find a way to get them organized.

03:27I do think on the business side, you are seeing more organizing happening, and I think you have these models.

03:34Another model is when the internet was growing in the early years, Hollywood organized on one side and had exemptions to liability.

03:49So Section 230 provided internet liability for platforms, but Hollywood said, no, not for copyright.

03:55We want to protect our copyright online.

03:58And so there are all these models.

03:59I like the one that you're pointing to with MasterCard, Visa, credit card companies that we can draw on right now.

04:07Anyone else have any thoughts on it?

04:09Mr. Kent?

04:09I mean, the enforcement happening in the courts, and then I think legislation, starting with simple common sense rules like America Act, are critically important.