Elizabeth Warren says she wants to break up big tech companies including Amazon, Google, and Facebook

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  • Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat and 2020 presidential candidate, has proposed a plan to break up some of the country’s largest tech companies, including Amazon, Google and Facebook.
  • The plan calls for banning tech giants from both providing a marketplace and selling their product on the same marketplace, and the appointment of new regulators that would undo mergers between massive tech companies.
  • "That means we break Facebook away from Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon away from Whole Foods, Google away from Nest, and more," Warren wrote in a campaign email. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat and 2020 presidential candidate, has proposed a plan to break up some of the country’s largest tech companies, including Amazon, Google and Facebook, the campaign announced on Friday morning. 

Warren’s plan includes a call for "platform neutrality" — banning tech giants from both providing a marketplace and selling their product on the same marketplace — and the appointment of new regulators that would undo mergers between massive tech companies. She argues that these mergers smother competition and undermine democracy. 

"That means we break Facebook away from Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon away from Whole Foods, Google away from Nest, and more," Warren wrote in a campaign email. 

The plan also bars companies from sharing users’ data with third parties.

Warren is holding a rally in Long Island City, Queens on Friday night, where Amazon was set to open a new headquarters before it cancelled its plans amid fierce local pushback. 

"I want a government that makes sure everybody — even the biggest and most powerful companies in America — plays by the rules," Warren said in a statement to the New York Times. "To do that, we need to stop this generation of big tech companies from throwing around their political power to shape the rules in their favor and throwing around their economic power to snuff out or buy up every potential competitor."

The proposal would impose new regulations on two tiers of companies: those worth more than annual global revenue of $25 billion or higher, and those with revenue between $90 million and $25 billion. 

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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Eliza Relman)

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