| Hey, it's Josh. After an investigation that spanned well over a year, a Congressional committee has released a report accusing the world's largest technology companies of abusing their dominance over the American economy, likening the once-scrappy startups to "the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons." Whether Congress can actually act on its findings, though, is a tougher question. According to the 449-page report, the work of Democrats on the antitrust panel of the House's Judiciary Committee, all four companies investigators examined are monopolies that have abused their power: Amazon.com Inc. exerted its monopoly over other companies that sell items through its website, they wrote; Apple Inc. over the market for software distribution to its mobile devices; Facebook Inc. in social networking; and Alphabet Inc.'s Google in general online search and search advertising. If implemented, the report's recommendations would amount to a breakup of some of the most successful businesses in American history, and would radically reshape the economy of the internet. Among other things, it recommended prohibiting companies that run dominant platforms from competing against businesses that rely on them. This could take Apple out of the app game, or prevent Amazon from selling products that compete with merchants in its marketplace. It's striking that such calls, seen as fringe only a few years ago, are now the centerpiece of a Congressional report. At the same time, the paper is almost anticlimactic. Democrats have been telegraphing its conclusions for months. Many of the most damaging revelations—like internal Facebook communications framing acquisitions as a way to neutralize competitive threats—came out over the summer. And the path to actually implementing the recommendations is uncertain. The most ambitious approach would require new federal legislation to emerge from a Congress that hasn't even been able to pass a much-needed coronavirus relief bill. The circumstances of the report's release have also highlighted a dynamic that Democrats on the committee have insisted didn't exist—a deep partisan divide on the issue of tech regulation. For years, lawmakers have cheerily insisted that concern about the tech industry's power was one of the only areas of bipartisan consensus in Washington. But no Republicans have come out in support of the conclusions reached by the Democrats. On Monday, Republican Representative Ken Buck of Colorado called several of Democrats' key proposals "non-starters" for his party. Just minutes before the Democrats released their findings, five Republican lawmakers, including Buck, released their own report, entitled "Reining in Big Tech's Censorship of Conservatives." It's an issue that doesn't even come up in the paper. At first glance, there seems to be little common ground for a compromise solution, even after nearly 18 months of supposedly constructive collaboration. Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline, who led the effort for the Democrats, has repeatedly insisted that Congress was the best venue for antitrust reform. But there are also federal and state-level antitrust investigations proceeding that could accomplish some of the same goals without quite the exposure to the partisan rancor of the legislative process. The Justice Department is expected to file a lawsuit against Google imminently. Any legislative action, of course, won't happen until after next month's election. If nothing else, Tuesday's report was a striking reminder of the hunger for fundamental change in one of the most important sectors of the American economy. It'll be up to the next Congress—and potentially a new presidential administration—to pick it up from here. —Joshua Brustein | 
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