The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica hearing rumbles on and one of the key questions that has now been posed to Mark Zuckerberg is whether Facebook is a monopoly.
This question was posed to Zuckerberg by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Zuckerberg struggled to answer.
Facebook is one of the largest companies in the world with over 2 Billion active users and with their acquisition of the likes of Instagram and Whatsapp, many worry that it is becoming too big and should be broken up.
“Who’s your biggest competitor?” Graham asked Zuckerberg, to which the tech whiz struggled to give a coherent answer naming Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft as “overlap[ing]” with Facebook in different ways.
“If I buy a Ford, and it doesn’t work well, and I don’t like it, I can buy a Chevy. If I’m upset with Facebook, what’s the equivalent product I can go sign up for?” Graham asked. When Zuckerberg attempted to again break down Facebook’s different types of services, Graham reiterated his question.
“I’m not talking about categories. I’m talking about real competition you face. ‘Cause car companies face a lot of competition. They make a defective car, it gets out in the world, people stop buying that car, they buy another one. Is there an alternative to Facebook in the private sector?”
Zuckerberg then tried another tactic, rattling off that the “average American uses eight different apps” to connect with their friends, which would mean that Facebook is just one of those. Dissatisfied with the answer, Graham curtly asked if Zuckerberg felt Facebook was a monopoly.
“It certainly doesn’t feel like that to me,” Zuckerberg replied.
For more reading, the transcript for the hearing can be read here