Some ideas for questions and visual aids that House antitrust subcommittee members can use when questioning the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google
#Walmart. 👉 https://www.profgalloway.com/ ... #congressionalhearings #antitrust https://twitter.com/... @pythiar : What do you mean “appears”. They did. https://twitter.com/... Andrew Leigh / @aleighmp : Ahead of tech CEOs testifying before Congress, Scott Galloway suggests a few questions about their extraordinary market power https://www.profgalloway.com/ ... @profgalloway Scott Galloway / @profgalloway : Every firm, sector, and economy appears to have incurred a transfer in value and power to the Four. https://www.profgalloway.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Scott Galloway / @profgalloway : AAPL, AMZN, FB, GOOG have added greater market capitalization in the last five years than the largest retailers and CPG firms have in total. 👉 https://www.profgalloway.com/ ... #congressionalhearings #antitrust https://twitter.com/... Peter Atwater / @peter_atwater : And folks still laugh when I talk about a K-shaped recovery... https://twitter.com/... Jan Rybnicek / @jmrybnicek : Great essay on tech, the appeal of antitrust, the reality of trade offs, and the complexity of regulation. https://twitter.com/... Ashi / @ashimehta23 : Crisp, illuminating read on unpacking the ambiguous phrase “regulating tech” - which encompasses (very often) divergent policies on content moderation, privacy, antitrust, and the works. https://twitter.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : Big Tech antitrust hearing gets new date- noon next Wednesday, per @ashleyhcp https://www.axios.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Scott Galloway published this question-and-visual-aid memo days before the rescheduled noon hearing where Apple's, Amazon's, Facebook's, and Google's CEOs faced the House antitrust subcommittee. His core exhibit is a market-cap comparison: he argues the Four added more value in five years than the largest retailers and CPG firms combined — a transfer of power his questions are built to force the CEOs to address.
The hearing did not land in a vacuum. Tim Cook arrived with prepared testimony claiming the App Store has opened the "gate wider" for developers and that Apple lacks dominant market share, while post-hearing coverage catalogued how all four executives minimized their size and defended user control of data. Galloway's memo reads as an attempt to arm lawmakers against exactly that playbook.
First-order effects
- The four CEOs face direct questioning armed with a pre-built frame — extraordinary market-capitalization concentration versus traditional retail and CPG — designed to preempt their prepared talking points about competition and developer choice.
- Lawmakers get ready-made visual aids, lowering the preparation burden on subcommittee members who would otherwise have to construct their own evidence base for a single afternoon of questioning.
Second-order effects
- The hearing's question distribution became its own story: subsequent analysis of what Democrats and Republicans asked revealed partisan priorities splitting along content-moderation and market-power lines, shaping which of Galloway-style arguments got traction and which were sidelined.
- Legal observers followed by stress-testing whether the grievances aired actually support actionable cases, concluding the antitrust cases against Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook are no slam dunk — meaning hearing rhetoric alone does not convert into enforcement.
Third-order effects
- The pattern holds through to the structural output: the subcommittee's work culminated in the House Judiciary Committee formally approving a 450-page report accusing Big Tech of buying and crushing smaller rivals, framed as a potential blueprint for legislation.
- It also revives a decade-old argument: Foundem's complaint against Google had already shown why the self-correcting-internet thesis fails, and the hearing format gave that critique institutional airtime it previously lacked outside courtrooms.
The trend: Congressional scrutiny of Big Tech is moving from one-off hearings toward codified findings and legislative blueprints, with outside analysts increasingly shaping the questions lawmakers ask.