US Senator Elizabeth Warren calls for break up of Apple

Stressing that tech giants have too much influence over our lives, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said she wanted Apple to surrender control over the iOS App Store or cease selling its own apps within it.

The Democratic Senator, who recently launched her 2020 presidential bid, is in favour of passing laws that prevent large e-commerce platforms with a global annual revenue of $25 billion or more, from owning both the platform and any sellers on it.

"She thinks Apple should be broken apart too -- specifically, that it should not get to both run the App Store and distribute apps in it.

"It's got to be one or the other. Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They don't get to do both at the same time," the Massachusetts senator was quoted as saying by The Verge at the South by Southwest (SXSW) technology conference in Texas on Saturday.

She also proposed breaking up tech titans such as Amazon, Google and Facebook yesterday in a post published on Medium.

Under her plan, Amazon would not be able to sell Amazon Basics products on the Amazon retail store, Google would not be able to promote its own products in Google Search, and Facebook would have to split apart from Instagram and Whatsapp.

"This would not be the first time in US history that this kind of arrangement had to be broken up," Warren stressed, comparing the tech majors to the railroad barons who dominated the US commerce during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

--IANS

ksc/ksk/bc