This year, new proposed tech regulations could have extremely adverse effects on your small business. The “Big Tech Break-up” bills are part of the Anti-Trust Act trying to restrain companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. These companies are in no way small; however, the consequences on these tech giants could spill over to your business performance and analytics. This article will highlight the possible implications and concerns concerning these bills.
What Are These Tech Regulations?
In the most basic terms, these bills target big companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook from using their digital platforms to promote their services. The idea is that these giants of the technology world are using their services to promote their services to compete against smaller companies with similar services.
Society loves to take the path of least resistance, so most will be inclined to use the first and most notable product offered. This product is usually associated with the search engines company rather than their smaller counterparts. These bills wish to make that practice unlawful, while some want to force the companies to sell or eliminate certain branches.
How Is This a Bad Thing for Smaller Businesses?
This legislation set sounds like it would benefit your smaller companies to gain more business. While this seems like a logical scenario, other impacts could also damage small businesses. Companies such as Google offers many tools and services that small businesses use, and rely on, daily. Tools such as maps could be disallowed to show directions to your small business.
For travelers or people new to the area, this could mean that they choose a different business simply because they cannot find you. These bills could also prevent other utilities that highlight your company’s information like hours of operations, contact information, and reviews.
Think of how many times you have utilized these online services to choose a new restaurant to dine at or an entertainment venue for your family to attend. Small businesses need these services to function and survive in such a digitally-driven world.
Aside from the adverse effects that these bills can (and probably will) have on small businesses’ profits, some consequences could impact your internal operations. Functions like Google workspace could be forced to work independently from each other. Your Gmail, Calendar, and Drive accounts could no longer work seamlessly. This scenario could result in double bookings, missed meetings, and other missed opportunities for your business to thrive.
What Are Some Other Concerns Regarding These Bills?
These Big Tech Break-Up Bills are not just a threat to small businesses but also your technology. Security features that are automatically set in place to make the internet safer could be halted. This would make your computer or phone more susceptible to malware, phishing, and other harmful cyber-attacks. You could be forced to go outside of your phone’s internal app store to find many of your favorite applications. This legislation could do just that if they force Apple to stop offering their Apple App Store.
One other big issue with this piece of legislation would involve American companies instead of foreign companies. American companies would have to submit a “request for approval” from the government to launch new technologies and services. Their foreign counterparts would not have to go to such lengths to go public with their new services, which means less competition.
The tech regulations of 2022 are already gaining momentum in Congress. While the goal of this legislation seems like a good thing that will help David tackle Goliath, it is potentially going to take away all of David’s most valuable tools, leaving him defenseless.
How Can You Get Involved?
If you are a small business owner and fear that these bills could negatively impact you, send a message to your members of Congress telling them you don’t want to lose the digital tools that save your business time and money. It will take less than two minutes of your time!