Parliamentary panel to summon social media giants, search engines

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has decided to summon representatives of the world’s major social media platforms and search engines over issues related to their competitive practices.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Amazon, Flipkart, and Microsoft are likely to be summoned in the next meeting. The above development comes soon after Elon Musk took over Twitter in its entirety.

“BJP’s Jayant Sinha chaired the Parliament Panel and decided to summon major social media giants and search engine Google to discuss competitive practices,” committee sources said.

Jayant Sinha-led parliamentary panel for finance called a meeting today over, “Oral evidence of the representatives of Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Competition Commission of India on the subject ‘anti-competitive practices by big tech companies’.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has given a presentation regarding the ongoing investigations.

“CCI made a presentation before the panel citing various cases investigated by it on Google Amazon, Facebook and WhatsApp,” sources said.

Tata-owned Air India approached the anti-trust regulator Competition Commission of India (CCI) later this week for the merger of its low-cost subsidiary Air Asia India to acquire the entire equity share capital of AirAsia India Pvt Ltd. This matter will also be discussed in the next meeting.

The next meeting is likely to be called in the second week of May.