Competition & Antitrust
Small businesses benefit tremendously from America’s leading technology platforms’ products, services, and tools. Their size and scale allow them to combine products and services to save small businesses time and money while offering innovative, powerful tools that help small businesses run and grow their business, compete with much larger brands, and stay resilient amid economic challenges. For minority-led small businesses, in particular, digital tools help level the playing field.
The federal American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) and similar state legislation would prohibit large online platforms, like Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook (Meta), and Apple, from integrating products and services to save small businesses time and money. For example, AICOA would prevent Google from integrating Google Maps and Reviews with Search under Google Business Profile, a free tool that is an important part of millions of small businesses’ marketing strategies. It would also prevent integrating Google Analytics with Google Ads. For small businesses selling on Amazon, AICOA would bar Amazon from integrating Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) with Prime, an incredibly valuable service that makes it easy for small businesses to sell on Prime and save more than 60% by fulfilling their orders themselves.
Research from Dartmouth University Professor John Scott shows that the AICOA (if passed) would cost millions of small businesses an average of $100,000 each in sales and about $500 billion overall during just the first five years. This is the equivalent of a 5.2% tax on small business sales, which would cost millions of small businesses an average of $1,712 per month.
