Mozilla urges Congress to pass antitrust law in full-page ad

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post Wednesday to urge Congress to pass a key antitrust bill that aims to rein in the power of tech giants. 

The ad is an open letter to Congress calling for lawmakers to immediately pass the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). 

“Our vision for the internet is one that’s private, secure, interoperable, open, accessible, transparent, and balances commercial profit and the public good. But the anticompetitive practices of the biggest tech companies have made it virtually impossible for the billions of people around the world to adopt better tech alternatives,” the open letter of the ad states. 

The proposal would “restore the open nature of the web putting you back in control of your software,” it continues. 

More than 4,000 people co-signed the letter, according to the ad. 

The bill advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year with bipartisan support, but it has since been stalled in the Senate without being called for a vote. 

Mika Shah, co-acting general counsel at Mozilla, told The Hill the onus is on lawmakers hesitant to back the bill to take charge to revamp what she called outdated competition laws that are hurting small and medium sized companies as well as consumers.

“When companies talk about hurting them, really at the end of the day that means hurting consumers, because companies are creating products for people. And so this is hurting people, people are not getting the benefit of what we could have with better tech, better choices,” Shah said. 

“I am going to be very disappointed if Congress doesn’t just take that action to pass a law that has so much support and so much impact on the internet,” Shah added. 

The proposal defines a covered platform by market value and user base in a way that would likely apply to Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon. It would limit companies from giving preference to their own products and services over competitors’. 

The legislation has faced fierce pushback from the companies and industry groups.

A House version of the bill also advanced out of committee with bipartisan support last year, but has not been called for a vote.