Big Tech CEOs face grilling in Congress

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Tech titans appeared on Capitol Hill - albeit, remotely - to face lawmakers in a much-anticipated hearing on anti-trust concerns.

Members of both parties at the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday grilled the four powerful CEOs - Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Amazon's Jeff Bezos - on everything from market dominance to data surveillance to military contracts to political censorship.

DEMOCRATIC REP. DAVID CICILLINE: "Simply put, they have too much power. This power staves off any form of competition, creativity and innovation."

The four men - who together represent about $5 trillion of the U.S. economy - faced accusations of abusing their immense power to remain dominant.

DEMOCRATIC REP. DAVID CICILLINE: "So my first question, Mr. Pichai, is why does Google steal content from honest businesses?"

(PICHAI) "I disagree with that characterization. Just last week I met with many small businesses. In fact, today we support 1.4 million small businesses."

Zuckerberg tried to convince Congress that Facebook was not as dominant as it was made out to be and still faced competition.

"In many areas, we're behind our competitors. The most popular messaging service the U.S. is iMessage. The fastest growing app is Tik Tok."

Bezos touted Amazon's mammoth size as contributing to job creation, but tried to argue it was still a little fish in a big pond.

"The retail market we participate in is extraordinarily large and competitive.

1:36 "Amazon accounts for less than 1% of the $25 trillion global retail market and less than 4% of U.S. retail."

While Tim Cook faced heat on whether Apple was stifling competition in its App Store.

DEMOCRATIC REP. HANK JOHNSON: "Has Apple ever retaliated against, or disadvantaged a developer who went public about their frustrations with the App Store?"

(COOK): "Sir, we do not retaliate or bully people…"

Democrats wanted assurances that Facebook would police hate speech and misinformation in the hopes of preventing a repeat of the kind of foreign election interference the U.S. saw in 2016.

"I'll just cut to the chase - big tech is out to get conservatives."

While Republicans like ranking member Jim Jordan said the real election interference was social media companies purportedly targeting conservatives.