“The pledge list is strangely limited. If the goal is to swear off the donations from all tech businesses, why include just these five? Now, only their competitors will have the ability to influence the congressmen,” said Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel at NetChoice, an advocacy group that represents companies, including Amazon and Google, that oppose government regulation of online platforms.
“They seem to want to address monopoly control, but it doesn’t complete that circle. If it increases Microsoft’s power, for example, then it’s dangerous by allowing taking money from some but not others.”