Four chief executives of most of the world’s biggest tech companies will testify before Congress Wednesday to discuss antitrust issues as some observers believing a shakeup is in the cards.

The CEOs of Google LLC parent Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc. will stand before lawmakers who for the last year have been investigating the matter of those companies possibly having a monopoly in various sectors. Each CEO issued an opening statement today.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai began his opening statement talking about the current global pandemic and the educational opportunities afforded to people via Google’s G Suite for Education. He discussed how Google provides thousands of jobs for people in its own offices, and also how its platforms help people to grow businesses.

“To this day, I haven’t forgotten how access to innovation and technology altered the course of my life,” wrote Pichai. “Google aims to build products that increase access to opportunity for everyone — no matter where you live, what you believe, or how much money you earn.”

The question is, does Google stifle competition on its platforms? That’s what the European Commission found Google guilty of last year, fining the company $1.7 billion.

“In areas like travel and real estate, Google faces strong competition for search queries from many businesses that are experts in those areas,” Pichai wrote. “Today’s competitive landscape looks nothing like it did 5 years ago, let alone 21 years ago, when Google launched its first product, Google Search. People have more ways to search for information than ever before.”

Apple’s Tim Cook will say his company is uniquely American and has worked to “open the gate wider” for developers without stifling competition. He’ll state that the App Store is currently home to 1.7 million apps and only 60 of them are Apple software.

“Clearly, if Apple is a gatekeeper, what we have done is open the gate wider,” Cook will say. “We want to get every app we can on the store, not keep them off.” He will discuss the commissions Apple makes from the App Store and will add that the company needs to make this money to continue delivering a top-shelf product.

“In the more than a decade since the App Store debuted, we have never raised the commission or added a single fee,” Cook will say. “In fact, we have reduced them for subscriptions and exempted additional categories of apps. The App Store evolves with the times, and every change we have made has been in the direction of providing a better experience for our users and a compelling business opportunity for developers.”

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos will begin in a similar vein as Pichai, talking about how he got into technology even though he didn’t have the best start in life. In a long and emotive introduction, he wrote that his parents invested what they had to help him create Amazon.com, and it helped that he lived in a country that “supports and does not stigmatize entrepreneurial risk-taking.”

“To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment,” wrote Bezos. “Outsized returns come from betting against conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom is usually right.”

He wrote that by “focusing obsessively on customers” he has been able to create better services for them, and by doing so Amazon has gained their trust. “Those operations need to be close to customers, and we can’t outsource these jobs to China or anywhere else,” wrote Bezos. “To fulfill our promises to customers in this country, we need American workers to get products to American customers.”

He will say that while Amazon is a leader in the business of online retail, he believes that there is plenty of competition in the form of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and Costco Corp. The question remains, though, if Amazon has a too big market share. To counter that, Bezos will talk about how Amazon has helped others through its marketplace.

“We didn’t have to invite third-party sellers into the store,” he wrote. “We could have kept this valuable real estate for ourselves. But we committed to the idea that over the long term it would increase selection for customers, and that more satisfied customers would be great for both third-party sellers and for Amazon. And that’s what happened.”

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg will take the stand and open by saying that Facebook has “changed the world” but it still faces “intense competition globally.” He’ll say that just because a company is big, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad. He’ll state that Facebook is good for communities, good for businesses and entrepreneurs, and helps keep people connected – especially during a crisis.

“Our story would not have been possible without U.S. laws that encourage competition and innovation,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I believe that strong and consistent competition policy is vital because it ensures that the playing field is level for all.” He added that Facebook plays hard, but by no means is success a guarantee.

“Although people around the world use our products, Facebook is a proudly American company,” he wrote. “We believe in values — democracy, competition, inclusion and free expression — that the American economy was built on. Many other tech companies share these values, but there’s no guarantee our values will win out.” To that he added that China is building its own products with a very different focus and the country is presently exporting those products to other countries.

“As Congress and other stakeholders consider how antitrust laws support competition in the U.S., I believe it’s important to maintain the core values of openness and fairness that have made America’s digital economy a force for empowerment and opportunity here and around the world,” he wrote.

As for acquisitions, notably WhatsApp and Instagram, Zuckerberg wrote that those apps have benefited by being under the umbrella of Facebook. He believes that working with a “bespoke, lower-cost infrastructure” the apps have been able to flourish, to be stable, secure, free and, in the case of Instagram, make money. That, he said, “would not have happened had we not made those acquisitions.”

Photo: Alessio Jacona, James Duncan Davidson, Nguyen Hung Vu, Valery Marchive/Flickr