On Wednesday, the House's top antitrust subcommittee grilled big-tech CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos, who appeared via videoconferencing software. Some people called it tech's "Big Tobacco moment" while others compared it with past antitrust investigations of Microsoft and AT&T. To me, the hearing - and the ongoing investigations - conjured another set of hearings from 70 years ago: the probe into mob activity led by Sen. Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn.
Those hearings led to a wave of enforcement, new laws and eventually, in 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. What we learned at Wednesday's hearing suggests the behavior of Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon calls for a comparably comprehensive and forceful response. (Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)
There are more than a few similarities between the organized...