Ah yes, tech is the industry with the most insidious monopolies, not oil, telecom, or defense. And surely, the current government will enthusiastically move forward with the actual /legwork/ (rather than saber rattling) of killing its goose that lays the golden egg.
Let's be real here. None of these megacorps are getting broken up any time soon. We haven't had a trustbuster in office for a very long time. The megacorp/lobbyist/politico triopoly has ruthlessly, slickly snuffed out any perceived opposition for quite a long time.
I rarely agree with Elizabeth Warren, but in this case, she's right. If there were ever a justification for antitrust breakups, today's Big Tech Mafia is it.
These companies are way beyond the size and abuse levels of trusts and monopolistic companies like Standard Oil, which never even dreamed of, let alone possessed, the kind of power and control of even one of the big tech companies, let alone several of them colluding together.
The huge tech companies that have emerged in the last couple decades have been anti-competitive than Microsoft ever was.
Remembering back to the Microsoft Internet Explorer vs US Gov't anti-trust case is almost comical next to the trillion dollar app monopolies that Google and Apple have setup.
As endless threads talk about the free-speech vs hate-speech angle, the real damage is being done thru these near-monopoly/oligopoly tech companies.
The governments of the world are either going to co-opt them into puppets or force their break-up. ...at least I hope it's one of those two, because the alternative is for them to take over and obviate any democracy we have left.
It's absolutely wild and hugely depressing to me that the prevailing tone favors the mega-corporations. The current over-consolidation is a disaster in every industry, and tech is no exception. Nearly every one of these organizations has proven to be a bad faith actor who cannot be effectively regulated. It's time to actually do something about it.
Big Tech is big enough to be buy any rising domestic competition. The only way entrenched tech companies like Standard Oil, IBM, AT&T and Microsoft have been replaced is through government action
The FTC has been finally doing it's job recently, so unless the other side wins the next election and guts them, I think the tech industry might actually have a future that isn't just more miserable dystopia.
wait... there's talk of breaking up tech companies, and a tech company immediately after decides to prominently brand itself on all its (nearly) monopolistic empires?
I am very sympathetic to your view that these massive companies mustn't be allowed to use their absurd concentration of power to be anti-competitive. But the thing that I've noticed over time with these tech companies is that whilst they are extremely profitable and at points can be extremely powerful, their power is unstable. When you look at other markets the contrast is stark, AT&T and the break up of Bell system - they were a monopoly for decades and acted terribly and were broken up by the government and have basically slowly morphed back into their old shape. Compare that to AOL - they were powerful sure, but that exploded pretty quick. Before Facebook it was Myspace, and after Meta something else will come. These industries just don't seem to form a stable equilibrium they continue to get disrupted. And the problem you have is that if the government is going act thoughtfully, they'll act slowly, and if they act slowly they'll almost certainly be too late.
The big tech companies (and more) act as a cartel, doing things for each other to kick out smaller rivals or just censor and deplatform people and groups they don't like. This is just evidence that it's more than wink-and-nod deals, which I think most of us suspected anyway.
Social media, search, payment processors, hosting sites... they all work in lockstep for the benefit of the cartel. We lose privacy, opportunity, and freedom and these companies gain more power.
There needs to be a bigger crackdown on the power that these companies hold, and not just when some documents happen to leak. America is in the best position to do this theoretically, but neither head of the American uniparty even pretends like they're going to do anything about it.
This would be a lot more true if we could break up the trillion dollar tech monopolies. And we could do it if we would muster up the political will to do it. Step one is to stop idolizing the crony VCs and billionaires.
Governmental regulatory agencies are largely captured by the likes of Google and Apple, and if not completely captured there's a very large influence that prevents regulators from taking any actions that would actually threaten profits of monopolistic corporations. There has been a little push back recently, in terms of preventing more mergers and a push towards breaking up conglomerates, but not without a lot of political resistance:
I have never understood American politician's obsession with killing their Golden goose. They did the same with many manufacturing jobs in past and most of those jobs ended up moving to other countries over time. Hurting Google or Facebook is not going to make anything better but will lead to job less, loss of economic opportunity and competitive advantage to other nations.
You are absolutely right that ATT, Comcast etc. are the real monopolies that have been established with the help of government and they need to be broken.
I guess in 10 years they will do the same to Tesla, SpaceX.
Orthogonal to your point perhaps, but the problem with tech is that monopolistic megacorps are the ones who are both delivering that helpful content to you, and the surveillance technologies, dark-pattern Skinner box digital addiction devices/platforms, and whatever other negative things associated with tech.
Maybe we need antitrust action just so we can better separate the “good” software companies from the “bad” ones.
So Big Tech, under anti-trust pressure, getting more in bed with the government. The case seems to not only be: "if you break us up, you leave room for foreign (ie Chinese) competitors, which is bad for national security", but also, "you should spend more money on security, too, so give us more contracts."
Let's be real here. None of these megacorps are getting broken up any time soon. We haven't had a trustbuster in office for a very long time. The megacorp/lobbyist/politico triopoly has ruthlessly, slickly snuffed out any perceived opposition for quite a long time.
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