I think both shareholders and the economy would benefit in the end; these breakups would make explicit the implicit relationship between these multibillion dollar business functions and, in the process, incite a profit motive that would invite competition to make the ecosystem healthier.

For example:

Google could be split roughly into ads, search, browser, youtube, mobile, and nest/devices. When the relationship of each of these divisions is made external (ads pay search, search pays browser to be the default, browser pays mobile to be the default, etc) then we we can now have healthy competition, like bing bidding to become chrome's default search or facebook ads bidding to serve google search ads.

I haven't thought it out as much but I'm certain society could benefit from breaking out a few major business functions of amazon, of apple, of microsoft, of facebook, and so on.

In fact, if we were a really forward thinking society we could write a law rather than rely on antitrust action to restrict tech companies operating in the US from combining too many business functions - did it ever make sense to allow content discovery platforms to also be ad distribution platforms? Perhaps we should categorically disallow that.

Of course, I'm sure the free market minded of you will immediately point out - why do we want government dictating what private companies can and can't do? I sympathize with this sentiment, but ultimately the point of democracy is that the democratically elected government can make fair rules with the goal of promoting a better society.

If we can make a better society by separating content distribution from content monetization, I don't see why we shouldn't. If we can make a better society by separating marketplaces from their participants (e.g. amazon & AmazonBasics) then I don't see why we shouldn't.

There's an argument from an anti-monopoly / competition point of view. But perhaps organisational as well?

Perhaps smaller companies which favour local (product focused) concerns would actually benefit all of us?

Unlike previous uses of Antitrust law, it's not really plausible to simply split along geographic boundaries, sorting a few shared assets into one company or another, since the whole point of these companies is irrelevance of geographic boundaries.

Similarly, splitting along product lines is particularly challenging in tech companies, where everything is extremely integrated -- nevermind that Facebook and Google each have essentially one profit center, in advertisements. You couldn't very well split Google Flights out into its own corp. Even if you did, the search corp would still dominate.

Even if the political will is summoned to apply Antitrust legislation to tech giants, I'm not sure what an enforcement would look like.

I think what this actually points to is that Antitrust isn't the right lever: the problem is lax regulation, lax enforcement of existing regulation, and bad policy around lobbying efforts.

In this new broken up set of companies, what's stopping them from remerging like Bell? Also, what's stopping them from giving each other favorable partnerships?

Personally I find this entire exercise a waste of time - rather than break up Google we should just acknowledge that certain industries have certain types of attributes that result in necessarily "anti-competitive" behavior. In Google's case, since it's an internet company I would say the more users it has the harder it is to beat - with that being said they should just create some sort of progressive taxation as a function of users.

Your users in the USA equal 90%+ of the country, you are subject to rules A. Your users in the USA equal to <10%? You are subject to rules B and are subsidized directly by those whose users equal 90%+. If all companies are less than 50% than we use rules c, for example.

The same logic could be used for manufacturing, utilities, internet providers, and more.

Take Google as an example: they provide a large number of incredibly valuable services to the public (in my opinion). The cost for those services is a vast centralized surveillance system that cannot be reasonably avoided by basically anyone taking part in the first world economy. If Google we’re less hegemonic, then there would be at least a chance for alternatives that don’t either knock you out of contemporary society or simply change the nameplate on the panopticon to exist.

An exception that proves the rule here is DuckDuckGo: it’s a scrappy, functional search engine that lets people opt out of part of Google’s oversight —- except that it doesn’t; the remainder of Google is still in so many aspects that it can effectively bypass the loss of personal data that goes to search. If YouTube, Gmail, and AdSense were also separate blocks, though...

I’m sure it was really inconvenient and difficult for the once-shared infrastructure of Standard Oil or AT&T to be broken up among different companies, but it was necessary. Google can’t hold the market hostage because it’s “too big to be split”. Changing the status quo is difficult, but that doesn’t mean “too hard, just leave a monopoly, oh well!”

There is no reason for breaking up Google or Facebook. Their only monopoly is over advertising, and most people don't care about that. Advertising isn't a thing people crave.

If anything, break up the ISPs like Comcast!!

There are plenty of gigantic corporations who are probably looking forward to eventually acquiring parts of Google. I wouldn't put it past Verizon, who has not only partnered with Google but also fought for telecom control against them. Don't we also need to break these companies up as well? Or do they have too much influence in the government? Ajit Pai, for example, famously worked for Verizon before government.

I'm not trying to protect Google. But I just think that the government needs to find a way to enforce these breakups more evenly or else it just leads to further consolidation, as you pointed out.

I dint see how you can split off Google search from advertising things. Would you split up a newspaper and the business function that sells ad space on it? How? I suppose ads do make it less useful, but honestly it’s still the best by far, even if some others are now mostly good enough.

I’m with you on preventing the buying and elimination of competitors, but there are already mechanisms to do that. All acquisitions have to go through regulatory review.

What you really need isn't a breakup, it's some way to foster sustainable competition for search.

E.g. If Android becomes it's own company, it's still the only player in the mobile operating system space. If search was it's own company, it's still the dominant search engine.

Admittedly, I wasn't around at the time, but what use was breaking up Ma-bell into the sub companies, from a choice perspective? I certainly understand that from a telephony devices perspective, consumer choice drastically increased, since third parties could now make telephones, but you still ended up with local monopolies for all of the fractured components.

Also, how is search's integration into other products harmful in all circumstances? It's extremely convenient that typing the name of a restaurant into Google search gives me reviews, the menu, directions, etc.