![]() The tech giants, which have largely been allowed to grow unfettered since the Microsoft lawsuit, often argue that a competing option is just a click away.īut that reasoning looks increasingly specious in an era when Google functions as a verb, Facebook owns two of the biggest social networks, and Amazon is powering a huge portion of the internet. It’s an especially tricky argument to make against firms that offer free or cheap services via the internet. “ doesn’t allow one to just break you up because you’re big and you’re powerful.”Įven if the world’s most powerful companies have amassed monopoly power in certain sectors, regulators must prove that they exert that power in a way that harms consumers or stifles competition. “There’s no legal basis for breaking a company up just because of its size,” says Daniel Rubinfeld, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who served as chief economist for the Justice Department’s antitrust division during its 1998 lawsuit against Microsoft. Lindsey Graham asked Mark Zuckerberg whether Facebook was a monopoly at a congressional hearing in April.ĭespite growing anxiety about Silicon Valley’s outsize influence, “big is bad” doesn’t hold up as an argument for antitrust enforcement. Keith Ellison called on the Federal Trade Commission last week to investigate Google’s businesses practices, while Republican Sen. ![]() More importantly, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are agitating for regulatory action. Columns calling for the breakup of Google, Facebook, or Amazon are now common in national media outlets. A 60 Minutes segment in May explored whether Google is abusing monopoly power with its ubiquitous search engine. Industry watchers are less concerned with tech companies’ science fiction fantasies than their potentially illegal activity. 2013 was likely the apex of heady optimism about the boundless opportunities of technology.įive years later, the mood has shifted. That same year CNN marveled at Facebook’s plan to connect the entire world to the internet and Time wondered if Google might one day cure death. It’s been half a decade since Amazon announced its drone delivery service on 60 Minutes, during a segment so giddy it could have been retitled Tech Does the Darndest Things.
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