This has to be done by the ground up by offering better alternatives rather than trying to tear down these tech companies.
Also don't use their services. It is pretty easy to remove most of Google from your life. I don't think Google search is even that much better than the alternatives anymore (I am using Duck Duck Go and they are about the same these days tbh).
Competition is not the answer to monopoly, since it the monopoly status which is preventing competition in the first place. This is why antitrust laws exist.
GP claims there is healthy competition, eg ddg. Therefore I guess by your claim that monopoly blocks competition, there's no monopoly, unless you want to claim DDG actually sucks, which would be an unpopular stance to stake here on hn.
The claim could perhaps be rephrased as stating there is no (substantial) competition. For instance, Sailfish OS is technically a competitor to iOS/Android, but it is by no means one with any considerable market share.
Yes it is. Internet Explorer had something like 95%+ share on all browsing traffic and then someone brought out a better alternatives (Firefox and at the time Chrome). Internet Explorer is no longer dominate. It is now dead.
Using Microsoft as an example to argue that monopolies aren't bad shows you are either very young or were not paying too much attention in the 90s. The reason Chrome even exists today is because the US & EU governments forced Microsoft to support other software and companies better.
I do remember exactly what happened back then and what you state couldn't be further from the truth.
> The reason Chrome even exists today is because the US & EU governments forced Microsoft to support other software and companies better.
Chrome came well after Firefox (2008 versus 2002). Many people were fed up with IE due to poor security and performance and were evangelising Firefox online.
> Mozilla has produced its own browser, called Firefox, that is enjoying a surge in popularity as increasing numbers of people and organisations tire of the security problems that plague Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
You could always install your own browser on Windows. There was nothing ever stopping you from downloading another browser and running it on Windows (in fact Opera at the time IIRC was doing well in Germany). Firefox was simply better than IE and people started using it.
People started changing browser 5 years earlier because Firefox was better than IE (in terms of security). People changed from Firefox to Chrome because performance in Firefox 3.6 was horrendous (browser tended to lock up) and Google Chrome was again better at the time.
With recent actions like that, you don't believe that Microsoft engaged in similar anticompetitive practices back in the early '00s, let alone in the late '90s?
We know they were. But it is irrelevant. Firefox was a better product than Internet Explorer and it clawed market share away from IE mainly because techies at the time were telling everyone to use Firefox instead of IE.
The fact that Microsoft was engaging in Anti-competitive practices actually proves my point. That despite all their meddling they started losing the browser war because Firefox was a better product at the time.
Also don't use their services. It is pretty easy to remove most of Google from your life. I don't think Google search is even that much better than the alternatives anymore (I am using Duck Duck Go and they are about the same these days tbh).