Hilariously shortsighted. Big Tech companies have been a GDP-doubling runaway success for the US economy.
It would be like if we here in Denmark started breaking up Novo Nordisk. Our economists would probably do a public lynching of any government official who suggested doing that.
However as a European I can't help but welcoming the US shooting themselves in the foot like this. Something tells me we will see more of this as more reddit-brained American millennials get political influence.
There is no point in chasing a high GDP when it results in a materially worse world. The point of a society isn't to make the numbers go up. If a monopoly is super efficient at generating some nebulous concept of value by creating and operating the world's largest surveillance system and actively using it to sell influence over people's attention and habits then the only sensible thing to do is to dismantle it.
The choices are not “Google as it currently exists” vs “a world without Google,” but rather “Google as it currently exists” and “Google as subject to stricter regulation.” There’s a fair case to be made that the world is worse than it would have been if the US had kept a tighter rein on Google.
What part of being a massive ad company whose raison d'etre is to collect as much personal information about you as possible (with limited or no consent) to enable other people to try to convince you to buy stuff even remotely a net positive for the world?
At a time of their choosing they can subject themselves to marketing material (yellow pages) or simple word-of-mouth amplified by the Internet. Treating "knowledge of your product/service" as a market commodity is bizarre and has overall negative effects on competition (more money buys more awareness equals more sales).
If ads are the only way people are able to learn about products, then there is clearly a massive failure of imagination, as well as innovation. People know what they need, and have always known. The concept of exploiting human psychology in order to sell more of a product to people who likely don't need it is a relatively recent development in human history. Plus you can just search for stuff you need in a search engine...
> People know what they need, and have always known
No we don't. I need a better mouse trap, but I already have mouse traps that work, so if you make a better one you need me to find out about it otherwise I'll just buy the same old not so good ones out of habit thinking they work as good as any other one. There are also problems that I don't even know I have. There are a lot of houses with terrible insulation that the owners really need some advertisement to get them to upgrade - it will pay off in just a few years.
These ads do not need to interrupt people's lives to make their cases. If that mouse trap is so good then people who are in the market will discover it by active searching, then spread their discovery. If the new insulation will save people money then that's newsworthy information and will be reported on in information outlets that people subscribe to. The idea that businesses paying to push awareness is the only way people might discover previously unknown products and services is absurd.
Hilariously shortsighted. Breaking up Standard Oil created wildly competitive industries and launched Rockefeller's wealth into the stratosphere. Big Tech is a rent-seeking middleman that chokes the life out of innovation.
Hilariously confused. Tech is different from Big Tech, which is yet further different from Big Ad Tech.
For the avoidance of doubt, Wintel was Big Tech. The status quo now is Big Ad Tech.
The main economically positive thing for the US (and something Europeans absolutely screwed up in relative terms versus the US and increasingly China) is the early investment and adoption of Tech. Digitization as such is a great enabler.
But you don't need Big Tech oligopolies for a vibrant digital economy.
But even more importantly, you don't need bizarre Big Ad Tech commingled business models that build the economy's entire tech infrastructure - many parts of it having a critical utility like role - on the back of... ads.
But there is little scope for European schadenfreude. Arguably the US antitrust gears are moving precisely because people slowly wake up to the limits on economic opportunity placed by the Big Ad Tech status quo.
In Europe we are good at words and criticizing mistakes but deeds are scarce.
> Hilariously confused. Tech is different from Big Tech, which is yet further different from Big Ad Tech.
Big Ad Tech has been a money spigot for R&D in both hard and soft tech. This comes via M&A but also spawning a generation of VCs willing to fritter away adtech money on fun hard tech startups.
There is not a big source of VC funding for hardware startups that doesn't come directly or indirectly from Big Tech / Big Ad Tech revenue and valuations.
It is precisely the large impact on GDP that poses a threat to the host nation. When companies like Novo Nordisk are such a huge part of the economy, they can exert disproportionate influence on society itself.
Our economy is absolutely benefiting from Novo Nordisk's size right now, but if/when their demand weakens or they're out-competed, we're going to end up with a lot of unemployed biotechnicians and massive roads to Kalundborg which will need to be maintained.
What you say would have been true 10+ years ago, but not anymore. Big tech is really into rent seeking and competition stifling now, we'd see more innovation by opening up the space so new players can get a foothold.
The point is to not allow a company to be able to buy out the entire country. Maybe Novo Nordisk is a good steward but historically companies like Google and Amazon act only their own best interests. Breaking up these massive companies ends up doing the better thing anyway - a surge of competition emerges and offers better and often cheaper services. Look at the break up of Bell. The short term was marginally negative (higher long distance costs) but the market was better for it.
Google has a substantial amount of control over the flow of information in the United States. To the point it can literally redefine truth. This is a problem - and one that is easily solved by breaking up a de-facto monopoly. Moreover, the acquire-and-kill strategy stifles innovation. Imagine what we would have if Google didnt have the capital to buy and kill so many small companies.
It would be like if we here in Denmark started breaking up Novo Nordisk. Our economists would probably do a public lynching of any government official who suggested doing that.
However as a European I can't help but welcoming the US shooting themselves in the foot like this. Something tells me we will see more of this as more reddit-brained American millennials get political influence.