[maxxxxx]

The need for exponential growth will force all big players into making more money and doing shadier things more and more. I am especially concerned about Google and Facebook since they haven't figured any way for making for making money other than selling ads. Apple and MS at least have products they sell.

I think we really should start making it difficult for companies to grow beyond a certain size. I think they are a big net minus for the whole economy.

[Y_Y]

I think this is an excellent idea. Once a company grows beyond a certain market share/ market cap it gets split down the middle. Thus kind of happened in an ad-hoc way before, e.g. Bell. The only trouble is these mega companies have lots of clout and a strong self preservation instinct.

[maxxxxx]

I would prefer if there was a way to do this with taxation or similar. So from a certain size on it would be more expensive to do business. I think this would be more gradual than a hard split.

[ams6110]

Companies that grow beyond a certain size become laden with inertia and overhead. Smaller companies can come along and disrupt them. Facebook did this to MySpace. Someone will do it to Facebook, eventually.

[Dirlewanger]

It's looking more and more unlikely every day. The Facebooks and Googles have such massive reach that they'll just buy whatever competitor threatens them. They and others have been doing it for years.

[maxxxxx]

Eventually someone will disrupt them. But there will be a long time span before that where they can compensate for their lack of innovation by buying out possible competition with a lot of money.

[wilsonnb]

There's also the possibility that they just don't get disrupted. The entire computer industry is less than 100 years old. Who knows if the next 100 years will be anything like the last 70.

Of course, there might be a long history of larger companies getting disrupted by smaller companies outside of the tech industry, which would be much more compelling evidence than MySpace losing to Facebook, IBM losing the PC market to Microsoft, Microsoft losing mobile phones to Apple/Google, etc.

I am not willing to make a bet as to whether or not we will still be talking about Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, or Facebook 25, 50, or 100 years from now.

[maxxxxx]

I wonder how things would have worked with Microsoft if they hadn't got into trouble with governments in the US and Europe in 2000. There may be no Apple today and the internet may be their network.

[Santosh83]

Even if they eventually fail or are disrupted, their massive and ever expanding troves of data aren't going to go away. Somebody else is going to take possession of the valuable data. If nothing else, then govt will acquire them for intel.