They still escaped it. Competition was the driving force for companies to become big and monopolistic. The "intended" effect of the market resulted in the opposite.
Copyrights, patents, and lawyers weakening or blocking competition helps. Then have buildings near top colleges to pull their talent. Then, throw in some labor and price fixing plus other cartel behavior in some sectors for the win. :)
There's a lot more to it. These just get ignored by the media and studies the most. The corporate media is doing similar stuff. No surprise they'd downplay it. Author covered talent snatching but misses most of the rest. Even the too hard to clone requirement comes from IP law (trade secrets). And a lot gets cloned anyway.