[mtgx]

Both the EU and US groups have called for breaking Facebook up. More specifically, they want WhatsApp and Instagram to be separated from Facebook.

Facebook should have never been allowed to buy Instagram, just like Google should have never been allowed to buy AdMob and perhaps Deepmind and a few other companies.

It hurts competition and the economy (in the long term) when large players can just buy out anyone that presents a threat to them, and then either integrate them into their main service or shut them down. Facebook has been trying lately to get Instagram people to post more om Facebook for instance. Facebook also attempted to buy Snapchat at one point.

If the rules to stop such mergers don't yet exist, then maybe someone should invent them. Much more often than not the consequences of these mergers and consolidations, as well as various crimes the big companies commit, are dealt with when it's way too late, and the companies have profited much more than what the punishment takes away a decade later.

[tomrod]

Oligopolies are also how we get business driving fundamental R&D. The tradeoff isn't as clear cut as Econ 201 makes it, because in additional to the above point you also have a difference between oligopolies and monopolistic competition.

[goliatone]

I would be curious to read some literature supporting this idea. Oligopolies driving R&D sounds counterintuitive to me.

[tomrod]

Sure! There is a lot of lit, here is the basic idea. On mobile now, hit me up via github (same name) for academic refs later?

http://www2.harpercollege.edu/mhealy/eco211/lectures/monopol...