[bongobongo]

Your first point isn’t a matter of opinion. Competition and innovation have been steadily declining, and monopsony (wage-setting power) concentrating. These aren’t just the musings of some random know-it-all on some tech board, they are reality. Look it up.

Your second point is just whataboutism. Investigating Google now doesn’t mean Equifax can’t be investigated later.

[linkregister]

This is somewhat incorrect. There are finite resources in the US justice system. Investigating Google now does hinder investigation of Equifax. Furthermore, momentum for prosecution in a class of business begets greater public support for prosecution of other businesses in that class. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there is a substantial belief that tech companies deprioritize Conservative opinions and content. We should not ignore the political component to these prosecutions.

Your first point is correct, however. Competition in some fields is declining; Amazon is the dominant internet retailer by a large margin. Google has even larger dominion over the online ad space, save for walled gardens. Investigation of large tech companies is justified on its merits. It is likely that some companies have not broken any laws, but there is value to investigation.

[akersten]

Happy to look it up. Can you point me to some sources that measure competition and innovation? One yardstick could be the number of new businesses per year, which is increasing per this article from two years ago [0].

I am not trying to what-about around Google possibly having some skeletons in their closet - just pointing out that the company screaming "hey, I'm handling data irresponsibly" is not being investigated, but the ones that have been the target of techno-fear-mongering smear campaigns are. Makes me question that the motivation of the investigation is not actually to benefit the average consumer.

[0] https://fortune.com/2017/02/22/startups-2017-challenger/