[shartshooter]

Let’s assume for a moment that Facebook and Google we’re clearly monopolies that needed to be regulated. How would that work practically? Does the justice department and federal courts have people capable of understanding the nuances of some of these companies or are we going to end up with CEOs reminding senators that iPhones aren’t made by google?

[jdblair]

Yes, the justice department and federal courts have domain experts who understand the nuances of the tech industry. You are conflating elected officials (Senators) and the staffers in the justice department who are experts in their fields.

The real danger is regulatory capture: the experts come from industry and will design regulations to favor the industry. The best remedy would be to break the companies into pieces rather than try to craft rules for how the behemoths should behave. For example, Instragram and Whatsapp can pretty obviously be split from Facebook. At Google, YouTube, mobile, search and even advertising could be split into separate companies.

[anticensor]

Instagram cannot be taken out (due to backwards horizontal integration), WhatsApp, maybe. The correct solution for FB is revoking its business license with a very short notice period.

[MaupitiBlue]

Right. Just like the FAA.

[lithos]

The same could have been said of steel and rail barons.

[goatinaboat]

Well, same as Standard Oil or Bell, break them up. Make Google sell off YouTube, GMail, Google Cloud, Android etc and just be a search company again. End all integrations between them to prevent further abuse.

[tracer4201]

And gmail, Google Cloud, and Android are different organizations in one company. What’s the line? Having too many products? Do we break up other companies too? I’m trying to tease apart the logic here that makes tech companies a special case.

[goatinaboat]

What made Standard Oil a special case? A combination of its size and its behaviour. Same with Ma Bell.

Specifically we need to prevent the river of cash Google gets from AdWords being used to run its other businesses at a loss purely to stifle competition. Maybe YouTube can stand on its own, maybe not. Maybe Google Cloud can, maybe not.

[tracer4201]

You’re stating accusations as facts. How does Google Docs stifle competition? How does YouTube stifle competition? Who is stopping you from creating another YouTube?

Ma Bell literally had sole access or directly owned infrastructure and therefore actually stifled competition. It’s unreasonable to assume someone else could enter the market. I’m not seeing how that’s the case with Google. Their ads business may very well be printing money, but stating they can’t reinvest that to grow their business in other verticals or streams doesn’t make sense.

I assume you’re arguing in good faith, but your post reads less like “Here’s a company actually stifling competition and hurting consumers” and more like “I don’t like tech is so successful. We should break them up.”

[chillacy]

Sometimes I can't tell if the break them up rhetoric is out of a desire to see things improve with competition or a desire to stick it to the big bad tech companies.

[Notorious_BLT]

As a user of several of those services, that sounds awful.

[toast0]

Google can't realistically sell those. Anyone who would reasonably buy those is going to fit in the same mold of too much concentration. They would need to spin them off.

[goatinaboat]

Google selling YouTube to Vimeo or DailyMotion, say at a court-ordered valuation of $1, absolutely would have the desired effect.