[myaltacct415]

Lawmakers did not just wake up one morning and decide to push antitrust forward. I would love to see which companies or people are pushing for, or against, it.

Yelp was singularly active in bringing scrutiny to Google years ago - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/01/yelps-six-year-grudge-agains... "antitrust law is boring, complicated and political"

[kxrm]

It would not surprise me to find out that telco lobbyists had a lot to do with this. It's not shocking that this whole movement to break up FAANG started after the Net Neutrality loss.

Telcos have largely been able to avoid breakups and scrutiny for years because they invest very heavily in lobbying.

[konjin]

>Telcos have largely been able to avoid breakups and scrutiny for years because they invest very heavily in lobbying.

Big Bell has been broken up a couple a dozen times. It keeps getting back together because communication is a natural monopoly.

[octoberfranklin]

No, they invest very heavily in cooperation with the NSA. Much better than lobbying.

[ocdtrekkie]

I think antitrust has been asleep for decades but the shear scope of the damage of these monopolies is forcing congresspeople to finally ignore their special interests. Bear in mind, plenty of people ready to move forward on antitrust now are people literally receiving campaign money from Google. It's just not working anymore: Congresspeople aren't completely stupid (well, except Jim Jordan) and they can see their jobs are under threat due to Big Tech interference in the media and politics.

[cblconfederate]

So what? Considering how big these companies are, it's hard to claim that they can be bullied by lobbyists.

[myaltacct415]

I'm not claiming they are being bullied by lobbyists. I'm claiming that the antitrust arguments have a long history of political motivation, as opposed to broadly beneficial economic motivation.

[whimsicalism]

This is one of my favorite classics of Hacker News: searching for the nefarious companies behind the anti-trust action.

It's interesting because it's clearly an attempt to take populist suspicion of corporations and redirect it towards opposing a policy that would reduce consolidated control in markets.

[myaltacct415]

It would be a wholly incomplete picture to think that such actions are happening organically. Whether antitrust is justified or not, ignoring the behind the scenes maneuvering will do a disservice to the discussion.

[nerbert]

Only if the behind the scene is backed with facts.