[0xDEF]

It's funny how eager Americans are to break up the Big Tech companies that happen to be the only reason the US economy is not a complete dumpster fire. Look at GDP growth for the US vs. the Eurozone since 2008. The high level of integration, both horizontal and vertical, is what makes the US Big Tech companies so economically productive and valuable.

But sure. Kill your software industry. Does the US even know how to do anything else? Does the US even manufacture anything physical anymore? Last I checked tiny little Denmark produces more wind turbines than the US and tiny little Switzerland produces more CNC machines than the US.

[anon25783]

> the only reason the US economy is not a complete dumpster fire.

The US economy is a complete dumpster fire for those of us worth less than seven figures. Big tech monopolization does not strengthen our productive capacity, and breaking up the big tech companies won't weaken it. If anything, it will strengthen the economy by making it more viable to found a tech startup without the explicit goal of being bought out. We aren't "killing" our software industry; we're revitalizing it.

[jppittma]

Idk. This makes me super nervous. Look at what the bell breakup did for innovation in software. The transistor was literally invented there before it was broken up. Likewise, I think it's probable that if Google is broken up, you'll not see anything as innovative as the transformer models, GFS, or Spanner anymore. I think quality of life for employees will likely go down, as it did when bell labs was broken up.

[passwordoops]

Different time. Bell was one of the last great break ups and occurred just before the modern pro-Big Business, ultra-financialized era kicked off in earnest. If Bell weren't broken up, Bell labs would have been shut down or severely trimmed regardless as the execs diverted the R&D spend to stock buybacks or other inefficient use of funds that benefits the shareholders over all else (e.g. Boeing).

I think a better parallel is the late-20s early-30s Robber Baron breakups. There's been much ink and elections spilled over how that anti-trust era contributed directly to the proliferation of post-war innovation (e.g. https://bookshop.org/p/books/goliath-the-100-year-war-betwee...)

[jppittma]

Is Google not on the bleeding edge of research into LLMs? Are they not investing billions into cloud? Google research has quantum computers, and is investing in self driving cars, healthcare, and god knows what else.

[satvikpendem]

> The US economy is a complete dumpster fire for those of us worth less than seven figures.

Not sure what you mean, you can invest in VTI, wait 30 years, and hit 7 figures real. The US economy is stronger than almost every other economy on the planet and is so even for the non-rich.

[smolder]

> Not sure what you mean

Look at the risks a poorer person in the US has to contend with, many of them life-ending expensive, as well as the difficulty of finding places to live that offer decent job markets, services, amenities, and are affordable.

Life here can get really ugly for people that are well above the 'poverty line'. That's not to say it's really the overall economy making things hard for them, but more like microeconomic constraints. However, that's the lens they see the economy through.

[enraged_camel]

I’m all for breaking them up but I’m not convinced it will revitalize the industry. Google is enormous. Even if it is broken up, the resulting pieces will still be massive, and almost impossible to compete against.

[WrongAssumption]

Yes, the United States is the #2 manufacturer after China, producing 16.6% of manufacturing output with just 4.2% of the world population.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/manufactu...

[hackernewds]

Hey that's a great point! Meanwhile you have China, Russia, Israel, Korea passing all sorts of anti competitive edge AND funding to singular tech companies to corner the GLOBAL market. One need just look at Tiktok and Temu and Huawei

[bigyikes]

I can buy this argument for Apple, but Google? To me it seems like there is an intuitive split between Search+Ads, GSuite, YouTube, and Android. Why do you believe breaking these up would adversely affect the US economy?