Excellent piece in Fast Company by Scott Galloway about where there is a real need for government regulation … and here's how he frames the issue:
"Before anyone had heard of COVID-19, Big Tech companies had secured unassailable power in their core markets, and they were leveraging that dominance into new areas.
"Amazon was moving into entertainment, Apple had claimed wearables, Facebook was even eyeing currency itself. They had long passed the stage where their greatest profits came from innovation, and were instead focused on monetizing their dominance. Their market power allowed them to starve new entrants of capital, keep competitors off their platforms, and use their profits to turn entire industries (e.g., streaming movies) into loss-leader features that differentiated and protected the lucrative core businesses (e.g., next-day delivery of toilet paper).
"Then the pandemic shut down retail shopping, closed in-person entertainment, and moved nearly all of our interactions onto screens—and Big Tech grew even stronger. The rise to dominance of Big Tech has produced staggering share price gains in the short term, but it also suppresses innovation and harms long-term economic growth.
"That is why the biggest economic boost that the Biden-Harris administration can deliver won’t be stimulus or bailouts, it will be committing funding and political support for serious antitrust enforcement. I’ve been calling for the antitrust breakup of Big Tech for years, but the last few months of 2020 give me hope that this is going to happen."
You can read the entire piece here.
- KC's View:
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Seems to me that there is real momentum for antitrust regulation of big technology companies, with pressure in that direction coming from both the left and the right.
This also is a continuing campaign by Galloway - that was very much the goal of his book from a few years ago, "The Four."
Seems to me that breaking up Facebook is a no-brainer. I still think Amazon will have a persuasive argument about how its power serves consumers' interests, but that may not be enough to carry the day. I can't quite work up as much enthusiasm for breaking up Apple, though - it seems far less a threat than the other companies.
