AA Edit | Breaking up Big Tech

The war against Big Tech just got bigger in the US where the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of Attorneys General of 46 states sued Facebook on the grounds that it transgressed  antitrust law and hence should be broken up. This comes on top of the Justice Department taking similar legal action Alphabet’s Google two months ago. The day cannot be far when Amazon will be facing similar charges, perhaps Apple too for its restrictive App Store practices. Together, the quartet is the creme de la creme of the new economy, whose bloated growth into behemoths gave them the power to influence society by dictating digital lives and the economy while enjoying a global footprint. 

The charge against Facebook is it used its dominance to crush rivals at the expense of everyday users even as its power rose manifold with the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. The same charges could as well be aimed at other tech giants who have already been facing intense scrutiny from lawmakers in Congressional hearings. Given the US history of successfully breaking up monopolies like Standard Oil, US railroads and AT&T, besides Microsoft in the new millennium, Big Tech world could look quite different in a few years. 

While socialist countries can move against monopolies by simply nationalising industries like India did its banks and the life insurance business, only to suffer a different kind of lazy monopoly, the US believes in dismantling monopolies to ensure healthy competition thrives. The Internet may not be that much different for users if Facebook were to hive off WhatsApp or Amazon were to divest some of its 88 acquisitions. The only difference would be that Google cannot demote competitions through clever search algorithms or Amazon copy goods of their own sellers to take a greater slice of the marketplace. 

When threatened with anti-monopoly action by the UK, Mark Zuckerberg challenged a nation saying he would invest elsewhere in Europe. And now you know why the arrogance of unbridled power should be curtailed by promoting healthy competition free of restrictive trade practices.