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CNet:
"Today's big tech companies have [too much power over] our economy, our society, and our democracy," wrote Warren in a blog post. "They've bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation."
Warren said that big tech companies use mergers to swallow competition and sell products on their own e-commerce platforms, which hurt smaller businesses' opportunities to succeed. Weak antitrust enforcement also resulted in "a dramatic reduction" in competition and innovation in the tech industry, according to Warren's blog post.
With conservative voices decrying Big Tech censorship, internet activists decrying privacy violations, and now Senator Warren calling for outright dismemberment, Big Tech might be in for a rocky stretch of road.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 09 2019, @02:17AM (10 children)
True, government stood idly by, and watched the various tech companies swallow the competition. They allowed Microsoft to monopolize the world, rather than just the US. But, those tech companies aren't the core problem.
The core is the assumption that all these companies have some kind of "right" to everyone's data. Running a close second, is the advertising industry. They have been more than happy to pay the likes of Google to supply them with all that data. Our government should have created the GDPR ten or even twenty years before the European Union did.
Most people today don't even see a problem with tech companies. Everyone seems to believe that "bigger is better". One big Google has to be better than 125 different tech companies competing with each other, right?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Saturday March 09 2019, @02:37AM (5 children)
I would love to see Facebook wiped off the face of the planet. But, I have a hard time seeing the antitrust violations there.
Google, maybe, though personally it seems a bit tenuous.
Amazon is a software company driving grocery stores out of business. That's one I can get on board with.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 09 2019, @02:47AM (4 children)
Every time government approves of a multi-billion dollar acquisition, they are assisting in creating monopolistic corporations. Smaller acquisitions fly under the radar, but they work to the same end.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:00AM (1 child)
This is a policy position, the correct thing to do is make a big stink about the telecoms themselves along with FB / Google. As others are saying those are definitely the more important monopoly threat. Maybe she has a hidden agenda for Big Telecom, maybe not, but without some type of evidence you shouldn't judge too quickly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @07:26PM
the correct thing to do is make a big stink about the telecoms themselves along with FB / Google. As others are saying those are definitely the more important monopoly threat.
Yes. Another worthy cause is being torpedoed by the popular fascism that seems to fly under everybody's radar. Attacking the content providers reveals a not so well hidden censorship agenda. Once we deal with the ISP issue, the content giants will naturally fall by the wayside.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:02AM (1 child)
That's definitely where the oversight should be occurring, but here we are....
John Oliver's take on corporate consolidation was pretty good. [youtube.com] If you haven't seen it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:07AM
Oversight has to come from the voting booth, or it simply won't happen.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:53AM (2 children)
Not in the international markets. If the US wasn't so under-regulated it would never have gained market dominance in so many industrial fields in the last century.
The trick is not letting US corporate predation go as far as to alienate key US allies or the American voter while making sure the US is gaining economically out of all of this...
Ops.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday March 09 2019, @09:37AM (1 child)
International markets is exactly why I'm hesitant to agree with Senator Warren. If these American companies are broken up, will the daughter companies be able to compete with massive foreign entities like Alibaba? Looking at smaller countries as an example, typically there are native language equivalencies of Facebook, Google, and Amazon, however the massive American companies still dominate thanks to an international presence and more advanced features.
I don't have a good solution for the problem. Perhaps forcing federation based standardizations on some services, which would help mitigate vendor lock-in.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday March 09 2019, @08:27PM
Campaign funds reform and an end to industry-to-capital hill-to-industry job rotation will sort most of it under two or three house terms. Once the tie that binds corrupt politicians and high ranking officials to lobbying groups and corporations is cut, the solutions will present themselves in the working committees. Just limit donations to $10000 per-individual and pass a law stating a regulator or advisor to a regulator body isn't allowed to work in the same industry or hold relevant stocks some 10 years after they leave government.
Republicans... Democrats... Everything will sort itself out for the better once.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by krishnoid on Saturday March 09 2019, @08:25AM
And running a close 0th is the credit agencies. Tech companies know who my friends are and advertisers know what flavor potato chips I buy, but credit agencies can misstate loan information and leak financial information, locking you out of or jeopardizing your engagement with, well, capitalism itself in a capitalist country. You want these companies not to have your data? At least Google lets you download most of your data and close your account, with nearly the exact opposite [cbsnews.com] happening in the financial sector [huffingtonpost.com].
If "Pocahontas" wants to take on these kinds of injustice, she can start by handing back those beads and (metaphor breaking apart here) reclaiming New York and everyone's financial identity from *these* offenders first. She could also start just by implementing what Europe already has in place regarding data privacy.