Comment by nojvek
5 years ago
I agree. Google is such a large behemoth who actively tries to avoid customer support if they can. Splitting it to smaller business with a bit of autonomy and not having to rely on ad money fueling everything else means those smaller businesses have to give a shit about customers and compete on even ground.
Same applies to Facebook and other tech companies. The root issue is taking huge profits from area of business into other avenues which compete with the market on unfair ground (or out right buying out competition)
However anti-trust in US has eroded significantly.
> However anti-trust in US has eroded significantly.
Perhaps compared to the 40s-70s, but certainly not compared to the Reagan era. Starting with the Obama administration, there's been a strong rebirth of the anti-trust movement and it's only gaining momentum (see many recent examples of blocked mergers)[1].
[1] https://hbr.org/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...
The Obama admin used it only to attack enemies.
Renata Hesse was part of that effort, and has since worked for Google and Amazon, and is now expected to be in charge of anti-trust at Biden's DOJ.
And as long as the internet giants are on the correct side of the culture war there will be scant appetite for breaking them up or reigning them in. As long as you need 5 phone calls to silence someone and erase them from the online, there is no chance in hell that the government will try to break them up.