Most of big tech doesn't have much of a monopoly on the technology. They have a monopoly on network lock-in. If you split them up, they have no monopoly and competition can resume.
Phone companies were for years considered the dictionary example of a “natural monopoly” because of the network effect. I’m actually old enough to remember when you could call people in AT&T and Verizon network respectively, cheaply, or use phone cards LOL. But call outside the network? You pay.
Yes, I agree the government did ONE thing that helped some people and that is pass a law mandating that you could port your phone number between carriers.
But no, splitting up Ma Bell into a cartel of phone companies did little to lower the price of phone calls. Technology like Voice Over IP did that overnight.
The Web disrupted walled gardens like AOL overnight. Trillions of dollars in value was unlocked with business models like SaaS and e-commerce. Splitting AOL into 5 AOLs wouldn’t do that.
The reason Google, Facebook, Amazon and all thr Big Tech companies even were able to get their start (and funding) is because they built on top of the open and permissionless Web!
Do you really think AOL or MSN would have allowed a search engine, a social network and a massive global store to grow within their walled garden and not pay then any rent? And they wouldn’t cannibalize them like Twitter did with Periscope and so many other platforms did with their startups? Come on :)
