Eric Schmidt demanding the firing of antitrust researchers at the New America Foundation may go down in history as one of the worst decisions ever by a corporate officer. Nobody was paying much attention to antitrust papers from there. Now both Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon want Schmidt's head, and antitrust is coming back.

The last time there was an unregulated industry with network effects this strong was when railroads had enormous power and used it to force high rates and favor companies they owned. This generated strong political opposition from businesses that needed to ship goods by rail, which was most businesses. Railroads were forced to become common carriers. Something like that might happen in network infrastructure.