The law targeting monopoly is broken in the digital era.
One reason is that much of the mainstream economic discipline has pronounced that antitrust is "a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance." to quote Alan Greenspan.
As an example of how views changes is a quote from the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890:
> Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
But today, the business mode of almost every startup is to monopolize some part of the trade or commerce, preferably all around the world. The announce it publicly without any concern about antitrust enforcement.
This!
A thousand times this!
What good does it do to break these companies up if they can all share my data with each other freely in any case?
And if we make the sharing of data EXPLICITLY illegal with harsh repercussions, a la HIPAA, then I don't really need for them to be broken up.
It's just sound bite politics that will land we the people in the same place we started. Probably a worse place, because we will have split up what was a 9mm data privacy bullet into what would effectively be a shotgun blast.
I get the impression that in the US, ~everybody who can afford it chooses iPhones, so rich educated liberal types on some emotional level don't realize that "iPhone" is just one product in the smartphone market, which is plenty diverse enough.
Governments allow you to be violated, at the request of the wealthy and currently-powerful. Appealing to governments to solve this issue will not work.
Even that is going to be a hard sell in the political climate though. Twisting to take an even more abrasive and high-touch action is just not going to happen. Hopefully democrats will learn to calm themselves down and inject some degree of sanity over the next year because Americans deserve a rational alternative to the era of Donald trump. Not some Sophie’s Choice of two shock-and-awe Americas.
The difference is Americans can't sue, but they're already benifiting from corporate processes pounding every square process into a round hole (for better and worse).
Warrens idea points out a better idea. Presidential candidates from non-republicans can do their most work with powers the presidency already has: drug criminalization, immigration, pardon powers, etc. I’m pretty sure a president can break up companies under the trust buster acts from the late 1800s, but I'm basing that on decades old public schooling.