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Comment by namanaggarwal | Hacker News Reader

How do we decide which companies to break up ? Similar argument can be made for any big conglomerate. Look at Reliance in India or Samsung in Korea, they sell anything and everything possible. Could it make companies hide businesses as well, just to not want to break up.

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Well, this is not a new problem. Antitrust enforcement and breaking up companies has been a thing for decades (if not at least a century)

Starting with companies that make over a billion dollars a year and are in multiple markets seems like an uncontroversial place, though.

Starting with companies that make over a billion dollars a year and are in multiple markets seems like an uncontroversial place, though.

The problems don't occur when companies are in multiple markets, arguable that is better for competition and hence the person on the street. The problem is when a company or two dominates a single market.

You're correct that dominating a single market is bad, but using your dominance of a single market to bankroll taking over other markets is pretty nasty and you can't trivially do something like that if you aren't already fabulously wealthy from dominating a market.

In the case of the article, it's specifically talking about how Google is doing that.

> The problem is when a company or two dominates a single market.

It would also be bad if one company dominated multiple markets. (just a nit pick on your phrasing)

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