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Comment by afrojack123 | Hacker News Reader

Not going to get broken up. Apple has Samsung. Amazon has to compete with Google and every other e-commerce store. Facebook is in a natural monopoly business and has taken steps to be politically involved. Google owns the web through search and other products. Google is the only risk and even then maybe.

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> Amazon has to compete with Google and every other e-commerce store.

Amazon has majority market share in e-commerce. Google isn't even close.

It's interesting - the comments section appears to be a litany of excuses for big tech just to see what sticks. I think focusing on a single, higher-quality argument against anti-trust might be better.

> It's interesting - the comments section appears to be a litany of excuses for big tech just to see what sticks.

Not sure what comments section you're reading. In the one I see, most of the top comments are celebrating the possibility of these companies getting broken up. There's only the niggling problem that the law probably doesn't provide a provable cause of action supporting said breaking up.

> There's only the niggling problem that the law probably doesn't provide a provable cause of action supporting said breaking up.

Well, I think we should change our anti-trust law to deal with platforms. I think it is pretty confident of you to say that a priori there is no legal reason you could break up these companies.

The top comment when I commented was this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24698720. You're right that the tenor of the top comments now has already shifted.

> I think it is pretty confident of you to say that a priori there is no legal reason you could break up these companies.

I'm actually making this statement a posteriori, specifically a posteriori of reading up on what the antitrust laws in this country currently allow and don't allow. That being said, I could easily be wrong, which is why I said "probably." :)

As to changing the laws, this is all well and good, but it's hard to see that happening under a divided government, given Democrats and Republicans have different ideas of the effects they'd like to see out of such a break-up. If they can't do something extremely popular like legalizing marijuana or providing universal healthcare, I am not sure how effective they're going to be at less popular actions like breaking up Google or Facebook. We'll see I guess.

> As to changing the laws, this is all well and good, but it's hard to see that happening under a divided government,

I think the laws ought to change. I agree that it is likely that a combination of a divided government, plus political capture of Democrats by the tech industry, means that it unlikely we will see a shift towards economic justice any time soon.

>. Facebook is in a natural monopoly

Facebook isn't even a monopoly. And that would have been even more true if they hadn't been allowed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp.

FAANGM needs to be stripped off of their for-profit status, they are necessary in the current society in their large form but not as commercial entities.

By what right do you have any standing to propose something so radically confiscatory and transgressive of property rights?

Because public good overwhelms private property, and stakeholders will be compensated in the process. Moreover, they are an essential business, where a split would cause unnecessary expenditure, whereas making them non-profit would not. Maths win. I even coined a name for that: utilisation.

I explained the process in the nutshell 2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24094535

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