However, I guess big tech companies have become part of the superpower games (USA vs. China etc.). Breaking up Google might just mean a Chinese company takes over. Can't trust the other governments to enforce similar market conditions.
So yeah, like you said, conditions of the universe :)
Well-crafted arguments showing where Google (or ilk) are anti-competitive are likely to gain some traction.
In my mind it shouldn't make sense to found a company with the explicit goal of being purchased by one of the tech giants in a few years.
Many are never even really trying to get s sustainable business model and venture capital is fueling this machine.
One point of view is that it’s a more efficient way for the tech giants to develop new features. An internal team trying to do greenfield work will inevitably be slowed down by bureaucracy, where a startup can iterate more quickly without all the friction of things like performance reviews, HR exercises, and if I’m being cynical, pesky issues like user data protection frameworks.
It’s risky, but the payoff for founders is significantly larger than what an equivalent employee would get for leading an internal project.
You can break up the phone systems because the child companies can provide similar levels of service. But how do you break up a single search algorithm?