I feel like this line of argument is gaining broader traction. When I was making these points four and five years ago I was frequently downvoted. I feel powerless to affect change, but I'm starting to notice that many powerful players seem to be echoing this sentiment. Tim Sweeney, Marc Andreessen, and now YCombinator.
YCombinator hasn't had many centicorns lately, and the reason for that is that big tech is sucking out all of the oxygen in the room. You have to pay their tolls to play - discovery and distribution incredibly frictionful, and you're always in some manner paying the gatekeepers. They're bloodletting margin from the innovators and practitioners that need it the most.
VC firms are certainly thinking this over. Google, Apple, and the rest put a ceiling over what portcos can ultimately grow up into, and they can even force M&A when in a different world that would be a subpar outcome. These firms and mid-cap tech companies can be a powerful voice to help shape regulation.
I shouldn't even have to mention how this hurts the small business, lifestyle business, and mom and pop operations. Tech giants are finding every way to squeeze the lemon that they possibly can. If we can get enough of them talking about their pain points, that can be another set of voices to add to the angry cacophony.
Europe has gotten louder in beating this drum, and I'm hoping the wave is starting to come to shore domestically. It'll make the world better for all players - even the tech giants.
Google, as a sum of its parts, is frankly undervalued. They aren't properly monetizing all of their properties. If they were forced to break up and make each business unit anti-fragile, actually competitive, actually profitable, and wholly standalone, most of those business units would emerge stronger and better for customers. Shareholders would see benefit.
But the broader impact to the health of the overall market is what's most important, and that could be tectonically massive. Everything and everyone who isn't "big tech" - every industry, every individual - has been ensnared in this Pacific garbage patch of netting. The once-free Internet has so many artificial barriers that you have to pay to bypass, platforms are walled gardens that don't play together, and the companies that own the gates aren't good stewards. Their role is just to accrue power and tax.
Freeing the markets up again will make everyone collectively so much more innovative and profitable.
I hope we see change soon.
As an engineer I dread having to do all the toil required to disentangle them, should that be the DOJ and USSC mandate.
You’re welcome, I too find my disposition infected from time to time.
> VC firms are certainly thinking this over. Google, Apple, and the rest put a ceiling over what portcos can ultimately grow up into, and they can even force M&A when in a different world that would be a subpar outcome. These firms and mid-cap tech companies can be a powerful voice to help shape regulation.
I’m skeptical that this will happen in an environment of deregulation. However, it is possible that we’ll see change on a longer timeline.
> Google, as a sum of its parts, is frankly undervalued. They aren't properly monetizing all of their properties.
I couldn’t agree more. Every time I see Google kill a product line, it bothers me that it wasn’t spun off into its own company.
> Freeing the markets up again will make everyone collectively so much more innovative and profitable.
I’m not sure if I subscribe to the belief that markets were ever free. I do agree that we should do as much as we can to open them up though.
> I hope we see change soon.
Indeed, I simply hope we can see a return to reasoned discourse.
Thank you again echelon. May the winds ever be to your back, the sun to your face, and free markets on your horizon.