Posted in Menacing Monopoly

Jonathan Taplin: Google will need to be broken up because it’s getting too big

Looking ahead, Jonathan Taplin concludes that the current U.S. regime is unlikely to check Google’s ambitions or wide reach, which will necessitate a breakup of the company down the road:

I’m under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump’s inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.

Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government.” We ignore his words at our peril.

“Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy,” according to his New York Times byline.