An article published today by Wired magazine highlights growing calls for tighter antitrust regulation of larger technology firms amongst the current field of Democratic presidential candidates.
The argument is that it is time to look beyond 20th century criteria for evaluating whether a given acquisition is an antitrust concern - tech behemoths with too much market power can harm consumers and suppliers even without directly ratcheting up prices. Moreover, the pendulum may be swinging too far, with dominant players able to exert too much power on their suppliers and partners, with little regulatory recourse.
For example, in The Everything Store, Brad Stone describes the early years of the Kindle e-reader and e-books at Amazon. While things started out cordially, with in-house staff at Amazon maintaining positive relationships with publishers to ensure Amazon customers had good access to a wide array of high quality publications, things began to sour when the tech company was able to use its dominant market position in the e-reader space to exact painful terms for e-books from its suppliers. Even though there was no direct negative effect on customers, one could argue there should have still been regulatory oversight in the face of this aggression, as the growing tech company was able to take advantage of its strong market power to exert disproportionate pressure on the publishing industry. Given the current ubiquity of AWS among both small and medium tech companies, one could argue that lack of competition in the space could be a concern there as well.
A similar argument could be made for Facebook, with its recent acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. These are invaluable applications to Facebook's users, and allow people around the world to keep in touch with friends and family through post-card style updates and top-notch border-free messaging. However, consumers hesitant to share their contact book with Facebook may be limited in terms of alternatives for connecting with groups of family and friends on WhatsApp. Millennial globe-trotters have few alternatives for sharing stories if they are unwilling to provide Instagram / Facebook with unrestricted microphone and photo access.
As consumers, we benefit tremendously from the wide array of free products and services available thanks to the major technology companies of our time. However, it may be beneficial to have just a bit more consumer protection in place.
https://www.wired.com/story/tech-antitrust-break-up-andrew-yang/
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