CMV: Big tech companies need to be broken up

This may seem like an obvious take, but I'm gonna explain why I think big tech companies need to be broken up. I've thought about this issue a lot, so I think I have some good arguments to make. <br><br>Technology companies follow a classic winner-takes-all pattern. What does that mean? In other industries, you have lots of competitors doing basically the same thing, and different people like different companies. For example, some people like to buy their shoes from Foot Locker, but others like to buy their shoes from Finish Line. They're not the same experience, but they're close. Now, you might prefer the shoes from one over the other, but you have a choice. <br><br>Technology, and particularly tech companies that run on software, has a very different model. Which service people use is determined by which service their friends use. If you want to chat with your friends, you use Facebook messenger because that's where they are. If you want to tell a friend about a cool video you watched, you post it on Facebook because that's where they are. If you want to tweet out links to a story you wrote, you post it on Twitter because that's where your followers are. <br><br>You don't have a choice. You *have* to use the service where everyone else is. You cannot choose to use a different company once it reaches a certain size. You cannot choose to use a different search engine from Google. <br><br>Amazon has Alexa. Amazon has smart speakers. Amazon also has all your purchase history. They can use the fact that you've purchased something in the past to recommend it in the future, in the Alexa home. If a different company tries to make a competing smart speaker, they don't have your purchase history from other Amazon products. In other words, Alexa being integrated with all other Amazon products gives it a completely unfair advantage. <br><br>For those of you who don't know, there is something called US v. Microsoft. Back in the early 2000s, the Department of Justice was actually going to break up Microsoft because they violated antitrust law. Ultimately, they decided not to. But this was a case from nearly 20 (now 25) years ago. <br><br>The reason why big tech companies may not have been a problem back then is that they were still working in a completely new field - cellphones, operating systems, etc. There was a lot to be figured out, and the rules hadn't been set up yet. But now, we're *past* that period. The rules have been set up. <br><br>And cellphones have become so essential to modern life that it's tantamount to not having an automobile in 1960s suburbia, if you don't have a smartphone. Big tech companies need to be broken up. <br><br>Amazon has Alexa. But also independent bookstores. But also Audible. But also Whole Foods. Also Twitch. Also Zappos. Also Ring. Also Instacart. Also Nest. Also Sony. Also. Also. Also. <br><br>The problem isn't just independent bookstores. The problem isn't just US v. Microsoft. It's that they have a completely unfair advantage in basically every market that they enter. But big tech companies don't just enter markets and compete with other companies, they purchase companies that have a commanding market position. <br><br>You can buy Alexa because it's naturally the best, and Amazon is the natural best because it has all your history from every other Amazon product, and all the products it has purchased. But then they use that commanding market position to integrate all their history and information into Alexa. And that's what makes Alexa so good. But that's not fair. <br><br>Google owns independent home security companies. Facebook owns Instagram. Big tech companies shouldn't be able to do that. And maybe I'm being too alarmist, but big tech companies seem to be getting bigger. <br><br>***tl;dr: Big tech companies are so big that they have an unfair advantage. They have an unfair advantage because they have so much integration. Integration isn't fair because they were able to buy out other companies. Integration wouldn't be a problem if big tech companies weren't doing it. But they are. So big tech companies need to be broken up.***