Martin Giles

Breaking up Big Tech will be really hard to do—here’s why

If any of the tech giants are found guilty of anticompetitive behavior, they’re likely to be hit with heavy fines and other sanctions. But trying to force through a breakup of one or more of the companies will be tough to do because:

  1. Big tech firms have generally made their services available for free.
  2. They aren’t “natural monopolies.” 
  3. Big tech firms dominate data gathering and use insights to provide even more free services.

It’s time to rein in the data barons

Facebook, Google, and Amazon all have business models that require them to scoop up large amounts of data about people to power their algorithms, and they derive their power from this information. Like the oil barons at the turn of the 20th century, the data barons are determined to extract as much as possible of a resource that’s central to the economy of their time. The more information they can get to feed the algorithms that power their ad-targeting machines and product-recommendation engines, the better. Their dominance is allowing them to play a dangerous and outsize role in our polit

Net Neutrality’s Dead. The Battle to Resurrect It Is Just Beginning.

Internet activists and some politicians are ramping up efforts to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality decision, or to reimpose net neutrality rules through legislation. Here are the main battle strategies they will employ in 2018:

The Demise of Net Neutrality Will Harm Innovation in America

Entrepreneurs are rightly concerned that large companies will spend heavily to dominate fast-lane access, making it harder for some startups, such as bandwidth-hungry mobile video companies, to challenge them. “Milliseconds of difference can leave you at a disadvantage when potential customers are evaluating your product,” explains Tom Lee, the head of policy at Mapbox, a location data platform for mobile and Web applications. Even the very biggest startups could suffer.