Jonathan Taplin

[Commentary] Could it be that large tech companies — and Google in particular — have become natural monopolies by supplying an entire market’s demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities? Consider a historical analogy: the early days of telecommunications....

We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don’t inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.

[Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab ]