<story><title>&apos;Break up big tech&apos;s monopoly&apos;: Smaller rivals join growing chorus</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-antitrust/break-up-big-techs-monopoly-smaller-rivals-join-growing-chorus-ahead-of-congress-hearing-idUSKBN1ZG17J</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>m23khan</author><text>on one side I completely understand the need for healthy market competition in tech industry. However, you have to realize the amount of innovation and products FAANG companies (and Microsoft) have rolled out -- it is unimaginable how we would be able to function equally efficiently both at personal and commercial level.&lt;p&gt;On personal level for example,
I use gmail&amp;#x2F;google search&amp;#x2F;rely on google to tell me weather and search news and do FX rate conversion, do some unit conversions, etc. I used to own android based phone and it made life simple to have gmail compatible app and the likes.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I can use amazon for shopping, trying out &amp;#x2F; learning AWS and even get kindle to read ebooks should I desire. heck, amazon provides entire infrastructure to efficiently deliver my parcels --- better than my Government&amp;#x27;s mailing program.&lt;p&gt;- Similarly majority of Business world runs mainly on backs of Microsoft (when it comes to corporate tooling and computer OS).&lt;p&gt;- Even take example of Apple -- their products are worldclass and its integration with its own suite of products makes life so much simpler -- iPhone, iWatch, their storage offerings, etc.&lt;p&gt;Now imagine having to utilize products between dozens of companies instead of these giants who you don&amp;#x27;t know would be able to survive in long run. And those blaming these tech giants for lack of collaboration for a market standard -- sure, that is correct but remember it was much worse to integrate products and services among different vendors back in 1980s and 1990s when you had dozens of medium and large companies.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sshumaker</author><text>That’s what people said about AT&amp;amp;T before we broke it up in 1982 - that it would hurt innovation. This was the company that had Bell Labs after all.&lt;p&gt;Instead, we had an absolute revolution in communication technology since - from fax lines, to modems, to cell connections, to the commercial internet.&lt;p&gt;It turns out that innovation happens more often when there is a lot of competition in the market. And the market figures out how to build standards for interop - you don’t need all of the products from the same company to get them to work together.</text></comment>
<story><title>&apos;Break up big tech&apos;s monopoly&apos;: Smaller rivals join growing chorus</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-antitrust/break-up-big-techs-monopoly-smaller-rivals-join-growing-chorus-ahead-of-congress-hearing-idUSKBN1ZG17J</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>m23khan</author><text>on one side I completely understand the need for healthy market competition in tech industry. However, you have to realize the amount of innovation and products FAANG companies (and Microsoft) have rolled out -- it is unimaginable how we would be able to function equally efficiently both at personal and commercial level.&lt;p&gt;On personal level for example,
I use gmail&amp;#x2F;google search&amp;#x2F;rely on google to tell me weather and search news and do FX rate conversion, do some unit conversions, etc. I used to own android based phone and it made life simple to have gmail compatible app and the likes.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I can use amazon for shopping, trying out &amp;#x2F; learning AWS and even get kindle to read ebooks should I desire. heck, amazon provides entire infrastructure to efficiently deliver my parcels --- better than my Government&amp;#x27;s mailing program.&lt;p&gt;- Similarly majority of Business world runs mainly on backs of Microsoft (when it comes to corporate tooling and computer OS).&lt;p&gt;- Even take example of Apple -- their products are worldclass and its integration with its own suite of products makes life so much simpler -- iPhone, iWatch, their storage offerings, etc.&lt;p&gt;Now imagine having to utilize products between dozens of companies instead of these giants who you don&amp;#x27;t know would be able to survive in long run. And those blaming these tech giants for lack of collaboration for a market standard -- sure, that is correct but remember it was much worse to integrate products and services among different vendors back in 1980s and 1990s when you had dozens of medium and large companies.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nabla9</author><text>&amp;gt;realize the amount of innovation and products FAANG companies (and Microsoft) have rolled out&lt;p&gt;This is common misconception.&lt;p&gt;Look at the list of acquisitions made by FAANG companies. For some reason their internal innovation dries up very fast and they buy innovation.&lt;p&gt;FAANG companies innovate with checkbook and grow using network effect.</text></comment>