<story><title>First, Do No Harm</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2020/first-do-no-harm/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>protomyth</author><text>&lt;i&gt;The first group that benefits from large tech company acquisitions is end users. The fastest possible way for a new technology or feature to be diffused to users broadly is for it to be incorporated by one of the large platforms or Aggregators. Suddenly, instead of reaching a few thousand or even a few million people, a new technology can reach billions of people. It’s difficult to overstate how compelling this point is from a consumer welfare perspective: banning acquisitions means denying billions of people access to a particular technology for years, if not forever.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This really seems like a stretch.  First, its assumed that the actual features make it into a product again or the company is not simply shutdown and the current less-than-great feature is left in place (NIH).  This is the web and great things spread, the whole last line is just really sounds like fear-mongering.</text></comment>
<story><title>First, Do No Harm</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2020/first-do-no-harm/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lifeisstillgood</author><text>My first thoughts were similar to Thompson&amp;#x27;s- investigating small acquisitions will chill the market (a market each of us dreams of being in :-)&lt;p&gt;But then, I started thinking like an entrepreneur- &amp;quot;Hey, Zuckerberg, I know you are only offering 7M for my awesome iphone app, but if you buy at this price it might look to the FTC you are hiding something.&lt;p&gt;Now if you upped your price to 94.1M and reported the deal, everyone will be happy!&lt;p&gt;I remain hopeful.&lt;p&gt;More seriously, pretty much everything certain &amp;quot;systemically important&amp;quot;&amp;#x27;companies do (Utilities, banks etc) in the M&amp;amp;A space is reviewed and regulated - Big Tech is just going to face more and more of that in more and more countries.&lt;p&gt;I should think they could get ahead of the curve - start embracing things like GDPR and lobby &lt;i&gt;for&lt;/i&gt; it.  Get (bribe? lobby?) regulators in different jurisdictions to choose similar compatible rules - forget about trying to keep regulators off your backs while making money, if Thompson is right and these companies are in place for the next century their strategic goals should be sane, coherent and transparent regulation globally - that global regulation is coming is inevitable - that it is sane and coherent and transparent is far from not.</text></comment>