Antitrust Can’t Catch Big Tech

Facebook, Google and the rest will change their ways before the feds can make a case.

By Andy Kessler. Excerpts:

"The first antitrust suit against IBM was filed in 1968. The U.S. government dismissed all antitrust cases against IBM as “without merit” in 1982. AT&T , an actual government-mandated monopoly, faced its first antitrust suit in 1974. It settled through a consent decree in 1982, with the Bell telephone system breaking into Baby Bells. Yet unlike Humpty Dumpty, the market put AT&T mostly back together again, with it and Verizon going strong in wireless—a field few foresaw at the time of the breakup."

"So has Big Tech squashed competition? Hmmm, let’s see. From 2014-18, global venture-capital funding has tripled to almost $360 billion. More than 40,000 startups launched in 2018. There are almost 12 million technology jobs in the U.S. while Apple , Amazon, Google and Facebook combined employ fewer than a million, world-wide."