> I'm not at all clear what a break up means. How do you break up a monolithic single platform like Facebook? Maybe spin off the messaging stuff but who cares about that?
Facebook's platform is already pretty well broken up: you have IG, WhatsApp, the core News Feed, Messenger.
Warren's argument isn't so much that breaking the big tech companies up would benefit consumers in itself, but that breaking them up would enable competing services to emerge (in the same way, she argues, that breaking up Microsoft enabled Facebook and Google to emerge).
It's easy to forget now but in 1998 Windows was pushing Active Desktop pretty hard and MSFT were making a big play to make the Internet something which you consumed via the Windows desktop and via Microsoft owned products.
It's not clear that competition neccesarily _would_ emerge from more constraints on large tech companies, but it's probably true that Facebook making a "WeChat" type play would not be a good thing for the Open Web or competition in any way.
> (in the same way, she argues, that breaking up Microsoft enabled Facebook and Google to emerge).
Is this a reference to the consent decree? Microsoft wasn't actually broken up, not that I recall. Nor did the consent decree permit Google to emerge - it was emerging anyway, and before the consent decree.
Facebook tried for years to compete with Snapchat and failed. Competition is obviously beneficial for substitute goods, but I don't think tech is there.
Facebook's platform is already pretty well broken up: you have IG, WhatsApp, the core News Feed, Messenger.
Warren's argument isn't so much that breaking the big tech companies up would benefit consumers in itself, but that breaking them up would enable competing services to emerge (in the same way, she argues, that breaking up Microsoft enabled Facebook and Google to emerge).
It's easy to forget now but in 1998 Windows was pushing Active Desktop pretty hard and MSFT were making a big play to make the Internet something which you consumed via the Windows desktop and via Microsoft owned products.
It's not clear that competition neccesarily _would_ emerge from more constraints on large tech companies, but it's probably true that Facebook making a "WeChat" type play would not be a good thing for the Open Web or competition in any way.