Is it Time to Break up Big Tech?
“Is it time to break up Big Tech?” This question has been discussed since 2020 in the U.S .
Former president Donald J. Trump has said “something is going on in terms of monopoly, and it’s a bad situation.”
It is true that Big Tech occupies a large number of market share: Facebook has roughly 2.85 billion monthly active users as the first quarter of 2021(Statistic); Amazon has 310 million active customers worldwide and 148.6 million Amazon Prime Members in the US(Backlinko), which occupies a more than 40% of market share of the U.S e-commerce retail market in 2020 (Statistic); Google was ranked first amongst the most visited multi-platform web properties in the U.S in 2020 with more than 92 percent of global search engine inquiries (Statistic); Apple’s market share remained high at 55% from strong iPhone 12 demand and Apple was the first one to be valued at $1 and $2 trillion (NPR).
Answering this question is kind of incompatible as many a customer, because we love it and we hate it. The big Tech truly built a strong trust in many people mind not only Big Tech has an outstanding performance as their high quality of products and services, but also some of them are continuing acquiring other big companies, so that they would have more and more customers. People who uses Big Tech are also have a concern about their personal data the tech giants possess and the sway these companies have over their lives. However, in my opinion, this is a problem that will eventually arise in the development of electronic technology, because the internet brings human’s life more convenience, such as the Amazon, there are plenty different stores on Amazon, we can shop different products from different brands only from one website or App, it saves more time and give consumers more information, Facebook owns Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, three most popular messaging services in the world, which provides a cheaper, convenient approach for human to contact, when all of your friends are contacting from these applications, you are not willing to be the one who is different.
However, there are indeed some impacts for other companies and the government. Because when they are growing stronger, they are going to become monopoly in the market, and that is bad for other companies to develop, the market can’t be a competitive market, that would be an unhealthy market which would be lack of innovation, and it is bad for an industry to develop. In addition, monopolies have potential negative effects on the consumers which can be: charging a higher price than in a competitive market, reducing consumers surplus and welfare. Besides the impacts of producers and consumers, there are bad impacts for the government, as the monopoly can influence the market and economy, the monopoly would have more rights to restrict the government, when the monopoly grows a certain extent, our government might listen to the monopoly, this situation might be out of control.
Therefore, I think we need to have impose restrictions on Big Tech to avoid being monopoly, but break up them also brings negative impacts to consumers and the society.
