A Better Way to Break Up Big Tech
Senator Elizabeth Warren has an interesting plan for reform. But it has shortcomings worth considering.
Among the techies who attended the annual South By Southwest Interactive conference the past few days, the hottest topic of conversation — besides the swarms of drunken idiots careening around Austin on rented electric scooters — was Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s ground-shaking proposal to break up large tech companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook.
In her proposal, which she released on the eve of the conference, Warren argued that these companies have abused their power and harmed competition in two big ways.
The first is by offering their own products on platforms they control: Amazon giving preferential treatment to its house brands, or Apple promoting its own apps inside the iOS App Store. Warren, D-Mass., a presidential candidate, argues that the companies should be required to do one or the other — sell their own goods or run a third-party marketplace — but not both.
“You can be an umpire or you can own teams,” she said. “But you can’t be an umpire and own one of the teams that’s in the game.”
Warren also argues that by acquiring potential competitors, as in Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp…
