Google, Facebook and Amazon now face a techlash
go bankrupt?…Gradually and then suddenly.” Many technology entrepreneurs know this quote, from a novel by Ernest Hemingway—and often, from experience. The words have, of late, taken on new meaning. After years during which tech’s titans could do no wrong, they are now being pulled into a vortex of regulatory woes that make headlines almost daily. Big Tech is not about to implode.
A day earlier, America’s Department of Justice announced that it would look into how big online platforms have achieved market power and whether they abuse it. Thedid not say which firms it had in mind, but Google is likely to be one. The department’s lawyers are reportedly already preparing to investigate it.
All this suggests that the tech titans are in trouble both in Europe and America. Some Democrats hoping to run for the presidency have called for their break-up. William Barr, a lawyer for media and telecoms firms who became attorney-general in February, has spent years fighting them. At his confirmation hearings he agreed with a senator who said that “dominant Silicon Valley firms could use their market power...to discriminate against rival products, services or viewpoints.
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