![]() ![]() Which means antitrust enforcers must determine whether, and exactly how, each tech platform violated U.S. Without new laws giving the government the power to take a different approach, Washington cannot just break up big tech, or any company, solely because it is large or has a high market share. If a product gets a big share because it is good and popular-but its maker has not behaved anti-competitively toward its rivals-it has not violated our antitrust laws. New products can achieve huge market share because consumers love them: consider Rollerblade’s dominance in the inline-skating market in the late 1980s, AOL’s high share of internet access in the 1990s, or how Apple owned the tablet market in 2011. The break-them-up sloganeering fails to recognize that “big” is not, under the law, an antitrust violation. There are usually more effective ways to create competition. Unfortunately, “breaking up” large tech platforms is often not a good solution to the economic harms created by large firms in this sector. In this anti-big tech moment, the slogan “break them up” is simple, catchy and has been adopted by some politicians and other observers to capture the emotion of the era. Overseas, the specter of other action, from other capitals, also looms. And there are promises of more to come, if not from the FTC, then perhaps from some other part of the federal government. That seemed to change a few days ago when the Federal Trade Commission slapped Facebook with a $5 billion fine. ![]() There has been a lot of talk all year about restraining big tech-but very little action. This commentary originally appeared in the Washington Post. ![]()
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