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Why Startups Aren't Pushing the Feds To Break Up Big Tech (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Today's tech startups have largely stayed out of the debate over whether antitrust law should be used to humble -- and possibly break up -- giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon. Startups are often in position to lead the antitrust charge against major competitors. But entrepreneurs face a dilemma: If they go running to regulators, they have to admit they're in danger and tick off a powerful player in their world. If they do nothing, they risk bleeding out.
[...] Tech giants have immense leverage over startups. "The tech hypercaps have never been more powerful relative to startups, including Microsoft in the '90s," said Sam Altman, the president of startup accelerator Y Combinator. "[T]he resources are so mismatched it's an unfair fight." Startups (or larger competitors) can confidentially press their case before staff members at the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission, or the startups can go public with their concerns. With the exception of Yelp, there are no major startups in the U.S. that have turned to regulators to take on today's biggest companies, like Facebook, Amazon, or Google. [...] Why startups don't lodge antitrust complaints: "Running a startup, running a growth company there's so many things to do, and every hour is precious," said Albert Wenger, a managing partner at Union Square Ventures.
[...] Tech giants have immense leverage over startups. "The tech hypercaps have never been more powerful relative to startups, including Microsoft in the '90s," said Sam Altman, the president of startup accelerator Y Combinator. "[T]he resources are so mismatched it's an unfair fight." Startups (or larger competitors) can confidentially press their case before staff members at the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission, or the startups can go public with their concerns. With the exception of Yelp, there are no major startups in the U.S. that have turned to regulators to take on today's biggest companies, like Facebook, Amazon, or Google. [...] Why startups don't lodge antitrust complaints: "Running a startup, running a growth company there's so many things to do, and every hour is precious," said Albert Wenger, a managing partner at Union Square Ventures.
We remember the time when MySpace was king and Facebook was a startup and Zuckerberg was a nobody. Or we remember MySpace knocking off Tribe, which knocked out Friendster, which stole away all of the LiveJournal user base.
Or we remember when Google was just a cute misspelling of the word for a 1 followed by 100 zeros, and we did our searching with Lycos, AltaVista, LookSmart, AskJeeves, or just welled on the Yahoo directory to find cool pages.
Or we remember when Microsoft was the unstoppable evil empire. And Apple was "beleaguered" and Mikey Dell was threatening a hostile takeover so he could "shut it all down and refund the money to the shareholders."
Or we remember when there was no Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Borders were the monolithic behemoths putting neighborhood bookstores out of business.
The real oldsters remember the days of IBM being the evil empire that even the US government was incapable of reigning in, and no one would buy a computer named after a fruit, and Gates and co. were rotting in a New Mexico desert writing an OS for a computer that communicated vis das blinkenlights.
Dominance in tech is fleeting, and has been for at least 50 years. I expect most startup founders are as aware of that history as anyone. And they probably all have dreams of. themselves, being that scrappy underdog that punches out an established player to become the king of the mountain. So it shouldn't be too surprising that they're wary of inviting the government in to interfere.
Imagine all the people...