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Elizabeth Warren Calls To Break Up Facebook, Google, and Amazon
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is proposing to break up technology companies, including Amazon.com, Google and Facebook, calling them anti-competitive behemoths that are crowding out competition. From a report: "Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world," Warren wrote in a post on the blogging platform Medium. "It's a great story -- but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets." Warren's call also comes as Democrats have begun to plan for increased oversight of tech companies after winning control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. On Wednesday, House and Senate Democrats introduced legislation to establish strong net neutrality protections that would look to prevent major service providers from using their power to manipulate how users experience the internet. Update: In a statement, Warren's team said that the proposal would also apply to Apple. "They would have to structurally separate -- choosing between, for example, running the App Store or offering their own apps," a spokesperson said.
Warren has to say something to separate herself from the throngs of Democratic Presidential hopefuls, and elevate her campaign into the limelight, but she doesn't really have a clue what her proposal would do.
Internet neutrality is poorly understood by Washington, and there would be throngs of salivating international competitors for the void created if the US government handicaps their domestic tech industry.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Separate the networks and prohibit them from selling to users, or having exclusive contracts. Then we have competing networks (though sometimes it might be cable vs dsl), and competing providers on top of the networks.