Last night 60 Minutes ran an important expose on the monopoly of Google. We are headed for another trust busting period to dethrone monopolies and restore democratic, free market forces. The reset periods have happened of necessity throughout human history. Extreme concentrations of control and wealth are inherently unsustainable.
This past week the Federal Trade Commission was asked to investigate the data collected by Google on its Android operating system, which powers most of the world’s smartphones. It was a tiny blip in the news cycle but another sign of Washington’s and Europe’s growing concerns about the enormous, largely unchecked power accumulated by tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google over the last two decades. Of the three, Google, which is part of a holding company called Alphabet is the most powerful, intriguing, and omnipresent in our lives. This is how it came to be. Here is a direct audio link
On a related note, see New ‘freedom from Facebook’ group wants to dismantle it.