Week of 05/13/2019

Break Up Big Tech?  Why Just Them?
– by David Matthews 2

So the big talk when it comes to Big Tech is that it’s just too big to keep it going.

By “Big Tech”, of course, we really mean Big Social Media.  That’s primarily Facebook and Alphabet (aka Google).  Yes, some people want to include Apple, but, really, Apple keeps sabotaging itself.  They show all the traits, they get really good at something, and then, for whatever reason, they just fail.

So right now it’s Facebook and Alphabet, because they seem to have a stranglehold on all the really big things, don’t they?  Well... “big” in terms of online social media and interaction.  “Everyone” has a presence on Facebook, this columnist included.  “Everyone” has an account.  Or two.  Or three.  People put up pages for their pets as well as their pet projects and business ventures.  Again, that includes this columnist.

But Facebook also has a problem with... well, itself. 

Most people see Facebook as a medium for social interaction.  However, as I pointed out in my “Don’t Be Facebook” article, Facebook is really an information brokerage group using social media as a means to collect data.  From day one, they collect information about every interaction we make through their service and then they make some form of that information available to others, be it through polling or advertising.  That’s how they make their money.  They sell your interaction as data.

Facebook is “Big” because it gobbles up anything that could replace it.  Instagram was considered a “threat” to Facebook... until they bought it.  WhatsApp was considered a “threat” to Facebook... until they also bought it.  And what they couldn’t buy, they pretty much rendered useless.  Snapchat used to be a “threat” until Facebook and Instagram copied many of Snapchat’s prized filters, and now it’s pretty much a dying media.  Yahoo’s Messenger service was driven into oblivion by both Microsoft Skype and Facebook’s Messenger.

Then there’s Alphabet, the “Big” that used to just be Google.  Much like its much older rival Yahoo, Google was originally just a search engine that made money off ad revenue.  But then it bought out all sorts of other things.  They bought out Blogger (which is the service this column is hosted through) and YouTube.  They bought out the Android operating system, which is now on almost all non-Apple cellphones.  They came up with their own browser, their own email service, their own maps, their own translators, their own streaming media service, their own home security service, their own laptops, their own... well, they had their own social media service but they couldn’t compete with Facebook so they dropped it.  Oh, and they also have been laying down some serious Internet cable, and getting into the cellphone business itself.

Like I said before, Apple tries to be a “big”, but they keep on sabotaging itself from getting too big for their own good.  They come up with one niche product, excel at it, and then that’s usually it.  They survived because of iTunes and the iPod, then because of the iPhone and all of the apps that were developed for it through iTunes.  They’re just hanging on right now, looking for the next “pop” venture to put everything into.

And, really, I’ve been on everything from Apple starting with the Apple IIe back in the pre-Internet days, and from what I’ve seen, they don’t really do anything to get past the stage of “wannabe”.  They may control their own hardware and software, but that rigid control has also limited their own scope so they will never be anything but a wannabe “Big”.

Am I missing anyone?  Oh, yeah, there’s Amazon; owner of the Washington Post, king of the online shopping business, and the sworn enemy of Narcissist President Donald Trump.  I guess they count as a “big” as well.

So, yeah, let’s break them all up.  Split them into smaller groups.  Scatter them so they can’t be so all-imposing and abusive and stifle progress and stifle innovation.  Because, you know, “Big” is bad, right?  Well, except when it comes to banks... and airlines... and healthcare... and oil... and political parties.

Yeah, we broke up AT&T back in the day.  They were “the” monopoly back then.  The original Ma Bell.  They owned all the phone lines and all of the phones and all the phone service.  And we broke them up.  We declared that they were a monopoly and that it was wrong for them to own and control everything.  They got split up, and we had a whole bunch of local and long-distance carriers.

Ever wonder what happened to Ma Bell?  Well they got bought out by one of those “new upstart” services, and then that company renamed themselves AT&T, and now they are the biggest media service in America, owning not only phone service, but also DirecTV and the mega-media conglomerate Time-Warner, which, in turn, owns Warner Brothers, the CW, DC Comics, CNN, TNT, TBS, Headline News, Cartoon Network, TruTV, HBO, Cinemax, etcetera, etcetera.  The current AT&T essentially became far bigger than the original AT&T ever could be, and nobody is saying that it is wrong or that they should be broken up.

But, yeah, let’s break up Big Tech.

Let’s talk about Microsoft for a minute.  I came to their defense twenty-plus years ago when the White House under President Bill Clinton (who is a novice in the field of narcissism compare to Trump) decided that the house that Bill Gates built was “too big” to keep intact.  Their supposed “crime” was having the most dominant operating system of the time, and then having their own in-house browser.  You may have heard of it.  It’s called Internet Explorer.  Yeah, *that* Internet Explorer!

Well Microsoft had to politic-up and learn to bring in lobbying groups in order to keep from being broken like Ma Bell.  But what happened to them since then?  Well, they’ve ventured into the cellphone service... which they failed at.  They came up with a really cool-looking cloud-based netbook that’s overpriced.  They put up a half-hearted attempt at a streaming device which is junk.  They have a gaming system that they are fumbling at.  And they’ve decided to replace Internet Explorer with the buggy Microsoft Edge browser that people hate and instead rely on Alphabet’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers.  Oh, and they declared that Windows 10 would be “the last” operating system.  And they’re working on including Android-compatible apps.

In other words, like Apple, Microsoft has really been sabotaging itself.  Instead of being “too big” like the Clinton White House proclaimed, they have been slowly working themselves into oblivion.

But, yeah, let’s break up Big Tech.

Let’s get brutally honest here... while “Big Tech”, or at least “Big Social Media Tech”, is, in fact, big and over-imposing and behaving like the abusive giants they are, they are far from the only “big” that we need to worry about.

Big Healthcare and Big Pharma have been teaming up to form much more abusive conglomerates to the American people than Big Tech.  We can say “no” to the new $1000 cellphone, but we can’t say “no” to paying through the nose for drugs that keep us alive.  We don’t need a wireless speaker, but we do need to see a doctor. 

Tell me, which do you think is more important: a voice-over home assistant to play songs, or an urgent care service close by that will see us when we need it?

We’re looking at cable services and satellite services and we’re saying they’re “too big” and “too expensive”, but also look at what’s popping up to challenge them!  Cord-cutting services like Roku are making streaming media a suitable replacement.

Don’t want to pay for that $1000 cellphone?  Hate paying those huge cellphone service costs?  There are affordable substitutes to both!  This commentator not only knows they exist, but this commentator also uses them!

The truth of the matter is this: Facebook and Alphabet are only “big” because we made them this way!  They are monsters of our own creation.  And we can also break them down if we want to.  We don’t need corrupt government officials or well-meaning politicians to do that for us.  And, really, they have much bigger and more menacing “big” groups to target.

Social media is just that... social.  That means we make it what it is.  We can also turn to something else if we don’t like it.  Don’t like Facebook?  Fire them and find something else.  Don’t like Google?  Go Bing or even Yahoo.

You want to break up “Big Tech”?  Do it yourself.