I think you underestimate how many small, long tail businesses are non-compliant with GDPR. For that matter, there are probably quite a few in Europe.
Big companies can’t afford the liability of GDPR non-compliance. Small ones, like those created by breaking up Google, will treat compliance as a “nice to have.”
I’m not necessarily arguing that, I’m just arguing that breaking up Google may cause other problems, especially if it results in lots of small businesses with little revenue but a wealth of consumer data.
If you break them up, make sure you’re breaking them up into viable businesses.
For example, instead of requiring Google to sell of its whole ad tech business, require it to spin off competitors. Then put a cap on the percentage of marketshare any ad tech business can have.
Yes, but there is two dimensions to the problem, one is the excessive market share Google has on some markets, the other is the vertical integration transferring that excessive market share to other unrelated markets.
Take for example Google Maps. You could argue that it competes with Apple Maps and Bing Maps, but that’s just saying that if you want to be in the online mapping business, you also have to own a leading operating system. You’re right, if you break Maps off Google, it will most likely not be competitive with Apple or Bing, but does that mean that we’ll never have real open competition on this space? And there is a lot of other markets like this that have an oligopoly at best cornering the market. Online document editing. Email providers. Browsers. Google Chrome specifically is shaping the whole Internet in Google’s image, against ordinary people.
Is there really no way to reestablish free markets on these sectors?
I think you underestimate how many small, long tail businesses are non-compliant with GDPR. For that matter, there are probably quite a few in Europe.
Big companies can’t afford the liability of GDPR non-compliance. Small ones, like those created by breaking up Google, will treat compliance as a “nice to have.”
You’re still arguing that monopolies are good, since they at least obey laws. That’s a weird thing to say.
I’m not necessarily arguing that, I’m just arguing that breaking up Google may cause other problems, especially if it results in lots of small businesses with little revenue but a wealth of consumer data.
Yeah, but what then is the alternative? Don’t break up monopolies if they have a lot of customer data?
If you break them up, make sure you’re breaking them up into viable businesses.
For example, instead of requiring Google to sell of its whole ad tech business, require it to spin off competitors. Then put a cap on the percentage of marketshare any ad tech business can have.
Yes, but there is two dimensions to the problem, one is the excessive market share Google has on some markets, the other is the vertical integration transferring that excessive market share to other unrelated markets.
Take for example Google Maps. You could argue that it competes with Apple Maps and Bing Maps, but that’s just saying that if you want to be in the online mapping business, you also have to own a leading operating system. You’re right, if you break Maps off Google, it will most likely not be competitive with Apple or Bing, but does that mean that we’ll never have real open competition on this space? And there is a lot of other markets like this that have an oligopoly at best cornering the market. Online document editing. Email providers. Browsers. Google Chrome specifically is shaping the whole Internet in Google’s image, against ordinary people.
Is there really no way to reestablish free markets on these sectors?