For Google at the very least the search engine has to become a separate independent entity with restrictions on how and what information is exchanges with the rest.
It's frightening to think that there are people out there who want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs but comforting that they are nowhere near the majority opinion. I hope it stays that way. I would hate to see Google Brain, Waymo, and Deep Mind go the way of Bell Labs.
Lets remember that these are not traditional monopolies, in the sense of Standard Oil. They are much worse, as they are so embedded in the lives of people today. Their status as monopolies will be tolerated by society only as far as they don't exhibit anti-competitive practices.
Amazon: $16.1B
Alphabet: $13.9B
Intel: $12.7B
Microsoft: $12.3B
Apple: $10.0B
(Recode/FactSet data)
Amazon: 136B
Alphabet: 90B
Intel: 60B
Microsoft: 90B
Apple: 214B
----------------
And Gross Income:
Amazon: 58B
Alphabet: 55B
Intel: 36B
Microsoft: 55B
Apple: 83B
It reminds me of the same things that happened with the banks and Comcast. Most people who have Comcast got there because Comcast bought their provider and the investors wanted to cash out, not because people voted with their dollars. The banks got too big to fail, not because everyone rushed to switch all their money to bank X but because bank X bought up all the smaller players with money bet on the bubble.
I think they do need broken up but I would argue all we really need to do is "unmerge" these acquisitions and spin them back out separate. Absolute power has always corrupted absolutely. To be fair, this isn't new. Gates did a lot of the same things but now their foundation is doing wonderful things. However, it is easy to be a philanthropist with spare billions. What I would love to see from one of these founders is to attack one of the world's biggest problems personally and with the same ruthlessness they did their main companies. Musk is the only one who really seems to be "walking the walk".
It's clear Musk is also interested in consolidation and expansion of his empire, probably one day under X.com brand, but I guess since he is good at working on his fan base and talking about imaginary ideas, he should be treated differently than Larry Page or Jeff Bezos.
When you think about it from another perspective (playing devil's advocate here for the sake of illustration), SpaceX is not about going to Mars, it's just another satellite launching business working its underpaid employees 80-hour-weeks with that line; SolarCity was just another put solar panel on your roof business you see a ton of in Costco without any clear differentiation (how about "unmerging" that too, by the way?) Heck, look at Tesla "Autopilot", nothing but a joke.
If what Musk does is Good, I like to point out Larry Page's company had a self-driving car project since ages ago; they tried doing breakthrough work on life sciences, and a lot of other things. Perhaps Larry Page should have dated Hollywood actresses all-year-long to get more positive press coverage.
The point is, yes, there are pros and cons. And you basically agreed to the parent post's when you brought up Musk's example.
For example look at the web. Google has pretty much free pass to crawl and index any website, while smaller players get blacklisted and blocked immediately. Paywalled websites open their door if the link comes from Facebook. If you get black listed by gmail, your emails have no chance of reaching user’s inboxes. And the list goes on.
In the same way the ancient Athenians used to exile citizens who were getting too powerful, it’s a good idea to split up companies that become too powerful. Even if they haven’t violated any laws.
I don’t think that any research gap will left unfilled by smaller startups if they get split up.