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Comment by JohnWhigham | Hacker News Reader

The Rockefellers and Vanderbilts of yester-century would be red with envy at the size and power of today's tech companies.

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Rockefeller became vastly more wealthy when Standard Oil was broken up.

Same will happen to Bezos, and he'll be the largest share holder of whatever pieces there are.

Rockefeller became more wealthy because he bought a ton of real estate in Manhatten during the Great Depression, not because of Standard Oil being broken up (although yes it was after, so technically you are right)

Yes, but at least in the case of Standard Oil, that was a monopoly which was definitively anti-consumer, because it was actually monopolizing an entire specific industry.

Right. But today when most people say "monopoly", they don't mean the Standard Oil kind. They mean the Google kind that has ~90% of the search market. That much market share is still pretty anti-consumer. With Standard Oil, there were no competitors. Today, you can start a Google competitor, but they will bully you every inch of the way, and probably end up buying you anyway. It's not as clear-cut as a Standard Oil/AT&T, but it's still highly predatory and monopolistic behavior.

Having market share does not automatically make you anti-consumer.

Google has 90% of the search market because they have the best product. This is the same reason Amazon is doing well – people just love what they're offering. It's not that you need oil and Amazon is the only player in town – it's that Amazon and Google offer the best gas station experience by a large margin.

Alternative narrative: Online services are a winner take all market, so early players who survived the dot com crash due to great product leveraged that to gain monopoly share. Without government intervention they will dominate these markets to the detriment of the consumer (and the abuse of their data/privacy)

Ok, but that's just not true, at least in my case. I've tried to stop using Google multiple times. I still use Google not because of monopoly, but because every time I use DuckDuckGo or Bing or what have you, I wish I was using Google.

They will not "bully you every inch of the way". Go ahead, start a competitor. Here's how it will go: First they will ignore you. You are so small they will not even know you exist. Then when you start getting some noticeable but still insignificant volume of marketshare, they will laugh at you. Then when you actually start getting too much market share they will actually do something and fight you. If you survive that you will either win or they will buy you.

>If you survive that you will either win or they will buy you.

That's the problem though. No one in the modern age has traditionally won against these companies, they just get happily bought. It's very arbitrary and sure, it's not breaking any laws, but it's also doing absolutely nothing for promoting a healthy industry. Is this the best "free" market we can muster?

If you get bought out, then it just reveals what you're true intentions were all along.

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