I don't think you could break them up in any meaningful way. What would you break Apple up into? The company that makes iPhones and the company that makes iPads?
Or Facebook? Two social networks that get half of the population each?
Breakups only make sense for vertically integrated companies. I guess you could break up Google (it's already done so itself to some extent with the Alphabet reorg) but not in a way that's meaningful, other than maybe requiring advertising to be its own company.
Also it neglects the fact that their biggest asset is their domain name. Google.com might be worth literally trillions of dollars. How do you break that up?
If anything, I'd argue the government could regulate Facebook since it's basically a natural monopoly, much the way it does the NFL or basic utilities.
Neither do the people above. Apple isn't acquiring any other phone makers. Google isn't acquiring any other search engines.
The breakups you suggested would make them slightly smaller companies but wouldn't solve any of the problems. the problem with Google if there is one is that it's the only search engine anybody uses. It's 90% of the market. Taking away YouTube doesn't change that.
Instagram isn't really a competitor with Facebook. Facebook would still be an effective Monopoly. Same with apple without iTunes.
> Instagram isn't really a competitor with Facebook
Of course it is. Facebook is losing certain demographics to Instagram. If they were separate companies, Facebook would be under far greater shareholder pressure.
I don't think that's true. I think Facebook is losing customers due to its own downsides, and Instagram is gaining customers on its own Merit. I don't think that there is a zero-sum competition between the two
Instagram is definitely a competitor with Facebook; indeed its founders recently quit because some of their desired projects (such as long form video) were being quashed to limit competition with the main Facebook platform.
> Why not break them up with identical tech stack to start off with
Now we’re arbitrarily drawing lines. Platform-service separation, on the other hand, has precedent. (As does gobbling up up-and-coming competitors, as Facebook did with Instagram and WhatsApp.)
Because whichever identical tech stack got the domain name Google.com would win. Do you know if Google is even the best search engine anymore? If Bing had gotten better would you know? Most people wouldn't.
And how would breaking Apple up, help with hate messages being posted on twitter, facebook, and youtube?
Taking it a step further, I mean, what would even be the basis on which you order a breakup of Apple? It's pretty set in law from the telcos way back to the railroads that monopolies are the reason to break a company up. (At least, that's the law in the US.)
But how do you argue that a company with a minority market share in all of its product lines, is a monopoly???
People have not quite thought through all the nuts and bolts of this whole "break up tech companies" idea.
(Although, I think at this point, one could argue effectively, that Google and Facebook are monopolies. It'd just be more difficult with companies like Apple or Netflix or companies like that.)
You could break off Google's, Amazon's, and Apple's app stores. You could break off Google's, Amazon's, and Microsoft's cloud platforms. You could make Instagram, WhatsApp, GitHub, and Youtube independent businesses. You could split Google Ads and AdSense. You could split off Google Chrome a la Mozilla and GSuites could be its own thing, too.
Or Facebook? Two social networks that get half of the population each?
Breakups only make sense for vertically integrated companies. I guess you could break up Google (it's already done so itself to some extent with the Alphabet reorg) but not in a way that's meaningful, other than maybe requiring advertising to be its own company.
Also it neglects the fact that their biggest asset is their domain name. Google.com might be worth literally trillions of dollars. How do you break that up?
If anything, I'd argue the government could regulate Facebook since it's basically a natural monopoly, much the way it does the NFL or basic utilities.