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Why it’s not as simple as “breaking up big tech” | Prospect Magazine

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Yet there are two problems with the attempt to revive pre-Bork and Bowman antitrust. First, the technical difficulties of getting intervention right, in a context where it goes against the grain. The software industry is prone to natural monopoly or oligopoly. Software reduces friction along existing value chains, often reconfiguring industries into two-sided markets, with platforms intermediating between providers and consumers. And, as the Nobel laureate Jean Tirole has shown, two-sided markets produce just a few dominant firms—an effect compounded in software markets by the aggressive use of patents and a deliberately engineered lack of interoperability.

From Why it’s not as simple as “breaking up big tech” | Prospect Magazine.

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