Breaking Up is Hard to Do
Do many of us even remember the days when our telephonic voice choices were AT&T and nothing more? The telephone invention is like most great inventions, the early pioneers working on such a device fade by comparison to Alexander Graham Bell, who patented the device in the U.S. in 1876. History rewards the commercializers of great inventions. Just ask Thomas Alva Edison. Bell fancy-stepped his way into forming AT&T in 1885 and by 1907 he had swallowed up Western Union. The concerns about anti-trust were gaining momentum, but the arguments for endorsing a monopoly to build a great physical infrastructure or utility for the greater good of bringing telephone systems to the largest portion of the population possible, were very compelling. Thus, was born the American telecommunications industry, a monopoly that went through two World Wars (with nationalization and then privatization alternating) and lasted until 1984 when a ten-year-long anti-trust action by the Department of Justice broke up Ma Bell and created a spawn of Baby Bells. Today we all look back on this governmental action as a good thing that opened telecommunications to greater innovation (best symbolized by ridding ourselves of the rotary dial phone). Of course, technological change towards wireless might have brought about the same change if left to its own devices. The power of AT&T lay in land lines and clunky analog switching that was only barely shifting to digital when it was broken apart. That all feels like ancient history to us now.
The point of that history lesson is that it took 100 years of monopolistic growth for the greater good of trust-busting to take hold and the infrastructure that “won the West” was getting creaky anyway. We are faced today with the next big chapter of anti-trust action as launched by the Department of Justice towards “Big Tech”, meaning against Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple (can’t say whether Microsoft gets caught in this net). While some of these businesses have built themselves in forty years (AT&T reached monopolistic status in twenty-five years in its day of slower tech advancement), but in the case of Facebook and Google it is fair to say they have attained that status in fifteen years (a timeframe that makes sense in these days of accelerated change and impact). There has been infrastructure development comparable to land line networks except it is less visible as it resides in cloud computing farms that we rarely see. The very nature of the internet as designed by the U.S. Department of Defense through DARPA, which was a government/academia joint venture to design a communications network for national security, was one of creating a ubiquitous and hard-to-pinpoint network that was more resilient to attack. This infrastructure, by its very nature, is global and controlled by no one. That is a big difference in any anti-trust consideration.
I am sure that when the DOJ starts its actions (don’t hold your breath, these affairs are long and drawn-out if we learned anything from the AT&T break-up), there will be a case that suggests that the monopolistic aspects rely less on the physical infrastructure than on the commercial network that blankets our daily utilization of these services. Hardly an hour goes by when I do not use my Apple iPhone or iPad to check on some issue through my Google Chrome browser or Facebook account and then reference and buy something on Amazon. Yesterday I bought two small items from Amazon, I used Google perhaps fifty times to do cursory research and I spent many hours (ten plus I imagine, though my devices could tell me more accurately if I wanted to track my utilization) of screen time. I also took delivery of a new Apple iPhone XR in case there is a concern that my interest in using this platform is waning.
The question comes to how we feel about the potential break-up of what is claimed to be a set of full-fledged monopolies. God knows there were lots of e-commerce platforms other than Amazon (let’s not ignore Alibaba’s growing Asian dominance that is starting to spread globally). Google had to duke it out with a full array of browsers and even the almighty Microsoft took its shot with Bing. They are dominant, but there is always an alternative available on Firefox and others (even Explorer on Apple takes a bite). As for Apple, we have watched it trampled by Microsoft and embattled globally by Erikson, Nokia, and now, especially, Samsung. It has prevailed by design and technological/commercial excellence. I’ll bet with enough research we could find similar travails that AT&T had to overcome, but I don’t get the sense that there was the extent of global competition given the dominance of the Bell System physical infrastructure.
If DARPA designed the internet for national security and we now see that the rest of the world is focusing its attention acidulously on breaking into that system to manipulate and take advantage of the U.S. and its world dominance (a debatable presence for sure), does it make sense for us to trust-bust our way to lesser dominance in an autocratically-motivated world (China and Russia alone make this a stark reality) by attacking our own internet strength? Or maybe we should all be concerned about the privacy breaches we have found that Facebook and Google have allowed to happen on their watch during 2016 and since. Does a non-nationalistic approach suggest that we should be OK with foreign-controlled commercial giants overtaking us because we have constrained our own tech oligopolies (I hesitate to call them monopolies and give gravitas to the current DOJ claims)? I am lost on most of these big conundrums. I am less prone to privacy concerns than others. I am very wed to my network of Apple, Google, Amazon and even Facebook. I want them, and I want them strong. This is not born of nationalism, this is due to my familiarity and feeling that 99.9% of what they give me is great. Not good, but great. Why in the world would we want to screw up a good thing? Make them more prone to regulation if we must, but to break them up, I would suggest, will be to weaken ourselves in ways we may not even be able to imagine.
We all survived the break-up of the Bell System, but I’m not sure I will survive the break-up of this wonderful internet web of capabilities and companies that really do give greatness to most of my waking hours.
My brother was near the top of the New York Stock Exchange IT department when Ma Bell was broken into the seven ‘baby’ bells. The exchange spent about 10 million on new equipment just to deal with the first day of trading on that occasion.
Europe of course has been ahead of us where the privacy issues and app’s are concerned. They have new laws with meaningful penalties. The agreement for getting an app is so long and legalized up that I don’t read it and I am sure I have given my first-born away numerous times. In Europe the agreement must be written in standard type and in a way that it can be understandable by the average person.
As to privacy, that is long gone. I read somewhere that Google might have more information about us than the NSA! Does anyone remember Senator Proxmire? In the early ‘70s he was warning us about the coming of the loss of our privacy. Do you recall that the Soc. Sec. Agency used to print your SS number on the outside of their envelopes?
You correctly point out that is breaking up the internet behemoths the way to go? Would it be possible to reign them in instead? Presently they are not limited by monopoly laws. It has been demonstrated that they have used such tactics.
On a smaller scale are the local fiefdoms of cable companies. There is no legal barrier to them operating in each other’s territory. It is more of a ‘accidental’ gentleman’s agreement. I finally saw an interview of a cable company executive where he in essence said that.
Do you recall how we were required to rent our phones from the phone company before the Supreme Court knocked that down? We presently have the same situation with our cable boxes. No wonder the ‘cut the cord movement’ is growing.
Right now I only have questions and loosely formed ideas about it. I see no relief coming in the near future.