Washington D.C. is a city that runs on buzzwords and the political calculus of lemming-like conformity. Bearing this out is the emergence of all manner of odd bedfellows deciding that the cure for what ails us is using antitrust concerns as the impetus to break up Big Tech.
There is a reason technology companies haven’t had to face antitrust enforcement since the 1990s amid concerns about Microsoft’s dominance: It didn’t work. All that was accomplished was a lifeline delivered to a then-struggling Apple and a clearing of roadblocks that allowed Google to become an even more formidable “threat.” Microsoft was never a true menace to competition and the tech economy. Rather, it prospered because it was one of the few companies offering what consumers wanted, rather than blowing through venture capital dollars on amassing clicks and sock puppets.
