Might be easier to get someone on the phone for support, one corp also wouldn't have all that profit sloshing around to go and unfairly dominate other markets.

I don't understand what you'd want instead. The way I see it, antitrust is the lowest bar in consumer (and business) protection. I'd advocate for more regulation, much more, but that seems unreachable in the current political situation in the US.

I suppose what I'm saying is I don't think antitrust is necessarily beneficial for consumers or client businesses. It could be. But generally speaking, large companies pay their employees better, are more likely to comply with regulations, and so on. Having businesses be small for the sake of being small is not necessarily good.

They are more likely to comply with regulations because they effectively get to write them. Smaller is better because a small company doesn't have the resources to corrupt the regulators.

Regulatory capture is a real concern but no, small companies just flagrantly violate the law and get away with it all the time. The stakes are higher for established ones. Many regulations also specifically exempt small companies.

They wouldn't be smaller Googles, they'd be different companies altogether, with their own practices and work cultures.

They'd have less bureaucracy, which might help them to innovate and move faster, and in different directions from each other.

In absolute terms more bureaucracy is required now because they must all duplicate administration that they can currently share.

Would you rather have McDonalds and Burger King operating all restaurants instead of having millions of small restaurants?

Interesting example since I’d bet a majority of independent restaurants are sourcing the ingredients from Sysco. Anyway, restaurants, maybe not, but I usually prefer dealing with large companies because they are more reliable.

Forcing, say, the Google OS (Android/Chromebook) and Browser business to justify its existence independent of the ad-selling business, and YouTube to justify its video-hosting existence independent of the other two would certainly dramatically modify the landscape for all three.

That seems likely, but I don't see it as a foregone conclusion that we'll like the result.

Yes, five smaller Google's would be good, 4 more points of view.

Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter seems to have highlighted anyone with the greatest of intentions is never going to please everyone, and that choice and freedom to express that choice is good.

Consider this: one of the many complaints about big tech is companies having too much personal data on customers. But if we feel one entity having the data is bad, why is several having it better? That seems worse. Now it's even harder to keep track of.

But most alternatives choose not to retain personal data and have much more stringent privacy policies.

Realistically I don't think the average individual can fathom how much personal data the likes of Google has on people. Small example, I deleted my entire Youtube subscription/history several times, I keep getting recommended the same things. Clearly there's more to 'deleting it entirely'.

Perhaps your experience has been different than mine but I find the handling of personal data at very large companies is much more careful than what I have experienced elsewhere.

> Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter seems to have highlighted anyone with the greatest of intentions is never going to please everyone

I dunno, wouldn’t that require assuming that Elon Musk had “the greatest of intentions”, as well as being a generalization to “never” from a single failure?

I think in his case he saw the flaws with Twitter, the bans, the algorithmic black box and thought he could bring something better to the table. Perhaps he learnt better after the fact.

At least having more private black box algos gives people a choice rather than a monopoly on choice.