Let's start today with some fun facts, Google has roughly 91.38% of the search market, Bing has roughly 2.69%. Google generated $104 billion from searches while Bing generated $7.74 billion from searches last year. Bing is the second most used search engine in the world, if we categorize Youtube as a search engine (and not a social media), Youtube would be the second most used search engine in the world and Bing would be third. I'm going somewhere, stay with me.
BIG TECH IS PERCEIVED AS SCARY TECH
There has been a lot of debates recently about breaking up Big Tech as some believe that they're becoming monopolistic, the last time talks were this intense were in the 90s involving Microsoft's hegemony, before then it was Standard oil. The nature of technology is one that mostly skews in favour of one entity, it's a "winner takes all" kind of industry and if you need more evidence to back this up just remember that the most searched word on Bing is "Google" with 40,958,757 searches.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR INVOLVING BIG TECH DEFIES REASON
A lot of internet users mistakenly find themselves on bing due to their browser configuration or something else, rather than use Bing (that they know as a search engine), they would prefer to search for Google first, then use Google to search for what they want. The dominance of big tech is quite mindboggling as some tech companies have grown from a product to an ecosystem where they provide end to end solutions that ensure that their clients do not need to patronize any direct or indirect competition.
HOW DO WE DEFINE FAIR COMPETITION?
That however is where the problem arises. Many feel that Big Tech stifles the growth of smaller businesses and tech startups by using their sheer size to encroach into the other niches and poach customers in a way that makes competition nearly impossible. On the flip side, there are those who argue that it is quite disenfranchising to penalise law-abiding organizations for being better than their competitors in business, it's almost the same as deducting marks from the highest performing student in a class in a bid to "help" struggling students.
AN AVOIDABLE SLIPPERY SLOPE
The entire narrative follows from the premise that you cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong, it is a slippery slope that will put a cap on innovation and reduce competitiveness in the long run as companies will try to avoid these sanctions by reducing the amount of value they can provide to the market. I personally weighed the benefits of breaking up Big Tech as some now have power and resources that surpass most nations on earth and I came to a conclusion that while breaking up Big Tech will satisfy those who want to "eat the rich" everyone loses eventually.
EVERY CHAMPION WAS ONCE AN UNDERDOG
Microsoft was once an underdog, so was Apple, both companies are now worth over $2 Trillion. It took Microsoft 33 years to reach a $1 Trillion valuation, and two years to reach a $2 Trillion valuation. These numbers don't mean that Big Tech are too big to fail, once upon a time, we had IBM, and others calling the shots. In conclusion, the market ought to determine those who rise and fall.