The IT Pro Podcast: Can the US take on big tech?

The growth of major tech companies over the last decade has been seemingly unstoppable, but as organisations like Facebook, Microsoft and Google work their way ever deeper into our lives, the US government has set its sights on curtailing the worst of their perceived excesses. A number of bills have been introduced by both parties to try and limit their power in areas like data portability, market consolidation and self-regulation.

But why are lawmakers so up in arms about the conduct of tech companies? What behaviour has prompted this? And do these bills have any real chance of slowing tech companies growth, or will they die on the floor of the house? In this week’s episode, Zach Marzouk and Justin Cupler return to discuss the US’ current slate of anti-monopoly legislation, and what it could mean for the country’s business climate.

Highlights

“I think the most legitimate one I see on here, the one that has the most grounds to stand on, is the limiting of mergers and acquisitions. Because now you have startups that are literally starting up just for the plain goal of being acquired by one of the big giants. And these giants are gobbling them up, changing the name, putting it under their umbrella and running with it. And that is limiting a lot of innovation. It's limiting people who legitimately want to get a startup running, want to run this as an actual startup that's going to be successful. It's limiting those people's ability to do this in lieu of the people who want to go out there and just sell their startup for a billion dollars.”

“You can definitely bring in regulation to curb the power of big tech, but I don't know if it will go far enough, especially since the bills are still being discussed. So we don't know what the final bill would look like. I think if you look at China, and see what they've done in terms of regulation, which is probably the other end of the spectrum, compared to the US, they're definitely taking a stance against big tech. They're curtailing the power of tech giants, firing CEOs and so on. But I don't know if the US is going to go all the way and bring in the right legislation that will address the power of big tech.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

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