To say you can't see any benefit at all is probably an overstatement.
These trillion dollar companies were often able to invest into big money-losing moonshot projects that benefited consumers massively - in Google's case, GMail and Google Maps - which were truly unimaginable at the time even though they're taken for granted today, so there's clearly some benefit in the form of innovation. Who else can afford to build things like that?
The questions to ask are, can startups and venture capital take on the role of innovating that these big corps have done? I'm doubtful, since there's been no startup in the past ten years that put out anything nearly as genuinely innovative and helpful as Google Maps was for me, mainly because the risk/profit ratio is so bad without the network effects that these big companies have.
Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Ten years ago, when the big companies were innovating so much to the benefit of consumers, I'd answer unequivocally yes. Now it's much less clear.
And finally, is there any way to rein in the negative effects of these big companies while bringing out the positive effects to the benefit of consumers?
Google maps was launched 7 years after google was founded. If you look up the market share of google at that time (less than half of the search engine market) I think you’re more proving the need for breaking the company up.
Maps was created because it allowed google to be more competitive, not because they were already on top of their game and could just pour billions into any product.
They did this when they were much smaller. I haven't seen anything impressive from the huge tech companies in the last years, be it MS, Google or Apple. All the the cool stuff was done years ago when they were much smaller. Their main achievements is to buy up or just crush potential competition before they become competitive.
These trillion dollar companies were often able to invest into big money-losing moonshot projects that benefited consumers massively - in Google's case, GMail and Google Maps - which were truly unimaginable at the time even though they're taken for granted today, so there's clearly some benefit in the form of innovation. Who else can afford to build things like that?
The questions to ask are, can startups and venture capital take on the role of innovating that these big corps have done? I'm doubtful, since there's been no startup in the past ten years that put out anything nearly as genuinely innovative and helpful as Google Maps was for me, mainly because the risk/profit ratio is so bad without the network effects that these big companies have.
Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Ten years ago, when the big companies were innovating so much to the benefit of consumers, I'd answer unequivocally yes. Now it's much less clear.
And finally, is there any way to rein in the negative effects of these big companies while bringing out the positive effects to the benefit of consumers?