mostlysignssomeportents:

Mark Zuckerberg offered to let Chinese premier Xi Jinping name his firstborn (seriously), Apple purged the Chinese App Store of privacy tools at the request of the politburo; Google secretly built a censoring search-engine for use in China, but America’s Big Tech companies are sounding the alarm that they will no longer be able to promote America’s global dominance if any of the US Big Tech breakup plans are executed.

Which is hilarious, because breaking up monopolies makes industries stronger, not weaker: the breakup of Standard Oil spun off companies like Exxon and Chevron, each as big or bigger than Standard was when it was split up. AT&T’s breakup gave us Verizon, Qwest, and a host of other telcos. Monopolies suppress growth by clobbering companies with innovative ideas in order to preserve the status quo.

By contrast, Japan encouraged and nurtured its monopolies, and lost its substantial tech lead to become an also-ran in the global tech marketplace

https://boingboing.net/2019/05/23/special-pleading.html