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This is true, I'd go much further than the OP here and say the barrier for merger should be MUCH higher than the barrier for spin-out or split.

There's no shortage of obvious problems that can arise from concentration of influence and control over a market. So just try to prevent it. Trade some max efficiency for redundancy + anti-corruption/pro-competition/pro-consumer market forces.

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I would say google is still in its growth phase, albeit a slower one. Especially with capex spending etc.
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>What we are seeing with some of these big tech companies is that they are transitioning from an exciting growth story into an extractive dividend story in a way that's becoming harmful to consumers.

Alphabet is rolling out autonomous driving vehicles in many cities around the USA, potentially getting rid of the need to drive a car in 90% of today's use cases.

How is this not still an exciting growth story? My kids might never need to drive a vehicle, even though we live in a car dependent suburb.

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Some cute tech projects do not justify a massive monopoly. Google is financing Waymo using the ~300 billion dollar it extracts annually from consumers via ad spending. I would rather pay substantially less on anything I buy, and have the free market sort out self-driving cars.
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A product/service that can drastically reduce the top cause of injury and death, as well as give safe mobility to so many who do not currently have it is not a "cute tech project".

>I would rather pay substantially less on anything I buy, and have the free market sort out self-driving cars.

Alphabet's entire revenue divided by the total amount of goods and services sold is miniscule, so I don't see how it could be mathematically possible to pay substantially less on anything you buy.

>and have the free market sort out self-driving cars.

This is the free market sorting out self-driving cars.

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Self-driving cars are an absurdly inefficient way to reduce traffic deaths that exists only because it makes substantially more money for shareholders than the alternatives. You are being witheld a good and cheap solution now for the promise of a worse and expensive solution some time in the future. All the while people keep dying.

Oh, and what's this "those who don't have it" bullshit? If anything, turning driving into a subscription service will mean mobility becomes harder for many people, as dirt-cheap used cars slowly stop being available. As for people who can't drive for whatever reason, they already have taxi apps. And don't think for a second that self-driving taxis will be cheaper in the long term than regular ones, only the margins will go up.

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Google is one of many monopolies that are collectively bleeding society dry. Of course, the others should be broken up as well.

Waymo is currently financed by a monopolist and has negligible revenue itself, so it is not part of the free market.

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thing i dont like: extraction

thing i like: free market

i would rather people like you please stay silent instead of polluting the world with lazy thinking fit not even for dog

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> This point of view has more to do with your information diet than it does with reality. Companies un-merge and spin out all the time, for many reasons.

That’s condescending and wrong. Mergers and acquisitions are hundreds of times more common than spinoffs.

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