What’s the point of trying to break up ‘big tech’?

The ‘antitrust’ law suit launched by US authorities against Google has been reported as a potential turning point in the dominance of ‘big tech’ — and an echo of the courtroom dramas that diminished the excessive power of America’s late 19th–century oil, steel and railroad barons. But I wonder how much impact it will really have.

The allegation, in brief, is that Google has created an illegal near-monopoly by paying large sums to Apple and other smartphone makers to secure its position as the default search engine for billions of consumers, its grip reinforced by ownership of Android, the phone operating system, and Chrome, the popular browser — all of which also gives it a stranglehold on the digital advertising market. But like the battle a generation ago to diminish the alleged monopoly of Microsoft in the PC market, this one will run for years and enrich armies of lawyers, and most likely end in a fudged settlement.

Even if Google is eventually forced to divest itself of Android — as proponents of the action hope — that’s unlikely to change the habit of a generation of consumers for whom ‘google’ is a verb that (unlike the names of Facebook and Amazon, for example) carries few negative connotations. What’s more, the mass of US investors whose wealth has been bolstered by the stellar share performance of Google’s parent company Alphabet and its peers are likely to see government-led attacks on big tech as a political distraction from more urgent economic threats.

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So I have some sympathy with former Google chief Eric Schmidt, who says the antitrust case is misguided, pointing out that ‘there’s a difference between dominance and excellence’. What matters more is that big tech should be forced to pay fair taxes on profits wherever they arise around the world; and that the giants should play a positive role as incubators of next-generation minnows.