The EU and the US have begun to push back against the power of Big Tech.

They both want a new alliance on how to regulate Big Tech and tax digital trade. The plan is to create new rules of the road for the 21^st Century economy.

Citing anti-trust concerns, a recent US government lawsuit has demanded Facebook spin out WhatsApp and Instagram – the social media platforms Facebook bought to choke off competition.

This spells the beginning of the end of the period dominated by Big Tech’s four behemoths – Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon. Their free pass is being revoked.

The move is overdue.  US markets are less competitive than at any time since the days of the Robber Barons.

From 1997 -2012, two thirds of US industries registered an increase in concentration  – meaning that the big guys got bigger and the small guys perished.

A side effect was that the number of start-ups as a percentage of all firms fell by 50% between 1979 and 2014.

That’s no surprise. Start ups don’t thrive when the big players will not provide them with any oxygen.

Today, Google controls almost 90% of the global search market. Forty cents in every dollar of business’s new funding goes to Facebook, Google or Amazon. And the accelerant of Covid is enhancing their dominance

One firm could get out ahead of any government action. Insiders believe Amazon will spin off AWS by 2021.

If that happens it’s likely AWS could become the world’s most valuable firm by 2025.

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