Taming Big Tech: Battles against them have reached a defining moment

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Key Points

Battles against Big Tech (Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Apple, or MAMAA) arent new..

Earlier this month, two possibly epochal cases got underway in the US against Alphabet (Google) and Amazon the biggest since action against Microsoft in 1998...

Meanwhile, this handful of companies began to challenge governments in their reach and power, with the financial clout of the five companies exceeding that of the S&P 500, stock market valuations in trillions of dollars, and incomes so large as to reduce record fines imposed on them into little more than flea bites..

The business practices under fire include pre-installing Google software on mobile phones (paying Apple billions of dollars for the privilege), denying interoperability across operating systems and creating walled gardens, snuffing out possible competitors or buying them out (Metas acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp), and dealing unfairly when sharing advertising revenue with news publishers...

Amazon could face restrictions on selling its own products on its platform because of conflicts of interest with third-party sellers, Google could cease to account for 90 percent of search enquiries, and Apple could end up changing the rules for access to its App Store...

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