Episode Details

On October 9, the government signaled that it may try to break up Alphabet, and while that may be a negotiating ploy, it is part of an ongoing debate about big tech companies, whether they have become too big and if so, what to do about them. In this session, I start with a short history of antitrust law in the United States and the enforcement tools available to the government. I then look at the pros and cons of applying those tools to big tech , from breaking them up, to treating them as regulated monopolies to putting in restraints on how they do business and doing nothing. At the risk of taking an unpopular position, I believe that big tech is getting "too big", but also that doing nothing may be best for consumers and even for competitors.
Slides: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/blog/BigTech.pdf
Blog post: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2024/10/breaking-up-big-tech-cui-bono.html

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