Tech Oligopoly Harmful, Deja Vu

[grarpamp]

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/8/14848642/walt-mossberg-tech-gang-of-five-apple-google-microsoft-amazon-facebook
What we have now in consumer tech, in 2017, is an oligopoly, at least
superficially similar to the old industrial-era American corporate
groups that once dominated key industries. I think that their enduring
and growing power casts a shadow over the Silicon Valley legend that
there are lots of great new consumer tech innovations being incubated
right now in garages or dorm rooms somewhere that will be taken all
the way to becoming great companies, the way each of the Gang of Five
was. What I fear is more likely to happen to any such startup is that,
if they're good, they get acquired by a member of the Gang, or that
their idea is turned into a feature for one of the Gang's products.
And, even if that never happens and a startup thrives, too often it
can only thrive by being successful on a platform controlled by one or
more Gang members, with the big guy maybe taking a cut. For instance,
Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, which went public last week,
famously spurned a $3 billion takeover offer from Gang member Facebook
in 2013. But it depends for its very operation on the cloud services
of Google and on the mobile app platforms of Apple and Google. And
plenty of other companies which either presented threats or
opportunities to the Gang have been snapped up by them. Each of the
five companies actively scoops up numerous smaller companies every
year, in many cases just for their talent and / or patents.