House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

This will serve them well.

Ever since the GFC big tech has not produced anything which actually improved the quality of life of the avg. citizen.

And the last huge leap was Windows 95, the rate of innovation slowed down since then, we just barely managed to collect Google and Facebook along the way.

It was Windows 95 which should have shown big tech companies the way. If you stop innovating, then people begin to look at the marketcap of the company and the net worth of the founders as well as the pay of CEOs and sure enough hatred among the public opinion starts mounting pretty fast. People get accostumed to the quality of life provided by big tech in a very fast manner, if the rate of innovation slows down then people will turn on innovators because of the wealth inequality that they see between themselves and big tech companies' insiders.

Microsoft was fighting for its survival a mere 5 years after the release of Windows 95, not because of competitors, but because of the public hatred against them had mounted and that emboldened the DOJ to sue them. It wouldn't have happened if the next iteration would have been as transformative as the jump from Ms-Dos to Win95.

Big tech has to understand that as complex as they are as companies, they are not much different than a bike, you can only slow down so much before you tip over and disaster happens.

They have their 300B cash warchest, they have their AAA+ credit rating, they have interest rates at an historic minimum. They have no excuse for the technological stasis

Do you hear yourself? You are full of yourself. An economy that doesn't work for everyone won't work for anyone.

In both of those cases, consumers were being overcharged for good and services in a variety of concrete economic ways. It's not analogous to the current situation, I don't think. It's not like a broken up Google or Facebook would cease showing ads or show fewer ads. If anything, they'd show more, as we can see from all the random clickbait news sites that are more ad than material. It seems possible that a broken up version of these would be better for ad buyers, but (with my consumer hat on), I don't really care about ad buyers that much. It's hard to picture the broken up sites offering better services.

It will be interesting to see! I'll be fascinated to see the degree to which congress is willing to take on these companies, and the degree to which their views on what should be done are congruent between the parties. I wonder the extent to which differing views on that subject could scuttle any legislation that would really address the concerns.

It doesn't.

Not actually true - Bell Labs was a government created and enforced monopoly, so the break up definitely helped people but it did not earn its 'monopoly' status.

As for Standard Oil at the height of it's market dominance the price of oil went down drastically, and by the time it was broken up it was nowhere near as dominant - iirc it was in the high 60%s of market share.

The only monopolies that ever seem to truly exist and cause harm, are those that are granted special status and favors by the state.