Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Twitter, Facebook and Google need to be treated like utilities [...] Our generation is reinventing the wheel here, our ancestors had exactly the same problems with the power, water, gas, telephone and rail networks (at some point in time, all those were unregulated and privately owned) and did exactly that. Critical infrastructure needs to be heavily, regulated if not outright publicly owned.
I disagree. Facebook, Twitter and Google are ephemeral utilities. They will probably be replaced by another company. Privatizing them will just let someone else come along and Embrace, extend, extinguish them.
Nobody has a chance, but different reasons in each company:
* What we have seen with Google - For a search engine, the more traffic you get the better results you can give (you can A-B test different algorithms for different queries, and optimise results). For new entrants they need to be popular before they can be better, which is a catch-22. Additionally Google has significant revenue which is very profitable because of it's monopoly position, and it can use this to reinvest in search technology to further widen the gap. It's going to take more than 2 people in a garage to beat modern Google at search!
* For a social network, Facebook buy out any potential competition when it's gaining traction to further solidify their monopoly. See WhatsApp, Instagram, Friend.ly e.t.c.