Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Big Tech May Be Monopolistic, But It's Good for Consumers

Call off the antitrust watchdogs.

March 20, 2018 at 3:00 PM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Are these companies threatening or reducing the welfare of consumers?
Photographer: Michael Short/Bloomberg

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“Big tech” is under increasing scrutiny. Tech giants like Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook are being accused of a wide variety of sins: promulgating fake news, stifling innovative competitors, and crushing mom-and-pop shops, to name a few. Some critics have gone so far as to call for these powerful companies to be converted into public utilities. Others want the government to use its antitrust powers to break up big tech.

This borders on the absurd.