Would the New York Times today accept a pitch for a “Is It Time to Break Up Google?” kind of essay? They have in the past. Back in 2017, the newspaper ran a piece by Big Tech critic Jonathan Taplin titled, you guessed it, “Is It Time to Break Up Google?” Or how about “Is It Time to Break Up Facebook?” Again, the Times has in the past. In 2019, it published the more definite “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook” by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.

The reason I ask these questions is that a lot has changed since those pre-pandemic years, making the answers less obvious. Google, for instance, hardly seems like the unassailable search giant that it did back them. It’s an old story, but one that critics seem to have forgotten: technological disruption. The emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other “generative AI” chatbots could “reinvent or even replace the traditional internet search engine,” write NYT reporters Nico Grant and Cade Metz in “A New Chat Bot Is a ‘Code Red’ for Google’s Search Business.” As it is, Google’s share of revenue from domestic search advertising will fall to 54 percent this year, down from 67 percent in 2016,” notes the Economist.

Then there’s Meta-Facebook, another supposedly unassailable platform mega-giant. Its market value is down to $470 billion from $1.1 trillion in September 2021 amid an effort to shift corporate focus to the metaverse. Meta’s effort to better compete with TikTok in short-form video isn’t going well. That, even as its share of US digital-ad revenue has also dipped, same as Google. The WSJ: 

For the first time in nearly a decade, the two largest players in online advertising are no longer raking in the majority of U.S. digital-ad dollars, a decline that industry insiders expect to continue in years to come. Alphabet’s Google and Facebook parent Meta Platforms accounted for a combined 48.4% of U.S. digital-ad spending in 2022, according to estimates from research firm Insider Intelligence. Their combined U.S. market share hadn’t been under 50% since 2014, said Insider Intelligence, which expects that number to drop to 44.9% this year.” . . . Meta and other social-media companies including Snap Inc. also suffered from Apple Inc.’s 2021 decision to require apps on its devices to ask users if they wanted to be tracked. The majority of iPhone users opted not to be, hitting the heart of Meta’s business: its ability to target ads at users with precision and prove to marketers that the ads generate sales.

In other words, the End of History argument about Big Tech isn’t looking so smart these days. Technology evolves. Business conditions change. New competitors emerge or old competitors start doing things differently, as is the case with Microsoft and OpenAI. So another question: Why do some many reflexive Big Tech critics not seem to know this?

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