IBM should have been broken up – avoiding that fate probably spelled its doom. They'll fight this all the way – although history tells us they shouldn't.ĪT&T broke apart in 1984, and before it came back together again in 2006 – like a T-1000 Terminator – generated a lot of value for shareholders. As the pressure intensifies to smash these industrial combines, we'll see each trying – and failing – to change their spots.
Too many governments and too wide a swathe of the public are now too tragically aware of their reach and influence for it to end any other way. States wanting to remain coherent have no choice: break up the internet giants – or fragment into a Hobbesian war of all-against-all. The competition regulators have suddenly found themselves pipped by the infinitely more persuasive case put by the guarantors of national security, who have weighed these engines of amplification, toxification, division and disunity and found them wanting. FAANG? That's Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google – the current tech heavy-hitters listed on NASDAQ.
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