Inside Facebook and Google's Monopoly Money
![Cardboard cutouts of Mark Zuckerberg at a protest at the U.S. Capitol, April 10, 2018 [Aaron Bernstein/Reuters]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f21dbb91adde3260d4ba1ef/1607626708760-KRE6S4869F9ZAUJ68SWB/facebook-zuckerberg)
Cardboard cutouts of Mark Zuckerberg at a protest at the U.S. Capitol, April 10, 2018 [Aaron Bernstein/Reuters]
Giant tech companies have accumulated vast amounts of wealth and power over the course of the pandemic — and many are wondering how (or if) the next president is going to address this fact. Two massive lawsuits — one against Facebook, announced yesterday, and one against Google — suggest one way forward.
While Americans lost livelihoods (and our collective sanity), our country’s 614 billionaires increased their net worth by $931 billion, according to USA Today. Well-represented among them were the founders and leaders of America’s tech giants.
For example:
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, raked in $19 billion for a total net worth in October of over $68 billion.
Larry Page, Google’s other co-founder, made about $19 billion for a $70 billion net worth.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, made $46.5 billion during the pandemic and is now worth over $100 billion.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, led the entire pack by adding $90 billion to his wealth, for a total net worth of $203 billion as of October.
These numbers are so enormous that they can begin to seem abstract — what does one person even do with all this money?
The astronomical sums are only a pale reflection, though, of the power these companies exercise. They have profited from the pandemic because they have insinuated themselves into every facet of our lives — communication, shopping, food delivery, web services — and have already driven many of their competitors out of business.
These outsize profits are then spent on record amounts of lobbying to ensure that their profits and power continue to grow. Throughout the pandemic (and before), they’ve abused workers and trampled on ethical standards, yet suffer no consequences.
As the Biden administration begins to take shape, some are wondering how his centrist administration will deal with such a powerful industry. The Obama administration was notoriously close to the tech industry, and at the end of the administration, many of its key players chose the revolving door not between the White House and Wall Street (as is Washington’s unsavory custom), but between the White House and Silicon Valley.
Before the pandemic began, a new wave of thinkers were calling for a revival of antitrust law — which is designed to promote competition among businesses by limiting collusion and monopoly power — to confront Big Tech.
This would require tweaking it a little. Decades of conservative judicial rulings have come to define monopoly rather narrowly, basing their analysis strictly on consumer outcomes, typically whether the company is charging high prices.
However, modern tech monopolies are not designed to create high prices for consumers, but to use low prices or a free service (like Facebook) to collect data or operate at a massive scale.
Rising legal thinkers like Lina Khan have argued that monopoly regulation should account for the power that a company like Amazon exercises over the whole economy through sheer scale, and by being the platform on which other companies must do business. One answer is to use lawsuits to break up these companies.
The Department of Justice has now announced two major antitrust cases. The first is against Google. While some see the case as having been prioritized by the Trump administration due to his personal antipathy toward the company, the Biden administration probably won’t drop it. There’s increasingly bipartisan support for regulating the industry, and this case is no exception. The second, just announced this week, is against Facebook.
When it comes to making appointments to the administration, David Dayen has written that tech monopolies may not have the influence they once had in Washington. And internationally, there are new examples to look to: European Union regulators recently unveiled new proposals for reigning in companies including Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook.
Still, organizers and legal scholars will be keeping a close eye on the incoming administration and its relationship with the immense world of lobbyists and ex-Obama staffers that smooth the tech industry’s way. And if Bezos’ pandemic billions have done one thing, it’s made ordinary people very sympathetic to something they may not have thought much about before: antitrust.
Jeff Bezos has been labeled a “pandemic profiteer.” This is why:
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