Here's a number that should stop you cold: researchers put the value Americans get from free search engines at roughly $8,000 per person, per year. That's not captured in GDP, so it's invisible, but it's real. When we talk about breaking up Big Tech, we're talking about dismantling the very scale that makes services like that possible. Look, size isn't inherently dangerous. These companies pour billions into foundational research and infrastructure that smaller players simply can't sustain. The economies of scale don't just benefit shareholders — they subsidize free products billions of people rely on daily. The antitrust instinct makes sense when a company uses size to crush competitors unfairly. But that's a conduct problem, not a size problem. Break up Google or Amazon and you don't create a dozen vibrant competitors. You create a dozen fragmented services that cost more and work worse. Focus on abuse, not bigness. That's the smarter target.

You're pointing at a real problem, but you're pointing at the wrong culprit. Health misinformation doesn't go away if you split Google into five companies — those smaller firms would still use engagement-driven algorithms, because that's what keeps users clicking. The incentive structure remains, just with fewer resources to build the very safeguards we'd want. Antitrust law is a clumsy tool for content moderation. It measures consumer harm in dollars and market power, not in bad tweets. The better fix is targeted regulation: transparency rules for algorithmic ranking, liability frameworks, maybe independent audits. That keeps the benefits of scale while imposing real accountability. Don't forget, the public square is getting messier, but these same platforms are also the ones surfacing credible medical information faster than any government or newspaper ever could. The answer isn't destroying the infrastructure — it's wiring better guardrails into it. Focus on conduct, not company size.

Here's something that doesn't fit the monopoly narrative: a Stanford study found that over 40 percent of the most valuable US tech startups founded in the last decade had at least one founder who previously worked at Google, Amazon, or Meta. The giants are practically training grounds for future competitors. You can't have it both ways, claiming they crush startups while also minting them. And about splitting advertising from search — that doesn't preserve the free product. The ad subsidy is the only reason search stays free. Remove it, and you either pay a subscription or hand your data to whoever pays most for it. That's not accountability; that's a worse deal for users. You're right that scale can amplify harm. But the fix isn't losing scale; it's targeted regulation that forces algorithm transparency without dismantling the infrastructure. We don't level the highway because some drivers speed. We add guardrails.