COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 16/04/2020
Mathew Ingram
In recent years a handful of giant digital platforms, including Google, Amazon, and Facebook, have grown in dominance. Each one has a market value of half a trillion dollars or more, and almost total control over some of the key levers in the digital economy: Search, online advertising, retail sales, and social networking. That has had a ripple effect on a number of industries, including the media business, where the lion’s share of ad revenue has been siphoned away by Google and Facebook. How did these companies get so big and as powerful? What responsibilities do they have when it comes to things like disinformation, and are they following through on them? And what if anything should we do about their dominance? Should they be broken up, or prevented from acquiring other startups? Should they be forced to help fund the industries they have helped to cripple?