Wu even suggested that we have turned a corner in curbing the dominance of Big Tech. “A decade ago or anytime, they could have gotten away with acquiring a potential competitor or shutting other companies out with a deal,” he said. “It’s a more challenging environment to do this kind of thing, and in some ways, they’ve changed their behavior. And when they change their behavior, it’s harder to become as ingrained as it used to be.”
In Wu’s tech policy world, not everything is going smoothly. For reasons I can’t fathom, we don’t currently have a U.S. CTO; instead, we have three deputy CTOs. While the Biden administration has made a bold move to nominate power’s righteous foe, Gigi Thorne, to the FCC, it hasn’t been aggressive enough to push the nomination vote or find someone else. As a result, Democrats still don’t have a majority on the FCC nearly halfway through Biden’s term.
Still, it’s clear that a Biden administration has dramatically changed the antitrust climate, much in a way that Wu had been advocating before moving to Washington. The question now is whether the momentum can outlast the government. (Microsoft later won an amicable settlement with the incoming Bush DOJ after losing a case against Clinton’s DOJ in 1999.) Moreover, a recent Supreme Court ruling that limited enforcement by the EPA may herald a similar government action against monopoly companies backwards. Wu admits this is a problem. “We know we face a challenging judicial environment,” he said. “We have to be very careful about the rules; we have to make sure they’re comprehensive. But the good news is that in many of these cases, we’re just using an authority that’s been around for a long time.” He also noted that the government supports the proposed antitrust legislation. (But, as far as I can see, it hasn’t gotten to the point where Congress’s mind is broken to get it done.)
At the end of our conversation, Wu talked about what it’s like to work on antitrust action inside the White House. “It was a treat, an opportunity to try and put into practice something I’ve been thinking about or writing about for the past two decades,” he said. “In that regard, it’s an experience of a lifetime.” After wrapping up, it’s no surprise that Bloomberg reported that Wu will be returning to a private life “in the next few months” shortly after our conversation.Wu Tweet quickly Rumours of his departure were “much exaggerated”. In government, no one has a monopoly on non-denial.
time travel
The last time the U.S. government made a big splash on tech antitrust was when it sued Microsoft.The government won the case — Bill Gates and the company did compete illegally — but in November 1999 Weekly newspaper Column, I wonder if the judge’s plan to break up the company makes sense.
Just as Microsoft appears to be denying its past, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson appears to be denying its future. True, in his 207-page “Fact Findings,” the judge in Microsoft’s antitrust lawsuit convincingly corroborates the government’s key allegations that the company has overstepped its boundaries and forcibly recruited its captive business allies to defend its turf. . (Microsoft insists its behavior is exemplary.) But not all of the judge’s ruling deals are true. Some of it is speculation about how the computer market will develop in the next few years. Some of these, despite appeals court warnings against judicial whimsy about software design, Justice Jackson has a surprisingly confident view of what does and does not belong in the operating system (OS).
