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Do tech monopolies stifle or spur innovation?
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The power of data

Monopolies have an immense amount of resources at their disposal. These resources can be used to gather data, which is especially useful in the tech sector.
Data Economics Technology
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The Argument

Data is an extremely useful tool when it comes to innovation. The problem a lot of smaller tech companies run into when it comes to data is not having enough of it. Tech giants like Facebook and Apple are able to gather immense amounts of data as a direct result of their size and customer base. With this data, these companies now have a more complete understanding of a given person's habits,[1] helping them innovate based on consumer patterns. The act of gathering data by tech giants illustrates the innovative capacity of monopoly-esque companies. That is, if these "monopolies" can engineer a way to record consumer activity and (relatively) accurately predict future activity, that action in itself demonstrates ingenuity and innovation.

Counter arguments

The tech giants Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have been found to not be monopolies, though there are multiple probes still ongoing. Thus, they can not be used as examples of tech monopolies.

Premises

[P1] For the purposes of this argument, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon are similar enough to monopolies to be used as examples of monopolies.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] These companies are not really monopolies.

References

  1. https://blog.datumize.com/four-things-big-data-can-tell-you-about-your-customers
This page was last edited on Monday, 26 Oct 2020 at 13:50 UTC

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