Whenever a company's revenue reaches more than 0.5% (or some such number) of US GDP, it should be required to split.
That would effectively outlaw very high success in a nation known to value capitalism, free markets and liberty. America...where you can't be
too successful. Scary thought. Not a slogan I care to see catch on.
Then came along Google with its Chrome browser, not only putting ad's in the browser but also using the browser to collect data from its users and selling that collected data to others.
The question is how much of that contains detailed personal info. (e.g.: my name, address, phone number, which sites I bought something at in the past 30-days) and how much is aggregate (which should be no problem).
Data collection gets dissed so often it's easy to miss the benefits. If I must be subjected to ads as a condition of 'free' services like Google Search, Chrome browser and YouTube, I'd prefer they at least be relevant.
Many years ago (back when I watched more t.v.), I got progressively irritated by a common commercial where a beautiful young woman in a bright white outfit came out, squatted down and swung her pelvis around while telling me how much better my life would be (maybe something to do with 'freshness?' Been years...) if I'd use that particular brand of female hygiene product (tampon, maxi pad, etc...). I'm a guy. No matter how wonderful their product was, it was not going to enhance my life and I did not want to hear about it. Nowadays browsing sites and seeing ads for things I've been checking out on Amazon, I remember that woman. I prefer the targeted adds.
Some of the things we presently enjoy are products of huge companies. Someone already pointed out Google subsidizes YouTube.
Even if every man, woman and software developer in Alphabet dropped dead today, a new giant in Search would arise. A new giant in browsers (likely Edge) would arise. As much as 'competition' is an esteemed buzzword by some government types, many in the public don't like the confusing balkanized landscape of multiple providers. They don't want a detailed breakdown of 5 to 10 search engine alternatives for various use cases; that's why smart phones have default search engines and a pre-installed web browser.
We've had this wonderland of competing providers before (e.g.: I remember Yahoo and Alta Vista), and many users simply wanted to know which was the mainstream one to pick.
I doubt the majority of the computer and smart phone using public are all that concerned about cookies, data collection and selling and such, as long as it's not used for overtly nefarious purposes.
Many people want their computer or phone to work like an appliance where 'it just works' and you're not confronted with myriad choices to analyze every time you want to do something.
It's ironic we're having this discussion on an Apple product-focused website, not Linux, etc... Living in the 'walled garden' Apple ecosystem while complaining Google leverages their products to advantage each other.
