Monopolistic trouble

It’s no doubt tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple have monopolies on many products. That’s bad for consumers. All are exerting monopolizing - buying competitors and locking users in. How will this shape our future?

Why wouldn’t they? They’re companies which need to make money. Having no competition is easier and worth the trouble.

Once they have sufficient market share (e.g. Google Search, Google Chrome, Windows, Apple’s App Store) or users locked in to their ecosystem (e.g. all of Apple, Windows with it’s bugs, Microsoft Office, Microsoft refusing to let users change browser, G Suite), the corporations can make decisions negligent of users’ opinion.

Other than the mentioned methods to gain a permanent foothold, lobbying is prevalent. Microsoft notably uses this to push Windows to schools and government organizations. It’s cheaper to use Windows than the free Linux!

The products were great when they appeared, that’s how they gained market share, but over the years, the capitalistic companies have made decisions focused on business, not consumers. They can do this, as humans dislike change, and therefore stick to what their using, regardless of what the owning corporation dictates.

Examples

With Google being the gateway for many to the World Wide Web, they can, and have, made the web less free. The latest example is their FLoC - a “privacy improvement” (as stated by Google), which basically ment only Google could collect advertisement data of you, while still tracking you.

Microsoft was subject to controversy when they required a TPM 2 chip to run Windows 11. This made many old PCs unusable, as only those produced the last three years have a TPM 2 module.

Microsoft also made switching browsers very difficult at the start of Windows 11. Independent programmers swiftly created tools to lessen the burden, and Firefox overcame the challenges. Yet, to hinder consumer choice and push users to using their browser, Edge, they patched all the workarounds.

Future

As I alluded to at the start, this will most certainly affect the future of electronics - it’ll degrade the quality of a major piller of modern life, to make large corporations more profitable. And it’ll only get worse as their power increases.

I predict increased monopolization and restriction is eminent.

If we consumers do not change and use alternatives to suppress Big Tech, they will continue to prioritize profits, as there’s no need to compete.

What you can do

Use alternatives. Firefox, DuckDuckGo, Linux (Manjaro), Fairphone, Framework laptops, and LibreOffice are all great products which oppose Big Tech’s principles to be beneficial to you, the environment, and the society.

So, what do you think about this?

If you find any holes in my argument, improvements to be made, or other arguments, send me a message!