> In many cases, there's no choice, unless you're willing to accept a certain level of inconvenience, or a monetary cost.

Yes, choices come with tradeoffs, that doesn't mean you don't have a choice. The big 4 are successful because they are incredibly convenient and good at what they provide.

> Need to stay in contact with a diverse and spread out group of friends, without manual mailing lists? Facebook is your choice.

What was your choice before Facebook?

> It is borderline impossible to live a reasonably connected life today, without at least one of the big four, and probably most of them.

If you're willing to use an AOSP phone it seems like it is pretty easy to avoid using the big 4. Don't buy things on Amazon, use DDG or another search engine, use another email provider, don't buy Apple products, don't use Facebook.

Sure, it is inconvenient to not use those things, but that's because they are the best at providing what they provide. If they weren't you would already be using something else.

They were already too big 5 to 10 years ago, and thus bought their way into continuing to be the best at providing what the provide (subsuming smaller innovative companies and arguably leaving us worse off than we would have been had they been left to innovate independently). Many of the market leaders cited in the piece were already market leaders when they were bought by these 4 (I'd add MS to the list).