For anyone in the U.S. who feels similarly, I urge you to write to the FTC and your representatives, and specifically:

1) Call for abandoning the "Consumer Welfare Standard"

2) Enumerate how the Tech Tyrants have negatively affected the competitiveness of companies/projects you've worked on (M&A, canceled products, vaporware, embrace and extend, pricing changes, etc.)

http://rooseveltinstitute.org/consumer-welfare-standard-outd...

https://medium.com/@CDisrupted/does-the-consumer-welfare-sta...

http://rooseveltinstitute.org/effective-competition-standard...

Big Tech is lobbying hard to retain the "Consumer Welfare Standard", which they rely on for anti-trust evasion:

https://itif.org/publications/2018/10/04/why-consumer-welfar...

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/dont-damage-our-democra...

I'm just wondering, at how many companies does a oligopoly become a healthy, competitive environment?

I once saw an economics paper that used a simple model and showed that when the top 4 companies in a given industry controlled more than 60% of the market they would naturally behave like a cartel even if they weren't coordinating. So that's probably the tipping point.

Interesting, I'd love to see the source if you can find it.

It's context-dependent. Sometimes 10, sometimes 50. But definitely not 3.

Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how strongly you feel about ads or anything else. Please don't do this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry about that. I had a few drinks in me.

Thanks for trying to keep this place civil.