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Re:The Fantasy of Opting Out by antasvara on Thursday February 18, 2021 @01:00PM (#26183216)
If I'm not mistaken, this problem is exactly what is attempting to be solved by the current anti-trust suit against the big tech companies in the United States (this is the suit brought by Texas and a few other states). Depending on the outcome, vertical integration like you're describing could be deemed monopolistic and result in Google being spun off into separate entities for each of the parts you're describing.

I think views related to this topic somewhat depend on whether or not you consider Google a monopoly in the digital advertising space. If you do, it would seem that bringing more of the world in-house would be deemed illegal under anti-trust laws.

Re:The Fantasy of Opting Out by Wowfunhappy on Thursday February 18, 2021 @01:10PM (#26183323)
I do believe that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and even Apple ought to be broken up. However, I don't have a ton of faith that it will happen, and even if it does, I'm wary of policies that would encourage future consolidation.