Corporations (beyond a certain threshold of market control) doing shady, consumer hostile things for profit is the norm. So I don't think the ticking time bomb concept is nonsense at all.

As a recent example, Google was an overwhelming net positive for years. They genuinely made the internet better. But the day they went public their eventual abuse of their market position, intentional or not, became inevitable. We're only in the early stages of seeing what that will look like.

Asking questions about whether we want to help give companies the market position to become abusive makes the most sense early, not after it's already happened.