> So sure, it'll get worse before it gets better, but it's not going to be permanently worse. Even if we don't shoot them first, the bad guys will shoot themselves in the foot eventually.
I used to think this way, but I have to admit the last decade or two has made me much more pessimistic about this.
There are just too many examples of oligopolies that have never stopped being terrible. I think the auto industry is one of them, and I suspect the software industry is likely to be another one.
Sure, they got too big for their britches and created propaganda campaigns against pedestrians. They set up a status quo re: the environment that future generations will hate us for. But then their ability to be evil hit a plateau. The cancer that ought to have killed them dwindled, and for better or worse, we collectively said "this is fine". As the head of a car company, your paths to god-king-of-the-universe are significantly limited at the top end, and therefore so too is the extent to which your power turns you into an ineffective lump.
Information companies are not so limited. So the cancer that comes with being powerful is much more likely to be terminal. That is, there's nothing stopping Google from driving their user base away by just showing 100% ads and 0% content. They'll get worse and worse until we're all throwing money at anybody who stands a chance at putting them down.
Just look at Elon Musk, for whom efficacy appears to be secondary to simplify being the biggest threat to the status quo. That dynamic isn't going away: When he ceases being The One another anomaly will emerge.
So sure, it'll get worse before it gets better, but it's not going to be permanently worse. Even if we don't shoot them first, the bad guys will shoot themselves in the foot eventually.