And some moves to find new areas for growth have the potential to increase controversy. Reports about Google’s plans to cooperate with Chinese censors as a price of being able to build a search engine to serve the Chinese market led to a wave of employee resignations, echoing earlier employee discontent with the company’s work on an artificial intelligence system to aid the U.S. military.
The seeds of these tensions were planted during Silicon Valley’s rise. In part, it is a coincidence that they are boiling over just as the markets seem to be turning. But a growing economy has served to paper over tensions that will emerge in tighter times. Matt Stoller, policy director at the Open Markets Institute, a group pushing for aggressive antitrust action, said that the fight over Big Tech’s power seems to be just beginning.
“Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff,” he said. “He hasn’t looked down yet.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.