Anti-trust laws have been used for AT&T, MS, Std Oil. Why not Google, Facebook, etc.?

Those anti-trust laws are nothing but a shibboleth. When the chips are down, they only stall things for so long. The long term trend continues to be to increased collusion and consolidation. The number of companies responsible for delivering information, communication, and entertainment in this country continues to plummet. If one added up the parent companies of 90% of terrestrial radio stations, newspapers, and cable tv networks, plus the largest search engines, internet service providers, cable companies, mobile phone carriers, record labels, and movie studios, you're looking at not even 2 dozen companies, and every year, that number seems to drop.

Regulation always favors the big and trends towards the few.

I think it worked with Standard Oil and AT&To. In the case of the latter, it's just that this industry has completely changed now.

Microsoft was less effective. They broke themselves up by being late to the internet party.

I see the problem being their power over the authorities. If you pissed of Rockefeller, what was he going to do? Call every gas station and say don't sell you gas?

Google, on the other hand, knows all your porn surfing, and can make up whatever they need. Huge coercion power.

Anti-trust is a really fascinating subject, but a short answer to your question: a lot of times it won't come into play when the player at hand gained market share through what is essentially organic growth. In other words, the Googles and Facebooks of the world were revolutionary enough that they brought such immense value to the customer that the "cost" side didn't really matter.

Anti-trust really starts to come into play when you get into M&A (see: Cigna/Anthem or Staples/Office Depot) or outright anti-competitive maneuvers (what, as I recall, Standard was doing, though I am not super-familiar with the business case there). It could be argued that Facebook's acquisition of Instagram was an example, but that's really tough to do considering both services are free to the consumer. A lot of tech companies haven't hit that threshold yet (except Microsoft) because the what they're doing is so new. You have to define the market first before determining anti-trust/anti-competitive maneuvers.

It will be interesting to see what eventually happens because, just like in the Gilded Age (trains, logistics, petroleum, etc.), there are a hell of a lot of demand-side economies of scale (network effects) involved, and the big boys eventually tipped the scales and started doing all sorts of anti-competitive things. Amazon, arguably, might be doing some of that right now, but I don't know if Facebook and Google have approached that threshold yet.

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AbuTheMonkey

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Anti-trust is a really fascinating subject, but a short answer to your question: a lot of times it won't come into play when the player at hand gained market share through what is essentially organic growth. In other words, the Googles and Facebooks of the world were revolutionary enough that they brought such immense value to the customer that the "cost" side didn't really matter.

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Yep this exactly. (Whole post...it only copied the first paragraph for some reason.)

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I think it worked with Standard Oil and AT&To. In the case of the latter, it's just that this industry has completely changed now.

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Not really.

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I see the problem being their power over the authorities. If you pissed of Rockefeller, what was he going to do? Call every gas station and say don't sell you gas?

Google, on the other hand, knows all your porn surfing, and can make up whatever they need. Huge coercion power.

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They do what they've always done, which is get well positioned in the regulatory committees and agencies. Given the money and power they have, nobody else can compete with their influence.

The key is to reduce the regs that keep these people on top. Not add more regs that simplify regulatory capture.

Edit: I don't have any real beef with google. Their terms are clearly stated. Once you send info through their pipes, it ain't yours anymore.

I actually thought he was just laughing at your name. It does strike me as funny.

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Anti-trust is a really fascinating subject, but a short answer to your question: a lot of times it won't come into play when the player at hand gained market share through what is essentially organic growth. In other words, the Googles and Facebooks of the world were revolutionary enough that they brought such immense value to the customer that the "cost" side didn't really matter.

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This. I'm not even sure we want to regulate these guys. Why would we want to reduce the efficacy of these services? If people want more privacy, the market is open for people that are willing to create that product.

We all have some beef with these companies, but not enough to Signal to developers that we will support new players.

Now, broadcast media is something else entirely, and those advantages are not organic in any way.

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Google and Facebook are big and they are dominant. But as far as anyone knows, they haven't engaged in conduct that would impair competition. 

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Read the link I posted from The Chive. They would push back on that.

Again, my issue has nothing to do with their power over people surfing. My issue is with their power over what these people find and see when they do.