Bill Gates: Splitting Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook is not a solution

Splitting up Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook is not a solution to bad behavior from those companies. So says former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. The US government considered splitting Microsoft 20 years ago, but didn’t.

Gates at Bloomberg

Breaking up a company is rarely a good solution, Gates told financial news agency Bloomberg. “I think the number of things that splitting helps against is quite small. These companies are large, influential companies. It’s no surprise that the government is thinking about such solutions.”

According to Gates, it is better to regulate them. “If you see behavior from that company that you want to get rid of, you as a government have to say: that is prohibited behaviour. But splitting up a company so that two companies start exhibiting that bad behavior does not sound like a solution.”

The US government is investigating the monopoly position and possible abuse of power of large tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple. The government is not investigating Microsoft. That happened in the late 1990s, but in the end the US government decided not to proceed with the split. Various presidential candidates for next year’s elections, among others, say they are in favor of a split of large tech companies. The investigation has just begun and whether the US government will try to split large tech companies is not yet known.