Tim Wu

So how do you think about, on the one hand, the ways in which, I mean, I think it's what Google's made, you know, more than a thousand acquisitions over, you know, some number of years.

How do you think about the ways in which that harms competition?

Yeah.

But also, you know, I've known founders who get acquired and are excited to get acquired because they think it will give them scale and the capacity to compete in a way they wouldn't versus Google just trying to do it itself.

I think the antitrust level is one thing, but the sort of anti-competitive versus pro scale level is like a much bigger challenge to the way Silicon Valley now works.

And I'm curious to hear you talk through the pros and the cons of that.

Yeah, I think that's a really great question.

You know, Joseph Schumpeter, back in 1911, wrote a book about entrepreneurs, basically.

And he said, you know, these very unusual people were willing to go out and start to, you know, take these kind of risks.

They have some vision, they do this kind of thing.

And he thought they were essential to economic growth, that they were these kind of unusual, almost like superheroes, entrepreneurs.

and would do these things and go out and take these chances.

The United States economy in general has thrived because it has a lot of those kind of individuals and they can start things.

And I think we've erred too far in having all the brains under one roof.

You know, it's starting to remind me of AT&T in the 60s or IBM, where they sort of...

became much more centralized about innovation and big ideas would never be developed.

It became kind of group-thinky, I think, when the Justice Department did a deal, sued AT&T, tried to break them up, and they forced AT&T to stay out of computing forever.

and also license all of their patents, including the transistor patent.

And all kinds of people started quitting their jobs and saying, I'm going to start a semiconductor firm.

And there lies the origins of U.S.