`You know you've really made it when you've got antitrust problems.' That's the sign of success."
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| Image via CrunchBase |
By Justin Fox
Atlantic Magazine January/February 2013
Ask Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of the social network
Twitter and the mobile-payment start-up Square, what his two
companies have in common, and he has a quick answer:
"they're both utilities." Mark Zuckerberg might agree: he
spent years trying to convince people that Facebook is not a
social network but a "social utility." Utilities tend to be
boring, slow-growing beasts. They also-and this is the more
important point-tend to be monopolies that are either
regulated heavily by governments or owned outright by them.
But companies like Twitter, Square, and Facebook-not to
mention Google, Amazon, and Apple-aspire to a status similar
to traditional utilities like Ma Bell. They attempt to
position themselves so customers can't get around them, or
can't afford to leave them. And when they succeed, they
start appearing just like scary monopolies that somebody
needs to do something about. Today's technology
entrepreneurs are well aware of the tight link between
profit and monopoly. "There's a joke in Silicon Valley,"
says the UC Berkeley economist Carl Shapiro: "?`You know
you've really made it when you've got antitrust problems.'
That's the sign of success."
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