The "fat cat investors" are to a large extent these days things like pension funds, or VC firms that will just immediately turn around and re-invest the money i

The "fat cat investors" are to a large extent these days things like pension funds, or VC firms that will just immediately turn around and re-invest the money into new startups. And yes, I think that'd be the right thing to do. The sums of money we're talking about here are vast. They're not going to go into the pockets of some stereotyped "fat cat" capitalist. Outside of pension payouts they'll be reallocated to other companies that may be doing important things of the sort that big internet firms just won't tackle, like biotech/drugs research. Look at it like this. Does Google really need to create yet another instant messaging product for the seventh time? Or would the capital used to do that be better re-allocated to some other part of the economy?