3 ms·

Makes me wonder why the governments only seem to care about tech power ... is there movement to break up these companies?

• hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  If you look at that linked guardian article (which I think is a great article BTW), it would seem that what is considered "highly consolidated" in the grocery world is still generally less consolidated than the tech world. E.g. if you look at the soft drink data, it's ~ 42% Coca-Cola, 27% PepsiCo, and 23% Keurig Dr Pepper, so then about 7% "other". That actually seems like a well-functioning market with competition to me (though I'm sure there could be regional areas where this is widely skewed). Still, I do agree with you that there are some areas where a single company controls the vast majority of the market, and furthermore it got there by buying up a lot of brands, and this looks like there would be some pretty straightforward antitrust cases here. E.g. Grupo Bimbo alone controls nearly 2/3 of the bagel market, Danone controls nearly 80% of the refrigerated soy milk market, PepsiCo controls 87.5% of the dip market. Furthermore, I think the article does a great job exposing "the illusion of choice", i.e. in dips PepsiCo owns Tostitos, Lays, Fritos, and Doritos brands.