That's a very reasonable point. Could there perhaps be a middle ground by requiring interoperability and conformance with standards? By way of analogy, I'm sur

That's a very reasonable point. Could there perhaps be a middle ground by requiring interoperability and conformance with standards? By way of analogy, I'm sure that the vast majority of people purchase their appliances from a couple of big brands. However, because the various hookups are standardized, there is still a reasonably large market of alternatives. Similarly, early in the internet most people used, for example, AOL Instand Messenger; however, due to interopperability it wasn't unheard of for someone to use something like Trillian. I'm sure that wouldn't be enough to fully solve the problem of big tech having too much power, but it would probably significantly help.