Episode description

This is how many assume the tech economy is supposed to work. Big, established companies are at risk of getting disrupted as they get set in their ways; the internal bureaucracies grow too large and they lose their nimbleness and take fewer risks. The pressure from upstarts forces larger firms to innovate – otherwise, they lose market share and may even fold. 

But is that how it works in practice? An increasing share of policymakers believe Big Tech giants don’t face meaningful competition because their would-be competitors get bought, copied, or co-opted by essentially the same five companies: Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. While antitrust regulators have been focusing a lot on what they believe are “killer acquisitions,” such as then-Facebook buying Instagram, there seems to be less focus on what some experts call “co-opting disruption,” where large firms seek to influence startups and steer them away from potentially disruptive innovations. So what does that look like in practice? And is this a fair characterization of how the tech market works?

Evan is joined by Adam Rogers, senior tech correspondent at Business Insider. Prior to that, he was a longtime editor and writer at Wired Magazine. You can read his article on co-opting disruption, “Big Tech’s Inside Job,” here. He is also the author of Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern.