Antitrust Laws in the Era of Big Tech Dominance

This is a repost, original note was posted on LinkedIn on 29-Oct-25.

I wonder if antitrust laws shouldn’t be updated to address the reality of today’s technology landscape. Some companies are in a de-facto dominant position (think about Microsoft, NVIDIA, and many others) on their respective markets.

While we can argue about the supposed meritocratic aspects of their successes (yes looking at you Microsoft 365), this puts organizations in a situation where there is seemingly no alternative to look at. Alternatives exist, but the nature of human behavior within organizations tends to reward conservative approaches and status quo over risk taking (I have a personal blog post potentially coming up on this topic).

Nevertheless, legislators and consumers (specifically, large enterprises and SMEs) seem to either not care, or - if they do care - do not have sufficient leverage to demand fairer competition. At the same time, short-sighted business decisions, driven by short-term financial goals and share value, prevent organizations to plan for long-term objectives and the implementation of multi-year transformation strategies.

Lastly, we are now seeing the dystopian effects of an all-technological society in action. Is that the world in which we want to live, and see our children and grandchildren grow? It is likely going to be the outcome, until we, as a society, decide to put checks and balances in place.

To address the challenge, some hints:

• legislators should reassess antitrust laws and the pervasive impact of technologies beyond pure market share aspects
• enterprises should team together to combat dominant oligopolies / monopolies
• organizations should also challenge the status quo and look beyond short-term profits, considering technological alternatives (especially open-source options) as an opportunity rather than a risk
• citizens should actively engage their representatives, but also the companies they purchase services from (even engaging into conscious customer choices) to live in a world which is not dominated by big tech and surveillance trends.

The goal is not to get rid of Microsoft Excel to return to the abacus, or to ditch technological progress in general, but to ensure we build systems that benefit the society as a whole, and to ensure that governments, organizations, and citizens benefit from a healthy competition.

Lastly, all of this has to also be analyzed from a sovereignty standpoint i.e., how to ensure that technology is an enabler rather than a systemic risk, especially in troubled times where nation-state actors are more than happy to rely on our over-dependence on technology to apply pressure.