There are lots of technology-policy-related stories this weekend.  The first three concern about excess market power in tech markets, and its effects. The remaining three are miscellaneous subjects at the intersection of technology, policy, and politics.

Suggestion: If a newspaper is refusing to let you read an article, you can often get it by searching for it (on Google – irony alert, see one of the stories below), and visiting from the search result.

And a humble brag: Only the last of these stories directly concerns He Who Must Not Be Named. Nor did I mention Juicero, whose idiocy I tweeted about when it first came to market.

Is It Time to Break Up Google?

In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.

They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.

(My response on this one: Market concentration is growing in many industries, and yes it’s a problem. The secondary effects are dire: it is both a cause and caused by increasingly unequal distributions of income AND political power. But it will be correspondingly difficult to persuade the US political system to do anything about it. Perhaps other countries will have more luck because they can appeal to anti-Americanism.)

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How Google Cashes In on the Space Right Under the Search Bar

In the 17 years since Google introduced text-based advertising above search results, the company has allocated more space to ads and created new forms of them. The ad creep on Google has pushed “organic” (unpaid) search results farther down the screen, an effect even more pronounced on the smaller displays of smartphones.

The changes are profound for retailers and brands that rely on leads from Google searches to drive online sales. With limited space available near the top of search results, not advertising on search terms associated with your brand or displaying images of your products is tantamount to telling potential customers to spend their money elsewhere.

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AT&T’s Words on Time Warner Deal Say ‘Underdog.’ Its Actions Speak Otherwise.

WASHINGTON — Here in the nation’s capital, AT&T has painted itself as an underdog that needs to merge with Time Warner in a blockbuster $85 billion deal to compete with powerful cable companies. But in several cities and states, AT&T’s actions send a different message. ….

In other words, AT&T has positioned itself as the incumbent telecommunications juggernaut that has acted to hamper competitors locally.

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Uber’s C.E.O. Plays With Fire

Travis Kalanick’s drive to win in life has led to a pattern of risk-taking that has at times put his ride-hailing company on the brink of implosion.

(My comment: Change the company name, and this is an old story. Many startups have founders who are immature on multiple dimensions. It’s up to the Board of Directors to keep them under control, and of course that does not always happen. Apple’s Board fired Steve Jobs. In late 1985, Quirky imploded after running through $185 million of funding. See http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/they-were-quirky.html)

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Affordable Care Act: A Tale of Two Red States

In Oklahoma, which has raged against the
law, insurance premiums are among the
nation’s highest. New Mexico, which oversees
its marketplace, has some of the lowest.

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Finally, an update on an entirely predictable slow-motion-train-wreck that is coming in Washington, as a result of the unwillingness or inability of our dominant political party to make rational decisions.

Will the Government Be Open in a Week? Here Are the Dividing Lines

Case in point from today’s WSJ online:
Donald Trump’s Push for Border-Wall Funding Muddies Budget Talks
Administration injects volatility into a crucial week as government shutdown looms
“Less than a week before the federal government could run out of money, White House officials said President Donald Trump wants any spending deal to include some funding for a border wall, despite little appetite among congressional Republicans for risking a partial shutdown over the issue.”