I recommend Jason Furman's work for the practical mechanisms by which unnatural monopolies can be broken up and natural monopolies can be regulated.

On the other hand, you are interested in why the status quo isn't an accident and what we would need to do to accomplish those things, I recommend reading Reid Hoffman's book "Blitzscaling" side-by-side with Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's book "Winner-Take All Politics": you can see the same dynamics presented in two very different lights.

Then they'd already be smaller, so there's no reason to make them smaller. Or am I misunderstanding your question?

Okay, they would be smaller, but you said "big corporations should not be able to exist" and they would already be a big corporation with just search--they started this way.

Or, just to follow it through, let's say "WidgetBoss LLC" makes a new Widget that every single human has to have, they become the biggest company ever by making one widget. What will you do to make them smaller? Why?

I have a big problem with Google & Meta, and I can understand arguments about those companies. But not just "big companies" as a generality.

But that's how everyone speaks now. "Literally every billionaire is evil and exploiting blah blah blah"

I'm not sure if you're in good faith, but I will assume that you are.

> "Literally every billionaire is evil and exploiting blah blah blah"

Nope. Not every billionaire is evil and exploiting blah blah blah. But nobody deserves to be a billionaire, period.

> let's say "WidgetBoss LLC" makes a new Widget that every single human has to have, they become the biggest company ever by making one widget

Which hasn't happened because, obviously, it is not possible to become the biggest company ever by making something trivial.

It is not possible to promote your product by putting it at the top of the search results if you don't own the search engine.

It is not possible to get statistics about popular products in your webstore, copy them and put them at the top of the search results if you can't own both the webstore and the products.

It is not possible to force everybody to use your email provider in order to use their smartphone if you don't own both the email provider and the smartphone OS.

etc.