Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose company faced a federal antitrust dispute two decades ago, warned against the break up of big tech companies.
That puts him at odds with some lawmakers as they seek to rein in Silicon Valley titans.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg TV, Gates questioned whether breaking up tech companies that have been accused of engaging in monopolistic practices is the right way to curb the behavior.
“You have to really think, is that the best thing?” Gates said. “If there’s a way the company is behaving that you want to get rid of, then you should just say, ‘OK, that’s a banned behavior.’ But splitting the company in two and having two people doing the bad thing, that doesn’t seem like a solution.”
Gates couldn’t recall the last time a company was broken up and said a “pretty narrow set of things” would warrant such action.
The tech industry’s biggest and most powerful companies, including Google, Amazon, and Facebook, have recently come under scrutiny by federal and state officials for what they say are efforts to keep smaller competitors out of the market. The Justice Department announced this summer a federal antitrust review into “market-leading online platforms,” and the Federal Trade Commission has launched its own investigation into the practices of big tech companies.
State attorneys general have also undertaken their own efforts to probe the titans of Silicon Valley, who have been accused of having outsized dominance.
But Gates said tech companies are “behaving totally legally.”
“They’re doing a lot of innovative things,” he said.
Gates’ Microsoft was embroiled in an antitrust battle with the Justice Department and a coalition of state attorneys general in the late 1990s over allegations it illegally attempted to monopolize the market for internet browsers by bundling its browser, Internet Explorer, with Windows.
A federal district court ruled against Microsoft in the case and ordered the company be broken up into two, but a federal appeals court overturned the ruling in 2001. Microsoft remains as one company today.
Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has been a vocal proponent of breaking up big tech companies and has detailed a plan for how to do so. But Gates instead said the government should impose more regulations on tech companies, something Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also called for.
“I do think government really needs to talk about what those rules should be,” Gates said. “It’s not, you could say, unbiased, but I see these as well-meaning, highly innovative companies, that it’s up to society to make sure that their innovation doesn’t have negative side effects.”
