The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation

Historically, competition has powered progress under capitalism. Companies with productive new products rise to the top, but sooner or later, competitors come along with better innovations and disrupt the threat of monopoly. Dominant firms like Walmart, Amazon, and Google argue that this process of "creative destruction" prevents them from becoming too powerful or entrenched.

Documenting how the threat of competition has sharply decreased over the past twenty years, this book describes the ways today's corporate giants have come to power through the use of proprietary information technologies, creating an unlevel playing field. This development has increased economic inequality and social division, slowed innovation, and allowed dominant firms to evade government regulation. In the face of increasing calls to break up the largest companies, James Bessen argues that a better way to restore competitive balance and dynamism is to encourage or compel these companies to share technology, data, and knowledge.