2019-2020学年名校高二下期中汇编——阅读C.docxVIP

PAGE 1 PAGE 1 2019-2020学年名校高二下期中汇编——阅读C 【2020奉贤中学高二下期中】 (C) With the explosion of big data — a new product, a highly profitable, fast-growing industry, has appeared, urging antitrust (反垄断) regulators to step in to check those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the big companies that deal in data, the oil of the digital age. The most valuable firms are Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft. All look unstoppable. Such situations have led to calls for the tech giants to be broken up. But size alone is not a crime. The giants’ success has benefited consumers. Few want to live without search engines or a quick delivery. Far from charging consumers high prices, many of these services are free (users pay, in effect, by handing over yet more data). And the appearance of new-born giants suggests that newcomers can make waves, too. But there is cause for concern. The internet has made data abundant, all-present and far more valuable, changing the nature of data and competition. Google initially used the data collected from users to target advertising better. But recently it has discovered that data can be turned into new services: translation and visual recognition, to be sold to other companies. Internet companies’ control of data gives them enormous power. So they have a “God’s eye view” of activities in their own markets and beyond. This nature of data makes the antitrust measures of the past less useful. Breaking up firms like Google into five small ones would not stop them remaking themselves: in time, one of them would become great again. A rethink is required — and as a new approach starts to become apparent, two ideas stand out. The first is that antitrust authorities need to move from the industrial age into the 21st century. When considering a merger (兼并), for example, they have traditionally used size to determine when to step in. They now need to take into acco