2024高考英语阅读理解精读consent.docxVIP

2024高考英语阅读理解精读consent A new commodity brings about a highly?profitable, fast-growing industry, 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 giants（巨头）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?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 account the extent of firms’ data assets(资产) when assessing the impact of deals. The purchase price could also be