Interview with Sen. Warren on her plan to break up big tech, including Apple, which she says shouldn't both run the App Store and distribute its own apps in it
Under Warren's plan, Amazon would not be able to sell Amazon Basics products on the Amazon retail store, Google would not be able …
Context & Ripple Effects
This interview lands one day after Warren first rolled out the breakup proposal as part of her 2020 bid, and it does the work of making the abstract concrete: Apple should not both run the App Store and distribute its own apps in it, and Amazon should not sell Amazon Basics on its own retail store. The mechanism is structural separation — platforms must choose between being the marketplace and being a merchant on it.
The pushback was immediate and split along familiar lines: Stratechery argued the plan would create massive new problems and significant unintended consequences without fixing the concerns behind it, while Techdirt called it grandstanding populism light on substance despite valid underlying worries. Warren kept pressing the same antitrust thread years later, asking the FTC for a broad review of Amazon's MGM acquisition over its monopoly power.
First-order effects
- Apple's dual role as App Store gatekeeper and app seller is directly targeted — under the plan it would have to divest one side of that business, striking at the store that Apple says draws more than 800 million weekly visitors.
- Amazon would be barred from selling Amazon Basics on its own retail store, forcing its private-label hardware and goods business onto competitors' marketplaces or into a separate company.
Second-order effects
- Google faces the same fork across search, ads, and commerce, so all three companies would have to reorganize around whichever side of the platform line they keep — reshaping how rivals like Samsung, which partners with Google on services such as bringing Google Photos to TizenOS TVs, plug into those ecosystems.
- Critiques from Stratechery and Techdirt frame the terms of opposition, giving other candidates and industry players ready-made arguments against structural separation without conceding the monopoly-power concern.
Third-order effects
- If the self-preferencing logic holds, US antitrust enforcement shifts from conduct remedies toward structural separation of marketplaces from merchants — a template regulators could apply to any platform that competes with its own participants.
- The proposal moves platform power from a niche policy debate into mainstream electoral politics, raising the odds that future legislation, not just litigation, defines what large platforms may own and operate.
The trend: Antitrust thinking is moving from punishing specific conduct to structurally separating platforms from the businesses that compete on them, with Warren's plan as an early political marker.