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The European Commission has accused Google of using control of Android, its mobile operating system, to give its own apps a leg up.
歐盟委員會指控谷歌利用其移動操作系統安卓預裝自家的應用。
Facebook keeps buying firms which could one day lure users away: first Instagram, then WhatsApp and most recently tbh, an app that lets teenagers send each other compliments anonymously.
Facebook一直在收購那些有朝一日可能會分流其用戶的公司：先是Instagram，然后是WhatsApp，最近是tbh——一個讓青少年匿名贊美對方的應用。
Although Amazon is still increasing competition in aggregate, as industries from groceries to television can attest, it can also spot rivals and squeeze them from the market.
盡管亞馬遜總體而言仍在促進競爭，從食品雜貨到電視等行業都可以證明，但它也有可能識別出競爭對手并將其擠出市場。
What to do? In the past, societies have tackled monopolies either by breaking them up, as with Standard Oil in 1911, or by regulating them as a public utility, as with AT&T in 1913.
該怎么辦呢？過去，各國處理壟斷企業的辦法或是將其拆分，比如1911年對標準石油公司的拆分，或是將它們當作公用事業來監管，例如1913年對AT&T采取的措施。
Today both those approaches have big drawbacks.
今天，這兩種方法都有很大的缺陷。
The traditional tools of utilities regulation, such as price controls and profit caps, are hard to apply, since most products are free and would come at a high price in forgone investment and innovation.
價格管制和利潤上限等傳統的公用事業管制工具難以應用，因為大部分產品都是免費的，而且還會抑制投資和創新，代價太高。
Likewise, a full-scale break-up would cripple the platforms’ economies of scale, worsening the service they offer consumers.
同樣，完全肢解將削弱這些平臺的規模經濟，導致提供給消費者的服務質量下降。
And even then, in all likelihood one of the Googlettes or Facebabies would eventually sweep all before it as the inexorable logic of network effects reasserted itself.
而且即使拆分了谷歌、Facebook這樣的企業，由于網絡效應無可避免地會重新發揮作用，其中的某個“小谷歌”或“小Facebook”最終還是很可能再次橫掃市場。
The lack of a simple solution deprives politicians of easy slogans, but does not leave trustbusters impotent.
缺乏簡單的解決辦法會讓政客找不出簡明的口號，但不至于讓反壟斷機構無能為力。
Two broad changes of thinking would go a long way towards sensibly taming the titans.
如果能大幅轉變兩種思考方式，將大大有助于巧妙地馴服這些大家伙。
The first is to make better use of existing competition law.
首先是更好地利用現有的競爭法規。
Trustbusters should scrutinise mergers to gauge whether a deal is likely to neutralise a potential long-term threat, even if the target is small at the time.
反壟斷機構應該仔細審查兼并案，判斷某項兼并是否有可能消除潛在的長遠的威脅，即使當時兼并對象的規模還很小。
Such scrutiny might have prevented Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and Google’s of Waze, which makes navigation software.
以前如果有這樣的審查，Facebook可能就不會收購Instagram，谷歌也不會收購導航軟件Waze了。
譯文來源考研英語時事閱讀
