The VC side isn't my area so I don't think I have very good thoughts on it. Perhaps somebody with more expertise can chime in. That said, there's lots of great

The VC side isn't my area so I don't think I have very good thoughts on it. Perhaps somebody with more expertise can chime in. That said, there's lots of great work about financialization and antitrust coming out, and I should probably read up on it. With that caveat, I think it's plausible that some startups are/were getting VC funding not because they were good businesses, but rather because they presented enough of a competitive threat to a big tech firm that there was a good chance of a large acquisition. The net effect of those acquisitions is probably to transfer some of the surplus from Big Tech companies into the VC/founder ecosystem. Is that good? Maybe for the founders and VCs. From a social perspective though, we want to ensure that startups can meaningfully contest incumbent firms' market positions, and that can't happen if all the startups get acquired before they get a chance to do so.