Startups would try and build a profitable business instead of aiming for an acquisition.
Or do you mean preventing the acquisitions in a legal manner?
There is nothing wrong with acquisitions. It's one way big companies rejuvenate, and startups get a liquidity event. And if it's not an acquihire, the product can get broader distribution. Some companies are started to be acquired; their product of value mostly to big companies.
Why not let big companies die and be replaced by startups if the only way they can succeed is by [ab]using their incumbent position to “rejuvenate” (a euphemism if ever I saw one!)?
It would stop worse products winning as a result of resources gained through prior successes (and monopolistic practices).
In fact, I’d be happy to see a situation where sufficiently unrelated businesses have to be sold off after some grace period even if they were developed in house.
That's some euphemistic way of saying that monopolies can get even bigger without even any pretense of competition. We all know where this ends. The monopolists win big and consumers will have to suck it up.
No, it means the company can succeed and the service they built has a chance to continue. The choice isn't "be acquired or enter a Nirvana" it's often "be acquired or die".
Yes, and we need a lot more death in the tech company space. The problem is we have a lot of companies that are just bad, stupid ideas that are allowed to survive because they're on life support. We just dump hundreds of millions in marketings to cover up the shit product. And then we purposefully operate at a loss to flood the market, aka defrauding consumers, to cover up the shit product.
And then, like 12 years later, after our anti-competitive practices have paid off and we have 90% market share, we jump our prices 200% and drop our quality as we enter our robber baron business strategy.
All of this, because the shit company didn't die when it's time came. Instead, like a zombie, it now feeds on the brains of consumers that have no where else to turn.
It's the same thing. What you're describing is called embrace, extend, and extinguish. Or the more modern variant of embrace, extend, and enshittify.
Well no, if you don't have money to continue, that's not someone killing you.