I'm saying our tenuous attempts towards reestablishing the most basic of anti-trust was dead regardless of who won the election[1].
I think this decision would have been the same regardless of who won. As for the next few years... Harris was clearly signalling that her FTC would be a return to rubber stamping mergers and acting only against the most egregious corporate actions, and even then only when the penalties wouldn't be substantial. I doubt very much that her appointment to FTC Chair would be much different than the current Andrew Ferguson.
Nothing I've written endorses Trump or his actions. But we have to be a little bit more realistic about the interests that Harris was aiming to represent.
We can say that Harris would have been better than Trump in the aggregate, while also prioritizing the interests of Business over those of Consumers. Both these things can be true.
The writing was on the wall when Kamala Harris wouldn't commit to keeping Lina Khan at the FTC. We had some soft Anti-Trust action for the first time in decades, and the Trusts responded. If we get the chance to try again, we should be more clear eyed about what we are up against.
I've de-Googled my life as best I can, but I know how little it actually matters. Now that Google is clearly on the path of closing up Android, I hope the Linux phone effort gets reinvigorated.