It&#x27;s quite simple.<p>Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, et al. do not have the power to arrest you, and never will. They can&#x27;t find out you said or did something in the past and put you in a gulag for it 10 or 20 years from now when you&#x27;re considered a political enemy of the state.<p>It&#x27;s the critical difference between economic and political power. Google has no guns, much less the all-powerful legal authority - and then some - possessed by the government.<p>Microsoft can sell you software. Amazon can sell you a blender or ebook. Apple wants to sell you a phone. The US Government can kill you, destroy your life, put you on a no-fly list, proclaim you a terrorist to be constantly surveilled to the highest degree, punish you for speaking out, sic the IRS on you, blackmail you by tracking every single thing you do digitally without any consequences to themselves and then use it against you at their convenience or for their benefit (Google execs would go to prison for that), and dozens of other things using their countless agencies (and if you happen to be a leaker or journalist, the context is that much more amplified). And that&#x27;s just what they can do to you today, the fascism in America is blatantly going to keep getting worse, they keep reaching for more and more power. Tomorrow, the things you do today, will be held against you. There isn&#x27;t an example of a fascist system in which that hasn&#x27;t been the case.<p>Google et al. are the absolute least of your worries. The free market profit motive is predictable and functions at its most efficient under systems of high degrees of freedom (thus free market). Increasing political power of the sort going on in the US however is always violent and always trends toward an ultimate restriction of liberty. One need understand only the very basics of history to grasp that.<p>A quick look at what governments have done over just the last 200 years, versus what corporations have done, tells you everything you need to know. It isn&#x27;t a close comparison. Show me one modern big corporation like Google that has done the kind of evil things that eg Mugabe in Zimbabwe has done for example - there&#x27;s one simple example, and hardly the worst I could reference (how about Pol Pot?), and it demonstrates how clearly absurd it is to be frightened by the &#x27;big bad corporations.&#x27; The notion we need to be afraid of corporations is almost entirely a myth, typically pushed by people that then turn an intentional blind eye to the endless murder, war and abuse by governments. It&#x27;s power-seeking governments you should be absolutely terrified of.