@fribbledom I was thinking about it a lot. To me this is a natural evolution of capitalist businesses who, over the XXth century, gradually honed the way to make the most money, and it turned out that aggressive marketing + buying out competitors + subverting industries with a subsidized "free" products, all work better than "honest" competition. Computers helped doing it more efficiently, and the Internet helped to scale it globally.
@fribbledom forgot one necessary condition: they also have to buy out government regulation which would normally restrict the free market from monopolizing and acquiring too much power.