Just like Standard Oil was broken up, regulators need to break up Facebook and Google

If you think it cannot be done, history shows it can, and was done to companies much bigger and more powerful than the two digital giants

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, listens during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in Washington, DC last Wednesday Picture: Bloomberg

The word trust has had an interesting journey over the last century and a half.

We all know the primary meaning of trust; it’s to have confidence in something, to have faith in it, and to consequently rely on it.

But trust also has a second meaning – which arose out of the first – which refers to a legal arrangement in which a person holds a property or some other asset as ...