Axios goes big on the mounting political woes for America’s tech giants: “Tech behemoths Google, Facebook and Amazon are feeling the heat from the far-left and the far-right, and even the center is starting to fold.”

I mean, like I have been saying — see here, here, and here — for the past year. This issue really came to my attention when Elizabeth Warren attacked Apple and Google for using their size to “snuff out” competition.

And this summer has seen an acceleration with key events and moments including the EU hitting Google with a $3 billion antitrust fine; President Trump’s constant attacks on Amazon; Google’s firing of memo-writing engineer and amateur biologist James Damore; the release of the Democrats’ “Better Deal” agenda; Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods; and Trump adviser Steve Bannon and conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson both calling for Google to be regulated like a public utility. (See more in my new The Week column.)

From issues including privacy, free expression and speech, competition, economic power, and technological unemployment, “criticism over the companies’ size, culture and overall influence in society is getting louder as they infiltrate every part of our lives,” Axios reporter David McCabe writes. And of course, much of this backlash is ideological, from anti-business leftists who would love to nationalize the internet to Trumpopulists who don’t like the open, globalist values of Silicon Valley.

Despite the increasingly heated rhetoric from pundits, activists, and pols, we should remember these are popular companies. And government action seems terribly premature given the tremendous economic benefits from Big Tech. That said, the big platform companies need to do a better job reassuring the American public on the censorship issue. It’s the Spider-Man rule: With great power comes great responsibility. And as for the economic impact of these increasingly powerful firms and the gobs of data they collect, clearly more research is needed. This in the FT from economist Diane Coyle:

Economists are letting down competition regulators in failing to provide the tools for evaluating in specific cases the claim that — in a world of significant returns to scale and network effects — bigger is better for everyone. . . . The network effects of digital platforms do produce real economic welfare gains, but nobody knows how big these are or who captures them.  A second issue is how to take into account the interactions between markets, given that most platforms and tech companies steadily expand into other activities and markets. . . . A third issue, perhaps the most important, is the effect increasing concentration has on incentives to innovate and invest. . . . How can potential challengers develop new technologies to topple an incumbent if they have to compete with an apparently zero price?

Lots of questions. It would be nice to know some answers before smashing or regulating America’s premier companies.