Once a business reaches a certain size, a prudent founder stops boasting about his successes. No one likes a braggart and history is awash with examples of swaggering enterprises that came unstuck through complacency or at the hands of regulators.
In the United States, both Standard Oil and AT&T were smashed apart for using their dominant market positions to gouge consumers. In Europe, anti-trust watchdogs have shattered local energy and telecoms monopolies and have tried to muzzle Microsoft, Intel and, most recently, Google.