In February, The Economist magazine had a clear message for Big Tech: When the economy slows down expect more anger from the public and policymakers and more hunger for antimonopoly regulation. Fast forward to today: The economy has slowed down and so, too, has the criticism of Big Tech.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the world is learning that far from being inefficient, predatory and privacy-invasive monopolies, Big Tech firms are responsive, consumer-centric, dynamic organizations. They are hiring like no other firms in the economy; and researchers, pharmaceutical firms and government agencies are using big data and artificial intelligence to track the pandemic and to assist in clinical trials.

Let us zoom in. Once panic buying started, Amazon, in just a few days, delivered an inordinate amount of basic goods that had been stripped from shelves at larger chain grocery stores, and it has stuck to its two-day delivery promise for essential items. In addition to a hiring surge, Amazon is giving raises to its current employees. As if this was not enough, Amazon is leapfrogging law enforcement by policing price gouging and removing rapacious merchants from its platform.

Or take the other tech giants. Google’s Verily COVID-19 testing and triage website was operational in days. Apple has released an app and website that provide extensive COVID-19 information from the CDC and other government agencies. Oracle is using its cloud applications to assist researchers to develop a vaccine. All this was accomplished with the backing of companies with the resources of and creativity found at Big Tech firms.

To date, most of the antitrust and regulatory reform case against Big Tech has focused on narrow market segments where each firm enjoyed a near-monopoly position. The limitations of this synecdoche are clear. There is intense competition between Google, Amazon and Microsoft (as well as IBM, Slack and Salesforce) to supply enterprise and educational tools, applications and software to firms, households and students for remote work and distance learning. Amazon Prime, YouTube and Disney+ are bringing intense rivalry to industry leader Netflix. First-time installations of new entrant Zoom tripled in two weeks, cutting into the market shares of powerhouses Microsoft Teams, Skype, Slack and WebEx.

The pandemic confirms two equally important inconvenient truths that contradict the critics’ claims that Big Tech firms hold bottleneck positions and exploit their market power when demand spikes and supply is interrupted.

One, users find more value in Big Tech firms than policymakers and the mainstream press do. In consumer satisfaction surveys, the tech industry outperforms.

In a 2020 Morning Consult report, Google, Amazon and PayPal were in the top four of the most trusted American brands. Further, a Stanford study quantified that digital goods (such as search engines) create large gains in well-being that are not reflected in conventional measures of GDP and productivity. Policy makers are also realizing that sharing personal data at scale might also improve diagnosis capability and crisis management, putting one more dent in the privacy absolutist view that underpins contemporary regulation.

Two, unlike classic textbook monopolies, Big Tech firms are not idle organizations that expropriate wealth by restricting supply, increasing prices and extracting excess profits from captive users. Big Tech firms expand output, innovate, enter new markets and experiment to deliver new products and services. Economies of scale, network effects and big data—the essence of Big Tech—are at a premium.

As net losers of advertisement revenue to Big Tech, powerful voices in the mainstream press have feigned to ignore the contribution of the tech industry to social welfare and doubled down on calls for antimonopoly reform. Message to The Economist and other anti–Big Tech activists: When the COVID-19 crisis slows down, it will be game over for Big Tech bashing.

Nicolas Petit is a professor in the Department of Law at the European University Institute (Florence) and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Richard Sousa is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.