Tech adept David Streitfeld explores the upside of cutting Google into pieces today in The New York Times. He cites talk on Wall Street that Google might reap big rewards if it pre-empted a breakup decree by choosing to “spin off huge chunks of itself into independent entities.”

The breakup of Standard Oil, after all, made John D. Rockefeller the richest man ever.

Streitfeld does note a few likely losers:

“The breakup of Google would only hurt people who would otherwise benefit from unlawful market power,” said Barry Barnett, an antitrust lawyer at Susman Godfrey. “These might include Google executives, whose compensation could fall; start-ups, which could get lower buyout offers from Google or none at all; and rivals like Apple, which could see chances to share revenue vanish.” Google currently pays Apple $20 billion annually to be the default search engine on the Safari browser.