Imagine being so good at delivering value to both users and advertisers that even the President of the United States is jealous of the amount of money you make for his own country and wants to spitefully end all that.
Sent from my $100 Android phone bought off Amazon through Google Chrome after my friend told me about it on Whatsapp.
Alex Jones never delivered that type of value to me and you are free to listen to his content on his website, which I do from time to time.
Are they truly the best at delivering value, or are they simply good enough that their second-mover advantages, coupled with network effects, prevented potential future entrants from shaking up the market and providing better value?
My phone is South Korean. I use an open source desktop operating system developed mostly by French and German volunteers.
If anyone ever makes replacements to Android and Whatsapp that are better, I will use them, even if they are North Korean or Siberian or whatever they may be.
90s Microsoft certainly was a big monopoly that has now faced a lot of competition.
But I, as a freeloader, sure did write a lot of essays in Word. I just never paid for a copy.
Trump definitely speaks like a lunatic, and I can't parse if any of his opinions come from a place other than feeling slighted, but I see the issue with big tech is that they keep buying up or copying and exterminating competitors. Yes, we derive a lot of value from them, but who's to say that we would not have gotten greater value from a proliferation of social services or from Google not directly harming other specialized search products.
That line of thinking falls on the EU end of the spectrum, where they value market competition versus the US where they look at things just through the consumer lense. It's hard to say which is better.
We’ve had discussions along these lines before on hacker news. There is a definitely a contingent of people, myself included, who think they should’ve been regulated or broken up quite a while ago.
Unfortunately that’s not the motivation behind this story. So doesn’t really seem worth discussing now.
What is coordinated censorship by multiple tech giants?
What are dark patterns and patenting technology such as a loan desirability ranking based on one's social circle socioeconomic standings?
What is crushing your employees under brutal work conditions until they faint?
What value do you provide as a giant multinational tech corporation when you are subverting the country where you spawned by opening the door to fifth-column Chinese interest groups?
What is the value of a Google top executive demanding that anonymity be destroyed online and elsewhere?
Trump isn't jealous of these companies because of the money they make, he's a billionaire himself and probably owns more stock in them than you or I could afford. He believes they're part of a liberal conspiracy to silence him and is using antitrust as a pretense to threaten them.
That is absolutely correct, but you would probably agree that he also wishes to use his political power to bring that revenue stream to an entity or group of entities that are alligned to him in some way. He wouldn't just destroy that revenue stream and let someone else swallow it up.
I'm not joking, don't be surprised if some consortium of right-wing businesses start getting subcontracting rights over this stufff
>but you would probably agree that he also wishes to use his political power to bring that revenue stream to an entity or group of entities that are alligned to him in some way
Oh, definitely. That's the one thing I trust him to be competent at.
Alex Jones was kicked off of all these platforms. Trump is decently close with Alex Jones. It's not a coinsidence that when AJ was kicked off a week or two ago, Trump suddenly came out to say that someone could consider breaking up these companies via Federal action.
The problem with Alex Jones is not the value, it is that facebook, twitter et al are the de facto city square and the only city square of our times and the first amendment should be applied to them like any other public space.
It is also not fair that some small bakery was forced to bake a cake for a gay couple wedding against their religion but those big companies get away with discriminating who they serve and who they don't, not even doing some specific thing to an Alex Jones event, just serving him in general.
It is even worst because this bakery is a personal business and was forced to actively participate in something against their religion and believes while facebook is a corporation with different people and different believes so nobody can attribute what Alex Jones is saying to someone specific.
What Trump is about and always was about is standing against the oppression of the American people by a small elite which apply two different laws to them and the rest of the country.
People are right to be wary of the very monopolistic nature of the web today. Unfortunately, the powers that be are lead by someone who neither understands the law nor is motivated by honest reasons and isn't wise enough to hide it.
Not sure why this is getting downvotes. Gave you +1. I think there hasn’t been a president yet who has at least rudimental understanding of tech and internet. We should be electing more leaders from tech or engineering background into governing positions otherwise people who have no idea how internet works will be making decisions about how to regulate it.
While I agree that completely dominating a given platform is probably concern for anti-trust investigation and/or heavy regulations to ensure //regulated access// to that platform, I actually disagree that Google is a monopoly.
Microsoft is still pushing Bing, and I think Yahoo exists; and both of those providers also provide free email services (some under different brand names).
Apple competes on entire phone platforms, and Android as an operating system for phones is provided free to enable a market place across several different manufacturer's devices; that is likely what's saving //Apple// as a monopoly for mobiles.
Amazon for shopping... the Whole Foods horizontal integration may be problematic. I think it depends on how different platforms and services are broken up. It would probably be OK with the correct kind of regulation to ensure that it isn't used as an unfair competitive advantage. In that respect I think Walmart might also have issues.
What I think might improve things is more consumer protections, particularly in the form of requiring reasonable cost access to paid support (even for products that are otherwise free). We've heard of users being locked out of their contact address and account data far too often, even for paying or previously paying users.
Ecosystems, man. Possibly way higher barriers to entry for new players than before.
Google partly defeated Microsoft's phone platform just by keeping their services away from it. It's difficult to imagine any less powerful player having any chance.
Think of modern consumer applications and how much they depend on technology from Google, Apple, Amazon or Microsoft.
They can at many points enforce incompatibility for business reasons. That should probably be disallowed (car makers couldn't really prevent after market companies from producing compatible parts).
They paid devs and gave them Lumia phones. I still remember writing a trivial app for Windows Phone and getting $100 and a Lumia 521, which was pretty good IMO.
Google acted terribly towards Windows Phone, breaking Youtube and anything else 3rd party devs or Microsoft wrote for Windows Phone. Google Maps for mobile browsers was pretty awful until Google was sure that AT&T and Verizon were done selling Windows Phones
> and both of those providers also provide free email services
Even if you sign up for an alternate email service, the fact that Google controls so many email accounts means that it is still going to get to read many of the emails sent from Yahoo / Hotmail to Gmail.
I've been wondering for awhile how Google gets away with their anticompetitive practices in terms of YouTube. They built a huge business on search advertising, and then turn around and use that to run a video distribution infrastructure for well over a decade at profound economic loss just to guarantee no one else could ever get investment to build a competing infrastructure. It's essentially impossible to get the billions of dollars necessary to build a global video distribution system if you have to tell investors that they need to be willing to lose mountains of money for perhaps multiple decades while they wait out Google.
For it being essentially impossible, its sure been done a lot: Netflix, MindGeek (NSFW), and Amazon definitely have at least as large video streaming (especially with Amazon now owning Twitch). There are a lot of large, though not really global, ones too (e.g., in the US there is Hulu, CBS, HBO, various sports, etc.). I'm not sure how big Facebook's video streaming (probably fairly large, considering its Facebook). Smaller YouTube-like sites exist; for example Vimeo is still around.
Building a video hosting site costs a lot less than billions. Unless you have YouTube's traffic, you don't need their capacity.
Facebook probably is a monopoly and should have an anti-trust investigation. Mostly for the issue of: if I asked a random person on the street what alternatives existed for Facebook I fully expect that less than 5% would even be able to name a still functioning platform that they had considered using recently. Maybe if you count 'linkedin' as well (though that's supposed to be a different type of platform) or dating sites...
Anyway, I dislike how everyone's forgotten how to actually communicate and stay in touch and just assumes that everything and everyone exists on Facebook (as one of the GTAs spoofed: "Life Invader").
They key part of a "monopoly" claim is defining the market. Facebook has a monopoly communications? No. Does it have a monopoly on online communications? No. Does it have a monopoly on mobile communications? No.
Does it have a monopoly on social interactions? No. Does it have a monopoly on online social interactions? No. Does it have a monopoly on social networks? No. Does it have a monopoly on online social networks? No.
Does it have a monopoly on ads? No. Does it have a monopoly on online ads? No. Does it have a monopoly on online ads in social networks? No.
Does Facebook have a monopoly on serving ads in an online social network that is blue-themed? No.
Does Facebook has a monopoly on a on serving ads in an online social network that is blue-themed and has a feed? Not even that!
Does Facebook has a monopoly on a on serving ads in an online social network that is blue-themed and has a feed and is owned by a Harvard dropout? Yes.
That is the complication of a monopoly claim, you need to define the market. If you define it too narrowly, you'll always have a monopoly. If you define it too broadly, you'll never have a monopoly.
i dont know if it counts as monopoly, however you defined monopoly rather abstractly. Monopoly is defined by choice and not by the definition of the market. In terms of e.g. network lock-in facebook doesnt have an alternative. There was competition at a time , but then every alternative 'real name' network gave up. Where else would you publish the kind of personal stuff that people post on facebook. where else would you learn about your friends?
> Monopoly is defined by choice and not by the definition of the market.
No, monopoly absolutely depends on the definition of the market. If you define the market as "online human communication" Facebook doesn't have a monopoly. If you define the market as "online human communication with a feed that uses shades of blue and is owned by a Harvard dropout" then facebook has a monopoly.
> In terms of e.g. network lock-in facebook doesnt have an alternative.
Sure it does. You can talk to people, call people, send a letter, post a notice on a bulletin board, use an online forum, send an email, use an email group, post it on Google+ (it still exists), send a snap, dm on twitter, post on twitter, post on Hacker News, etc.
I think I did an adequate job in defining a definition above.
Ask a representative sample of 'random' people
* For an alternative
* That still exists
* That they actually considered using within the last year
Facebook fails this test because they have literally no competition within the same niche* (that the average person, on average, is aware of anyway).
Twitter as a specialized platform is in somewhat a similar area, however people can just group chat on several other platforms and if you re-framed the question like this people could probably come up with things they would or already use as an alternative.
"If [THING] suddenly went out of business, what would you use instead?"
I Facebook went out of business, people would instead message more on other messaging platforms, text people more, read news in other news platforms and so on.
There are plenty of opportunities for all of those options.
Consider, for example, the Cola soda market. There are countries in which Coca-Cola holds 95% or more of the market share for Colas, or even for sodas.
Does that make it a monopoly? No. Because Colas are just one type of soda drinks, and soda drinks are just one type of drink.
If Coca-Cola disappeared and there was no other Cola drink available, Cola drinkers would drink a lemon-flavored drink, or fruit juice, or just plain water.
So your definition doesn't work, exactly because you didn't define the market.
And hey, this isn't just my opinion, it is how monopoly is defined in economics. Particularly regarding something that we haven't talked about yet, which is monopoly pricing. There is no monopoly pricing in any market that Facebook operates. Quite the opposite, actually, ad prices have been going down continuously.
It is always interesting to see people in HN trying to recreate economics from first principles.
Google did lose 2 EU lawsuits, 2.4B for search manipulation and 5 billion for android antitrust.
It's not an opinion about Google has tweaked its search, just the scope.
We just don't know how big or small google search altering goes. They already proved during the 2016 US elections Google removed negative searches for Democrats. Would really be helpful if someone collected all the google search manipulations. Google at least lets you know if something is removed if its torrent link.
I've run into multiple Youtube search issues where I know a video exists, but can't find it easily or at all. Normally its just a dozen pages down. Even with exact titles searches, it can sometimes be extremely difficult.
> Google did lose 2 EU lawsuits, 2.4B for search manipulation and 5 billion for android antitrust.
> It's not an opinion about Google has tweaked its search, just the scope.
I think this is an example of Trump saying the right things for the wrong reason. If you just remove the 'because they don't like me' from his rhetoric, there could be a valid argument there.
True, I don't think it has been proven that search results against Trump are modified. So Google could absolutely be telling the truth that they don't modify search results about him. But Google does modify its searches, we just don't know to the extent, besides the lawsuits verdicts.
That was my point, you can't say they don't modify search results as a blanket statement.
I remember someone claiming a few years ago that if you type Egypt or Middle East in different parts of the world, you are shown different results. Some vacation related, some politics related. Unfortunately I can't find it.
What I meant is that even if he was right with his statements entirely, even if Google did bias search results against him, his reasoning of 'they did it because they didn't like me' will drive people to side with Google because he is just blaming everyone who is against him of wrongdoing.
He shifts focus from a more general issue that could have much wider effects and directs it into the Trump Vortex where everything is either pro-Trump or anti-Trump and you have to pick a side and that's what it's all about. That is why I think his rhetoric is so destructive - Trump will be gone 2-6 years from now, maybe even sooner, who knows, but Google will likely be around much longer than that.
Times the word “monopoly” appears in this comment thread (so far): 26
Times the word “monopoly” appears in the article: 0
It’s worth repeating: The Sherman Antitrust Act does not apply only to actors in monopoly positions. Antitrust actions may be taken against businesses engaging in anticompetitive behavior or otherwise restraining trade, even if they don’t control the entire market.
The problem is that that IS the article. This isn’t the justice department or group of bipartisan senators or someone like that saying they think there’s a big problem here.
This is 100% “Trump says X“. That’s the only reason this is an article, literally because he said it.
So to remove that from the headline seems very disingenuous.
(Yes, others have suggested the monopoly/abuse of power angle before, but that’s not why we’re discussing it today).
In the 90's, Democrats wanted to revive the "Fairness Doctrine" in response to Rush Limbaugh's and Sean Hannity's rise in popularity on talk radio. The Fairness Doctrine was in place at the FCC for parts of five decades, from 1949 to 1987. It will be interesting to see if interest is raised in reapplying a Fairness Doctrine today towards these companies, which may well need to be reclassified in some instances as communication utilities to be regulated. I personally think this is more likely for Facebook and Twitter than Google, but who knows. Another bigger situation could come into play if the infrastructure providers (AWS, Azure) start causing antitrust problems, but thankfully they do not seem to be a big issue yet.
As much as people dislike Trump, it's nice that the US has a president who is not afraid to stand up to big corporations. Just drawing attention to this oligopoly is a good step in the right direction.
Why not, it is exactly what should be done. People are mad because he turns out to be one of the best presidents ever, he is just doing the right thing in almost every aspect. He is actually revolutionary rather than conservative, I am sure if he ran as a democrat he would be celebrated by the media.
All of them are too big and we need someone like Teddy Roosevelt going on trust busting crusade. This is the second position of POTUS that I agree with (first being merit based immigration, as I'm myself an immigrant). In a weird sense, I think POTUS may achieve it as he is all about anti-establishment.
Now why do I think they deserve Sherman Antitrust investigations (and IANAL).
All of them have control over people's different dimensions of data that nobody has.
- Amazon: With acquisition of Whole Foods they control retail like nobody. Yes, Walmart is trying to make a dent. So does best buy. But they have pretty much monopoly over e-books business when it comes to publishing. Apple already had eBooks settlement.
- Google: They make or break Internet with control over gateway (Chrome), Search (gatekeeper, and promoting their own content) and monetization (Google Doubleclick/Adx is majority of share in ad-tech market for on-walled garden s, good luck competing against it). Given their control and 1B users across multiple platforms they constantly engage in anti-competitive behavior. Read about rise of header bidding and how AdX used to anti-competitive in ad-tech. Google's ad-tech division needs to thoroughly investigated over anti-competitive behavior.
Secondly, Android is free but Google has iron grip over Android using play store. I think gated App Stores are inherently anti-competitive and not in best interests of users and developers. OS should allow multiple app stores and DoJ should go after this. Fortnite already tried to highlight this issue.
Facebook - I think Facebook might be spared as for social they are not the only platform. But given their data scandals
Apple - As I said app stores are inherently anti-competitive. Same thing applies here like Android.
Anyway, these companies can make or break business with their anti-competitive practices. As discussed in another comment, Sherman Antitrust Act doesn't apply in monopoly positions but against businesses that may stifle overall competitive behavior. I strongly believe these companies are even more scarier in telcos as they are wolves in sheep's clothing and always try to play nice.
I agree that they need regulation probably never should’ve been allowed to get as big as they are. The near total lack of oversight as they’ve come to control giant portions of the economy is pretty worrying.
That’s sad I can’t agree with Trump on this because I know that he’s doing it for completely the wrong reasons. He sees them as political enemies and he wants them suppressed/controlled. I don’t believe he actually cares how big they are. That’s just the excuse.
This isn’t a “stopped clock is right twice a day“ thing.
You could come up with other reasons that I don’t necessarily agree with, say “tax dodging“, that I wouldn’t mind. If I agree with the goal and reason is just, even if it’s not my reason, that could be fine. There was something relatively small Trump did that I agreed with on these lines, though I don’t remember what it was.
This is a pure authoritarian threat. You don’t tie my line so I’ll find some justification to make you’re life hell.
"Of the 1m green cards (permanent residence visas) issued [in the US] each year, only 15% are granted because of the applicants' skills, notes John Dearie of Startups USA, a pressure group; in Australia the figure is 68%."
I would rather have 0 H1Bs and all those numbers converted straight to green cards so that immigrants were able to join unions and otherwise compete without fear of being sent to some other country just because they had even a minor disagreement with their current employer.
Except that to him and his supporters, "merit" is really just code for "skin color". They don't want Hispanics, period. To the point where they are apparently willing to go after natural-born Hispanic citizens on the sketchy basis that they might be fraudulent (of course actually bothering to investigate isn't necessary).
Yeah lets just habe a warmongering politican who randomly destroyes companies based on who his political friends and enemies are.
Peoples over romatezised history of Anti-Trust is ridicouluse. It was mostly a way for buissness that were outcometed based on price to try to use government power to their advantage.
The fist state level Anti-Trust law was basically butchers who were angry at the invention of the frozzen rail transport and slaughterhouses.
And when you want to talk about Anti-Trust on the internet you should actually know how it is applied today.
Anti-competetive actions are simply not going to make an Anti-Trust case. An Anti-Trust case requeres clear harm to consumers.
So if Whole Food would triple its prices because nobody else can compete in that market then you might have an Anti-Trust case.
I'm not a big fan of where the tech giants have brought the internet... the internet today has become too much of a walled garden and there is not enough competition and there's not enough cooperation between entities. But we live in a rather chaotic time geopolitically and I think it's good to have these gigantic entities in our country that other countries are wary of crossing too much.
One thing the tech giants could do is collude to compete greater with one another... there are too many advantages to the dominance in an market segment and so they don't bother competing with one another. Google+ was a bit half-assed... and it seems like they don't care to compete in social networking anymore. Facebook is doing something with video but it doesn't compare with youtube. I would like to see google attempt to create a social network comparable with facebook and I'd like to see facebook attempt to create a search engine or video sharing service comparable to google or youtube.
Rather than break them up, force them to compete with each other in each other's dominant market. And then if we get a super giant then break it up.
> I would like to see google attempt to create a social network comparable with facebook and I'd like to see facebook attempt to create a search engine or video sharing service comparable to google or youtube.
Forgive me but... how is that better than getting companies to spin off divisions or to simply not do anticompetitive things? Google is marginally better than Facebook, and what you're suggesting seems to be a switcharoo between two turd sandwiches where effectively nothing changes. Facebook could compete in the video space(god help us), but that doesn't mean we're going to get better video services.
While I think it's a topic worthy of informed debate. Looking at EU's antitrust decision against Google, the requirements to include competitors listings in results does not seem to have made much difference. Yelp's revenue streams are orthogonal and complementary to say, the results via local searches in Google Maps. Information is not a zero-sum game.
Much more urgent would be antitrust inquiry into consumer credit systems. Mortgage applicants are at the mercy of an opaque, antiquated credit score apparatus. While a majority of small businesses, professional services, and merchants prefer to be paid in check or cash in the US. For large transactions, this is a headwind against efficient commerce. The fee structure is simply too dashed high.
FICO’s Lock on Mortgage Credit Scores Comes Under Fire
Non of these companies can be sued in terms of anti-trust because since the new definition of that law by Richard Posner its very hard to come up with a story tjat would make it credible.
What I think will happen is that we will see a different type of decentralization become popular. Common platforms are needed or convenient. Right now these platforms are generally controlled by large companies with something approaching monopolies in various markets. For example, Amazon provides services and a destination that help people sell things. The problem is Amazon is a company that also sells things and is trying to maximize profits. So vendors are competing with the company running their vending platform.
Uber provides a platform for people to make money with their cars and to get around. It has the large network that drivers and riders need. But they are also so dominant that there is very little competition and so they can price things unfairly.
My belief is that A) we do need common platforms but B) the monopoly platforms are unfair and C) decentralized technologies can provide common platforms that aren't controlled by monopolies.
So what I think would make sense would be for drivers or even self-driving car companies to use decentralized protocols to make one large network and platform. That platform is open source and decentralized and used by many competing companies that want to provide transportation services. This allows companies access to a large pool of drivers and riders and a core technology implementation, but does not relinquish control to one company, so we can preserve competition and fairness.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadSent from my $100 Android phone bought off Amazon through Google Chrome after my friend told me about it on Whatsapp.
Alex Jones never delivered that type of value to me and you are free to listen to his content on his website, which I do from time to time.
Ask '90s Microsoft that.
If anyone ever makes replacements to Android and Whatsapp that are better, I will use them, even if they are North Korean or Siberian or whatever they may be.
90s Microsoft certainly was a big monopoly that has now faced a lot of competition.
But I, as a freeloader, sure did write a lot of essays in Word. I just never paid for a copy.
That line of thinking falls on the EU end of the spectrum, where they value market competition versus the US where they look at things just through the consumer lense. It's hard to say which is better.
Unfortunately that’s not the motivation behind this story. So doesn’t really seem worth discussing now.
What are dark patterns and patenting technology such as a loan desirability ranking based on one's social circle socioeconomic standings?
What is crushing your employees under brutal work conditions until they faint?
What value do you provide as a giant multinational tech corporation when you are subverting the country where you spawned by opening the door to fifth-column Chinese interest groups?
What is the value of a Google top executive demanding that anonymity be destroyed online and elsewhere?
For who are you shilling?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm not joking, don't be surprised if some consortium of right-wing businesses start getting subcontracting rights over this stufff
Oh, definitely. That's the one thing I trust him to be competent at.
It is also not fair that some small bakery was forced to bake a cake for a gay couple wedding against their religion but those big companies get away with discriminating who they serve and who they don't, not even doing some specific thing to an Alex Jones event, just serving him in general.
It is even worst because this bakery is a personal business and was forced to actively participate in something against their religion and believes while facebook is a corporation with different people and different believes so nobody can attribute what Alex Jones is saying to someone specific.
What Trump is about and always was about is standing against the oppression of the American people by a small elite which apply two different laws to them and the rest of the country.
But they have lots of advisors to help them understand that and recommend good policies.
Also the policies are based on real issues in the law and attempt to correct them.
Trump is a self-styled expert in everything (ESPECIALLY business) and doesn’t seem to like outside counsel if it contradicts him.
I can’t think of much in the way of “spite laws” that Bush or Obama tried to push. There was the rattling over encryption, but that was about it.
Trump has a very strong history going after anyone who disagrees with him or he thinks (correctly or not) makes him look bad.
Those two factors combined make all the difference in the world to me.
The article is mostly about POTUS's statement and opinion, not a detailed view of whether there are antitrust violations.
Microsoft is still pushing Bing, and I think Yahoo exists; and both of those providers also provide free email services (some under different brand names).
Apple competes on entire phone platforms, and Android as an operating system for phones is provided free to enable a market place across several different manufacturer's devices; that is likely what's saving //Apple// as a monopoly for mobiles.
Amazon for shopping... the Whole Foods horizontal integration may be problematic. I think it depends on how different platforms and services are broken up. It would probably be OK with the correct kind of regulation to ensure that it isn't used as an unfair competitive advantage. In that respect I think Walmart might also have issues.
What I think might improve things is more consumer protections, particularly in the form of requiring reasonable cost access to paid support (even for products that are otherwise free). We've heard of users being locked out of their contact address and account data far too often, even for paying or previously paying users.
Google partly defeated Microsoft's phone platform just by keeping their services away from it. It's difficult to imagine any less powerful player having any chance.
Think of modern consumer applications and how much they depend on technology from Google, Apple, Amazon or Microsoft.
They can at many points enforce incompatibility for business reasons. That should probably be disallowed (car makers couldn't really prevent after market companies from producing compatible parts).
If they dod not restrict web access then what they did is perfectly fine.
Google acted terribly towards Windows Phone, breaking Youtube and anything else 3rd party devs or Microsoft wrote for Windows Phone. Google Maps for mobile browsers was pretty awful until Google was sure that AT&T and Verizon were done selling Windows Phones
Even if you sign up for an alternate email service, the fact that Google controls so many email accounts means that it is still going to get to read many of the emails sent from Yahoo / Hotmail to Gmail.
Building a video hosting site costs a lot less than billions. Unless you have YouTube's traffic, you don't need their capacity.
Anyway, I dislike how everyone's forgotten how to actually communicate and stay in touch and just assumes that everything and everyone exists on Facebook (as one of the GTAs spoofed: "Life Invader").
A monopoly of...?
They key part of a "monopoly" claim is defining the market. Facebook has a monopoly communications? No. Does it have a monopoly on online communications? No. Does it have a monopoly on mobile communications? No.
Does it have a monopoly on social interactions? No. Does it have a monopoly on online social interactions? No. Does it have a monopoly on social networks? No. Does it have a monopoly on online social networks? No.
Does it have a monopoly on ads? No. Does it have a monopoly on online ads? No. Does it have a monopoly on online ads in social networks? No.
Does Facebook have a monopoly on serving ads in an online social network that is blue-themed? No.
Does Facebook has a monopoly on a on serving ads in an online social network that is blue-themed and has a feed? Not even that!
Does Facebook has a monopoly on a on serving ads in an online social network that is blue-themed and has a feed and is owned by a Harvard dropout? Yes.
That is the complication of a monopoly claim, you need to define the market. If you define it too narrowly, you'll always have a monopoly. If you define it too broadly, you'll never have a monopoly.
No, monopoly absolutely depends on the definition of the market. If you define the market as "online human communication" Facebook doesn't have a monopoly. If you define the market as "online human communication with a feed that uses shades of blue and is owned by a Harvard dropout" then facebook has a monopoly.
> In terms of e.g. network lock-in facebook doesnt have an alternative.
Sure it does. You can talk to people, call people, send a letter, post a notice on a bulletin board, use an online forum, send an email, use an email group, post it on Google+ (it still exists), send a snap, dm on twitter, post on twitter, post on Hacker News, etc.
It entirely depends on how you define the market.
Ask a representative sample of 'random' people
Facebook fails this test because they have literally no competition within the same niche* (that the average person, on average, is aware of anyway).Twitter as a specialized platform is in somewhat a similar area, however people can just group chat on several other platforms and if you re-framed the question like this people could probably come up with things they would or already use as an alternative.
"If [THING] suddenly went out of business, what would you use instead?"
There are plenty of opportunities for all of those options.
Consider, for example, the Cola soda market. There are countries in which Coca-Cola holds 95% or more of the market share for Colas, or even for sodas.
Does that make it a monopoly? No. Because Colas are just one type of soda drinks, and soda drinks are just one type of drink.
If Coca-Cola disappeared and there was no other Cola drink available, Cola drinkers would drink a lemon-flavored drink, or fruit juice, or just plain water.
So your definition doesn't work, exactly because you didn't define the market.
And hey, this isn't just my opinion, it is how monopoly is defined in economics. Particularly regarding something that we haven't talked about yet, which is monopoly pricing. There is no monopoly pricing in any market that Facebook operates. Quite the opposite, actually, ad prices have been going down continuously.
It is always interesting to see people in HN trying to recreate economics from first principles.
It's not an opinion about Google has tweaked its search, just the scope.
We just don't know how big or small google search altering goes. They already proved during the 2016 US elections Google removed negative searches for Democrats. Would really be helpful if someone collected all the google search manipulations. Google at least lets you know if something is removed if its torrent link.
I've run into multiple Youtube search issues where I know a video exists, but can't find it easily or at all. Normally its just a dozen pages down. Even with exact titles searches, it can sometimes be extremely difficult.
I think this is an example of Trump saying the right things for the wrong reason. If you just remove the 'because they don't like me' from his rhetoric, there could be a valid argument there.
That was my point, you can't say they don't modify search results as a blanket statement.
If you're not, it'll tell you about the Pyramids.
He shifts focus from a more general issue that could have much wider effects and directs it into the Trump Vortex where everything is either pro-Trump or anti-Trump and you have to pick a side and that's what it's all about. That is why I think his rhetoric is so destructive - Trump will be gone 2-6 years from now, maybe even sooner, who knows, but Google will likely be around much longer than that.
Times the word “monopoly” appears in the article: 0
It’s worth repeating: The Sherman Antitrust Act does not apply only to actors in monopoly positions. Antitrust actions may be taken against businesses engaging in anticompetitive behavior or otherwise restraining trade, even if they don’t control the entire market.
modern has annotations of beneficial progress
If you're going to be pedantic, at least be correct.
This is 100% “Trump says X“. That’s the only reason this is an article, literally because he said it.
So to remove that from the headline seems very disingenuous.
(Yes, others have suggested the monopoly/abuse of power angle before, but that’s not why we’re discussing it today).
Now why do I think they deserve Sherman Antitrust investigations (and IANAL).
All of them have control over people's different dimensions of data that nobody has.
- Amazon: With acquisition of Whole Foods they control retail like nobody. Yes, Walmart is trying to make a dent. So does best buy. But they have pretty much monopoly over e-books business when it comes to publishing. Apple already had eBooks settlement.
- Google: They make or break Internet with control over gateway (Chrome), Search (gatekeeper, and promoting their own content) and monetization (Google Doubleclick/Adx is majority of share in ad-tech market for on-walled garden s, good luck competing against it). Given their control and 1B users across multiple platforms they constantly engage in anti-competitive behavior. Read about rise of header bidding and how AdX used to anti-competitive in ad-tech. Google's ad-tech division needs to thoroughly investigated over anti-competitive behavior.
Secondly, Android is free but Google has iron grip over Android using play store. I think gated App Stores are inherently anti-competitive and not in best interests of users and developers. OS should allow multiple app stores and DoJ should go after this. Fortnite already tried to highlight this issue.
Facebook - I think Facebook might be spared as for social they are not the only platform. But given their data scandals
Apple - As I said app stores are inherently anti-competitive. Same thing applies here like Android.
Anyway, these companies can make or break business with their anti-competitive practices. As discussed in another comment, Sherman Antitrust Act doesn't apply in monopoly positions but against businesses that may stifle overall competitive behavior. I strongly believe these companies are even more scarier in telcos as they are wolves in sheep's clothing and always try to play nice.
I think this is undeniable in practice, but Google could claim that because Android also has F-Droid and the like, it allows multiple app stores.
That’s sad I can’t agree with Trump on this because I know that he’s doing it for completely the wrong reasons. He sees them as political enemies and he wants them suppressed/controlled. I don’t believe he actually cares how big they are. That’s just the excuse.
This isn’t a “stopped clock is right twice a day“ thing.
You could come up with other reasons that I don’t necessarily agree with, say “tax dodging“, that I wouldn’t mind. If I agree with the goal and reason is just, even if it’s not my reason, that could be fine. There was something relatively small Trump did that I agreed with on these lines, though I don’t remember what it was.
This is a pure authoritarian threat. You don’t tie my line so I’ll find some justification to make you’re life hell.
"Of the 1m green cards (permanent residence visas) issued [in the US] each year, only 15% are granted because of the applicants' skills, notes John Dearie of Startups USA, a pressure group; in Australia the figure is 68%."
[1] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/08/25/governments-ne...
Except that to him and his supporters, "merit" is really just code for "skin color". They don't want Hispanics, period. To the point where they are apparently willing to go after natural-born Hispanic citizens on the sketchy basis that they might be fraudulent (of course actually bothering to investigate isn't necessary).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/the_americas/us...
Peoples over romatezised history of Anti-Trust is ridicouluse. It was mostly a way for buissness that were outcometed based on price to try to use government power to their advantage.
The fist state level Anti-Trust law was basically butchers who were angry at the invention of the frozzen rail transport and slaughterhouses.
And when you want to talk about Anti-Trust on the internet you should actually know how it is applied today.
Anti-competetive actions are simply not going to make an Anti-Trust case. An Anti-Trust case requeres clear harm to consumers.
So if Whole Food would triple its prices because nobody else can compete in that market then you might have an Anti-Trust case.
Most of your list is simple "Things I dont like".
Rather than break them up, force them to compete with each other in each other's dominant market. And then if we get a super giant then break it up.
Forgive me but... how is that better than getting companies to spin off divisions or to simply not do anticompetitive things? Google is marginally better than Facebook, and what you're suggesting seems to be a switcharoo between two turd sandwiches where effectively nothing changes. Facebook could compete in the video space(god help us), but that doesn't mean we're going to get better video services.
Much more urgent would be antitrust inquiry into consumer credit systems. Mortgage applicants are at the mercy of an opaque, antiquated credit score apparatus. While a majority of small businesses, professional services, and merchants prefer to be paid in check or cash in the US. For large transactions, this is a headwind against efficient commerce. The fee structure is simply too dashed high.
FICO’s Lock on Mortgage Credit Scores Comes Under Fire
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ficos-lock-on-mortgage-credit-s...
I said: “Facebook‘s biggest competitor is the US government.”
I feel that’s even more true now, and the same comment applies to Google and Amazon. It’s not a coincidence these firms have massive lobbying efforts.
My belief is that A) we do need common platforms but B) the monopoly platforms are unfair and C) decentralized technologies can provide common platforms that aren't controlled by monopolies.
So what I think would make sense would be for drivers or even self-driving car companies to use decentralized protocols to make one large network and platform. That platform is open source and decentralized and used by many competing companies that want to provide transportation services. This allows companies access to a large pool of drivers and riders and a core technology implementation, but does not relinquish control to one company, so we can preserve competition and fairness.