Taking the article title and the author's own recommendation, it's best to gather information first and then develop an informed opinion - then once you're ready you take action if required.
That's what the FTC will do; their responsibility is to determine whether consumers are being protected against unfair or misleading practices, as stated in their about page[0].
Once no harm has been done and information has been collected for a sufficient period of time, then they might need to enforce laws against the tech companies involved - or they might not - depending on the investigation's outcome.
The first group that benefits from large tech company acquisitions is end users. The fastest possible way for a new technology or feature to be diffused to users broadly is for it to be incorporated by one of the large platforms or Aggregators. Suddenly, instead of reaching a few thousand or even a few million people, a new technology can reach billions of people. It’s difficult to overstate how compelling this point is from a consumer welfare perspective: banning acquisitions means denying billions of people access to a particular technology for years, if not forever.
This really seems like a stretch. First, its assumed that the actual features make it into a product again or the company is not simply shutdown and the current less-than-great feature is left in place (NIH). This is the web and great things spread, the whole last line is just really sounds like fear-mongering.
right, I'm not even sure if this the first group is statistically accurate, there seems to be too many small companies bought and shut down to really assume this. It would be an interesting study to see what percentage of products last after purchase, for how long, how many are incorporated, and so forth.
My interpretation of this is that this group is mostly the acquihires. He’s looking at this specifically from the Instagram view, where the product continues.
Obviously many projects are shuttered (“Our Wonderful Journey”) but I don’t think that’s what he’s addressing in this point.
I believe Instagram is the perfect counter-example to his whole thesis of helping the users. Instagram would have been just as popular, and one could even make the argument that they would have done better without Facebook because of the negative feeling of association.
I would hazard that before the "FROM FACEBOOK" branding last year the majority of users didn't even know it was a facebook property. And even now I bet a large plurality don't know and the majority of the rest don't care.
A former employer bought many competitors and sunset the product each time, because it was cheaper to rebuild the missing features than keep the whole product alive, especially when it did roughly the same thing as the acquirer's product.
This seemed logical but also a waste. Given that a likely outcome for any new company is acquisition, is there a way to make your technology friendlier to an acquirer? Even microservice architectures seem to usually have assumptions about users and other core concepts.
I want it to be possible to just staple the features on, like the business folks already assume is possible.
It’s an interesting thought; I suspect building microservices with well specified APIs (OpenAPI / gRPC) and a common api onto the infrastructure layer (Kubernetes) would be a compelling way to do so. I.e. spend some time being cloud-agnostic.
Honestly this seems like an effort to create a clever alternative theory just for the sake of novelty. This blog has an incentive to produce "hidden" information. This specific example is really contrived.
Small startups experiment with novel ideas, workflows and products (in a 1000 flowers blooming way). The successful subset of these that survive, get merged/molded/copied by BigTech, and acquisitions are one of the ways to do that.
More importantly, from Ben's other two points, if there were fewer startups because the expected return from investments reduce, end users lose because many of these novel ideas/products never come to market. BigTech can innovate much more slowly since they can only pick and choose a few of these ideas (even if they manage to come up with them).
My first thoughts were similar to Thompson's- investigating small acquisitions will chill the market (a market each of us dreams of being in :-)
But then, I started thinking like an entrepreneur- "Hey, Zuckerberg, I know you are only offering 7M for my awesome iphone app, but if you buy at this price it might look to the FTC you are hiding something.
Now if you upped your price to 94.1M and reported the deal, everyone will be happy!
I remain hopeful.
More seriously, pretty much everything certain "systemically important"'companies do (Utilities, banks etc) in the M&A space is reviewed and regulated - Big Tech is just going to face more and more of that in more and more countries.
I should think they could get ahead of the curve - start embracing things like GDPR and lobby for it. Get (bribe? lobby?) regulators in different jurisdictions to choose similar compatible rules - forget about trying to keep regulators off your backs while making money, if Thompson is right and these companies are in place for the next century their strategic goals should be sane, coherent and transparent regulation globally - that global regulation is coming is inevitable - that it is sane and coherent and transparent is far from not.
> I should think they could get ahead of the curve...
What makes you think they haven't?
What you are describing is straightforward regulatory capture. Every previous industry that has gotten large enough for regulation of it to get public attention has done it. There is no reason to expect big tech to be any different.
Unfortunately, I think the more strategic approach is to lobby for insane, incoherent, opaque regulation that varies wildly across jurisdictions. Then FAANG will be the only organizations large enough to handle compliance, and competitors will be shut out by the barrier to entry.
This is pretty much how most well-established industries are regulated today.
Well, probably based on thousands of years experience.
But ... imagine coding that shit.
It's ok to have country heads who manipulate and hide the illegal moves and regulatory shifts, but what if you want your web scale architecture to just work with simple configuration - not rewrite that shot in ten or twenty countries.
who has enough good web scale engineers who can fuck up a great design to meet country specific needs but still keep it running?
Imagine wifi being regulated in different ways in different countries? or GSM signals.
I think we are about to see a clash between the power of simple engineering and the wants of local regulations
Here is the zip file, which was also made available in the 3Jan2O2O update. The file within is VID_20200101_201948.mp3. Turn up the volume and put on headphones.
The dialogue about the impeachment starts near the beginning. Having Biden in the White House is as good as Trump or anyone else in their organization. Obviously Schiff and Nadler pledged their allegiance to the organization by raping boys on the record, with their task being to drag out an impeachment designed to obstruct and delay any real efforts to remove the President, thus keeping Trump in power. The witness blocking was to cause an apparent uproar delaying things with legal actions until late Summer. Soon after, the President would resign, leaving any other candidate with not enough time or support to compete with an opportunistic Biden, who is as good as Trump or any other Illuminati friendly politician in the Presidency.
\Wag The Dog: first was feigned impeachment hearings meant to obstruct, now an attack on Iranians in Iraq. Here is what they are trying to distract from & cover up to retain power. $100+ billion in bribes to the highest offices in this country. 815+ deaths from child rapes to prove loyalty!
See the latest PDF updates: FBI Director Wray, AG Barr, SoD Shanahan, & SoS Pompeo each raped boys and were paid billions in bribes for a Soros & Koch funded child rape org. So did Trump & his "impeachment" team Nadler,Schiff,Mueller.So did media moguls Redstone,Murdoch,Moonves. What are they trying to set up? Who can arrest them since they are all bribed and in on it ?
Their strategy to stay in every office and obstruct until forced to leave no matter what. Feigning impeachment: see page 13O. Ioj;iwmnvckn, vewmrvimev. voewpmvewmrverw.
\\if;Download the video/audio file, put on headphones and turn up the volume. You will hear these people committing these crimes. Audio was broadcast into my apartment by outdated surveillance equipment illegally embedded within my walls. This very same technology was being used to broadcast me to the internet for five years without my consent. I own this footage. Please use this to prosecute all found within. Note:: I am obliviously speaking throughout the video, and it can be quite loud at times relative to the desired content. The are dozens more links, including these, that can be found in this PDF last updated 4 FEB 2O2O:
Ok, totally unrelated to the article, but what on earth is up with the same creepy dead comment that is visible on what seems like every article lately (posted by beeschlenker this time). This has been appearing for months now and the user still doesn’t seem to be blocked from HN. I’m a bit perturbed that the text in his comment is even being loaded into my web browser, and while I generally like to show the dead comments, I think I’m going to have to turn them off.
20 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 49.2 ms ] threadThat's what the FTC will do; their responsibility is to determine whether consumers are being protected against unfair or misleading practices, as stated in their about page[0].
Once no harm has been done and information has been collected for a sufficient period of time, then they might need to enforce laws against the tech companies involved - or they might not - depending on the investigation's outcome.
[0] - https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/what-we-do
This really seems like a stretch. First, its assumed that the actual features make it into a product again or the company is not simply shutdown and the current less-than-great feature is left in place (NIH). This is the web and great things spread, the whole last line is just really sounds like fear-mongering.
Obviously many projects are shuttered (“Our Wonderful Journey”) but I don’t think that’s what he’s addressing in this point.
This seemed logical but also a waste. Given that a likely outcome for any new company is acquisition, is there a way to make your technology friendlier to an acquirer? Even microservice architectures seem to usually have assumptions about users and other core concepts.
I want it to be possible to just staple the features on, like the business folks already assume is possible.
More importantly, from Ben's other two points, if there were fewer startups because the expected return from investments reduce, end users lose because many of these novel ideas/products never come to market. BigTech can innovate much more slowly since they can only pick and choose a few of these ideas (even if they manage to come up with them).
But then, I started thinking like an entrepreneur- "Hey, Zuckerberg, I know you are only offering 7M for my awesome iphone app, but if you buy at this price it might look to the FTC you are hiding something.
Now if you upped your price to 94.1M and reported the deal, everyone will be happy!
I remain hopeful.
More seriously, pretty much everything certain "systemically important"'companies do (Utilities, banks etc) in the M&A space is reviewed and regulated - Big Tech is just going to face more and more of that in more and more countries.
I should think they could get ahead of the curve - start embracing things like GDPR and lobby for it. Get (bribe? lobby?) regulators in different jurisdictions to choose similar compatible rules - forget about trying to keep regulators off your backs while making money, if Thompson is right and these companies are in place for the next century their strategic goals should be sane, coherent and transparent regulation globally - that global regulation is coming is inevitable - that it is sane and coherent and transparent is far from not.
What makes you think they haven't?
What you are describing is straightforward regulatory capture. Every previous industry that has gotten large enough for regulation of it to get public attention has done it. There is no reason to expect big tech to be any different.
This is pretty much how most well-established industries are regulated today.
Well, probably based on thousands of years experience.
But ... imagine coding that shit.
It's ok to have country heads who manipulate and hide the illegal moves and regulatory shifts, but what if you want your web scale architecture to just work with simple configuration - not rewrite that shot in ten or twenty countries.
who has enough good web scale engineers who can fuck up a great design to meet country specific needs but still keep it running?
Imagine wifi being regulated in different ways in different countries? or GSM signals.
I think we are about to see a clash between the power of simple engineering and the wants of local regulations
Maybe
BB10Mp3Footage31Dec1Jan.zip 122.4mb
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IXOOhQhHybwky8Z5pGdr9ZXhWpI...
The dialogue about the impeachment starts near the beginning. Having Biden in the White House is as good as Trump or anyone else in their organization. Obviously Schiff and Nadler pledged their allegiance to the organization by raping boys on the record, with their task being to drag out an impeachment designed to obstruct and delay any real efforts to remove the President, thus keeping Trump in power. The witness blocking was to cause an apparent uproar delaying things with legal actions until late Summer. Soon after, the President would resign, leaving any other candidate with not enough time or support to compete with an opportunistic Biden, who is as good as Trump or any other Illuminati friendly politician in the Presidency.
162 page PDF [last updated: February|4th|2O2O]:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7T_kDv48E40eHzus6CTXHxcm0W...
Previously reported:
\Wag The Dog: first was feigned impeachment hearings meant to obstruct, now an attack on Iranians in Iraq. Here is what they are trying to distract from & cover up to retain power. $100+ billion in bribes to the highest offices in this country. 815+ deaths from child rapes to prove loyalty!
See the latest PDF updates: FBI Director Wray, AG Barr, SoD Shanahan, & SoS Pompeo each raped boys and were paid billions in bribes for a Soros & Koch funded child rape org. So did Trump & his "impeachment" team Nadler,Schiff,Mueller.So did media moguls Redstone,Murdoch,Moonves. What are they trying to set up? Who can arrest them since they are all bribed and in on it ?
Their strategy to stay in every office and obstruct until forced to leave no matter what. Feigning impeachment: see page 13O. Ioj;iwmnvckn, vewmrvimev. voewpmvewmrverw.
\\if;Download the video/audio file, put on headphones and turn up the volume. You will hear these people committing these crimes. Audio was broadcast into my apartment by outdated surveillance equipment illegally embedded within my walls. This very same technology was being used to broadcast me to the internet for five years without my consent. I own this footage. Please use this to prosecute all found within. Note:: I am obliviously speaking throughout the video, and it can be quite loud at times relative to the desired content. The are dozens more links, including these, that can be found in this PDF last updated 4 FEB 2O2O:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7T_kDv48E40eHzus6CTXHxcm0W...
All members of the "Illuminati"; "....an underground organization of homosexuals and child rapists..." (from pg 26: Barack Obama with Jack Dorsey).
President Donald Trump:
Demands a $4 billion dollar bribe here at 10:18am 4thJan2019:
3JanCh3_900-1100.avi
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77...
3JanCh2_900-1100-avi
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUmVygl_q0XVs8h2cWr8jZl-24f...
3JanCh4_1000-1100.mp3