The link here isn't exactly the right one - the same thing happened to me when I tried sharing this article previously as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28933313). Either we both pasted the wrong URL or maybe HN trims off the hashtag part of the URL (with the #capital-as-power on the end of the URL).
Given that there are sites that use fragment identifiers to encode state, and users may be including fragments mistakenly (eg. click a link in a Wikipedia page's TOC, scroll to the top, share link), figuring out what to do with some random URL submission that includes a fragment isn't straightforward.
In THEORY, when the fragment is (semantically?) significant, the site could dynamically alter the link rel="canonical" value to include the fragment such that you could check whether to keep it or not, but in practice I think that canonical links are intended for web crawler deduplication and so nearly always strip fragments off.
We're indeed replacing links with canonical URLs now, as of maybe a month ago. But we were stripping anchors from URLs even before that, with a list of exempted sites. I've added pluralistic.net to that list now. If there's a better way to do it, I'm interested.
> If there's a better way to do it, I'm interested.
About the only thing I could suggest would be to add a checkbox to the submission form that controlled fragment-preserving vs stripping, but you would probably need to add a review queue to double check it wasn't being abused (not that abuse is a particularly attractive target, in this case), and I am unsure whether the minor additional code and UI complexity is worth it vs. the ad-hoc process you have now.
A second possible approach would be to invert that suggestion and simply add a review queue to check whether a removed fragment should have been preserved instead (ordering or filtering the queue by the rank of the submission rather than chronological order, for sanity purposes).
"This is a great strategy in light of US anittrust [sic] theories over the past 40 years, during which time antitrust regulators promised to leave companies alone as they formed monopolies, provided they didn't hike price after attaining monopoly dominance."
No, Cory, that's not what happened and there was no "promise." The new theory of anti-trust was "consumer harm." Hiking prices is certainly one form of that, but so was forming a monopoly. Microsoft was prosecuted for forming a monopoly and reducing consumer choices.
"Google's true operating costs aren't captured by adding up its salaries and servers – a correct accounting must include the costs of acquiring companies and with them, patents. That's the cost Google must incur, if is to retain its power."
No, Cory, those are not "operating costs," those are called "capital costs." They're treated real differently in Accounting.
I was part of this "acquire patents" effort at Google. I actually interviewed people to be in Legal whose job would be to acquire patents. The theory (since discarded) was that a heavy patent portfolio would give you a better negotiating position if you were sued. There was no thought of actually asserting these patents against Microsoft, or anyone.
I actually used some of our internal tools to assess our patent portfolio. Most of those Motorola patents were worthless.
> I was part of this "acquire patents" effort at Google. I actually interviewed people to be in Legal whose job would be to acquire patents. The theory (since discarded) was that a heavy patent portfolio would give you a better negotiating position if you were sued.
Interesting! Can you expand on this topic? Does/has the strategy work?
The theory goes like this. The Patent Office keeps granting overly broad patents to your competitors, who then show up to sue you for unintentionally violating them. So you get your own overly broad patents, counter-sue them when this happens, and then they all cancel out.
The main problem with this strategy is patent trolls. Some company that doesn't make anything buys up some broad patents. Then there is nothing you can sue them over because they don't make anything so the strategy doesn't work.
It also makes the whole concept of software patents pretty useless, because the "defensive patents" could equally be used to counter anyone who tries to sue you for violating a "legitimate" patent. So the whole system becomes a bludgeon for larger companies to use against smaller companies, because they have more patents, even if most of them are low quality, which means they can tie up anyone who actually makes anything in court indefinitely.
Some of that is correct, but patent trolls are only after money. They like to settle quickly for a fairly small amount, and move on. An effective counter-strategy is to resist them (with IPRs, especially) because that ties up their resources.
As for big companies suing smaller ones: citations (in the mobile space), please?
You're asking for citations to things that happen behind closed doors. "Big company pressures little company into a buyout/capitulation" is bad PR for big company, so part of the buyout/capitulation is to sign the NDA.
There are still conspiracy theory leaker mathematics in play here. Facebook can't so much as send an internal email complaining about leaks making somebody's job harder without it being trumpted as yet another great wrong they committed.
It is within a space of possibilities but a sustained lack of evidence decreases the probability of it being so as numbers increase. It is possible that a given person drove drunk without being caught. But if they drove drunk everyday throughout many different towns and villages? Less likely.
If you disclose your identity then you're violating the NDA and get sued. If you don't, nobody wants to run the story because you have no credibility.
Also, how many times does this have to happen before it's a problem? Maybe it's not thousands of times. If it happens each of the small number of times that someone would otherwise have the opportunity to unseat a monopoly, that's still really bad.
> The theory (since discarded) was that a heavy patent portfolio would give you a better negotiating position if you were sued. There was no thought of actually asserting these patents against Microsoft, or anyone.
Doesn't it kind of prove part of the argument?
Google apparently felt threatened by patents, enough so to acquire "second strike capabilities" as deterrence.
Seems to me Google though patents aggressive tools with the purpose to hurt other companies or threatening to do so (though defensively in this case).
I am really interested in the "since discarded" part, if someone can recommend some reading.
It only "prove[s] part of the argument" if you rephrase the argument to your liking. You are also conflating "defensive" and "aggressive." Kinda like saying Switzerland is "aggressive" because they have mandatory military service for all males.
> Kinda like saying Switzerland is "aggressive" because they have mandatory military service for all males.
I'm curious: Have you heard of the state's "monopoly on violence" before? It comes up a lot in political theory discussions, and it applies to this attempted rebuttal by analogy.
I've certainly heard of that theory. How is that relevant to "defensive" vs. "aggressive"? You're saying Switzerland is aggressive because they have a military?
Just to offer a more benevolent interpretation: I read that "Google thought patents aggressive tools" sentence not necessarily as any implication of Google's intent, but rather an implication that Google were worried about patents being used as weapons against them.
that's not a valid reason for insulting somebody. if I've had to tone down my attitude to fit the tone this site aims for, then I think you should too.
I get his annoyance. It's infuriating to keep seeing the opinions of the ignorant elevated on HN as if they're gospel. It's bad enough that this place is a shrine to Paul Graham, let's not add any more fools to this roster.
Oh more undeserved out of hand insults, from another camp, great!
Cory is a well networked, fairly thorough, informed blogger. He participates in all sorts of panels on topics of regulation, listens to a wide amount of voices. His views typically reflect & meet with a wide variety of other expert opinions.
It's really unfortunate that such easy, cheap character assassination is being done against someone who has spoken so well, with such unvarnished genuine interest & care for what technology can be in this world.
Well, it wouldn't be HN if people couldn't post angry rants about Google. 10% of HN is just a group of same people complaining about Google again and again. Anytime I see a link about Google, I know there wouldn't be any insightful discussion. Just same people complaining endlessly about the same things. I wish mods would do a better job moderating this relentless tirades.
Except in this case it's not against Google, but someone being aggressive against someone taking a position critical of Google.
Disclaimer: I work at Google, and I'm used to keeping things polite when the workforce here is attacked on the forum. So not sure why the reverse can't also be true.
I doubt the little guy acquiring patents at behest of some corporate initiative from executives actually necessarily gets told the real reason. It would leave an paper trail for antitrust. "Would give you a better negotiating position if you were sued" is the exact kind of generic motivation you'd want on something that's real purposes could look worse in an antitrust trial.
A limited time monopoly on an invention. But antitrust laws are allowed to break up stuff with too much power if they engage in certain practices, and this can split up a patent portfolio amongst the parts.
You and gota both need to read the literature on patent strategy in maturing markets. This is well-known and informed everyone's strategy in the 2010 era, Google's and Microsoft's.
The literature says that in mature markets, the major players all have cross-licensing agreements sharing their giant patent portfolios, shutting out the minor players. They form an oligarchy, in other words.
I may be a few years behind, having been retired for a few years, but I don't think this has actually happened. It's possible that Google and Apple and Microsoft really do have cross-licenses now, but I kinda doubt it. It would be too complicated to negotiate. What they have is mutually assured destruction.
The difficulty of negotiating cross licensing deals has led to the creation of large patent pools like the Open Invention Network and Allied Security Trust.
Wow uh.... hitting a bit hard there. This seems like a very strong reaction, to something that seems straightforward & accurate to me. So you've found a couple bones to pick to justify these insults you're gunning to fire... here's my view on them.
> No, Cory, that's not what happened and there was no "promise."
Borkism's "consumer harm" theory has, in almost all cases, been centered around hiking prices. Given the lack of interference we've seen for the past 40 years, whether or not there was this "promise" seems moot: there has been a pathetically low level of anti-trust enforcement. Whether promised or not, there has certainly been a delivery.
That you can cite a single 20 year old Microsoft case does little to convince me that there is efficient & active anti-trust regulation. It was a pretty heinous act, by Microsoft, at a time when there was only one mainstream consumer OS. But now that there's two OSes, there's no need for anti-trust, seemingly, and Apple is allowed to engage in far far far worse behaviors on iOS with regards to only permitting Safari technology to run, hampering the web. Social media companies have faced no scrutiny in their bonanza of competitor purchasing. The semiconductor market has undergone a radical vast wave of consolidation, again, seemingly entirely unchecked. Whatever the new Robert Bork "consumer harm" standard might grant it license to regulate, it certainly doesn't seem to be doing much. Proving those harms is much harder & more specific a task than what came before, and has, imo, been enormously clearly for the worse, as Cory continues to rightly argue.
> No, Cory, those are not "operating costs,"
The entire basis of this post is that the accounting doesn't reflect the truth of the matter. The accounting of acquisitions as a one time capital costs isn't really genuine or fair, when a constant ongoing stream of acquisitions is required to maintain the power & position of dominance. The dominant player has to keep feeding the meter to continue operating from a position of power. Each of those may be a one time cost, but the macro behavior is that this is not so different than the grid hookup keeping the data-centers running. It sustains the dominance of the entity. It's an operating cost, the cost of staying where they are.
Your point about patents is entirely besides the point. This isn't about companies using courts to try to destroy one another- something we haven't ever really seen at scale in the modern world. This is about Saturn Eating His Son. This is about the gigantic titaneous overlords of the planet insuring nothing new ever happens, preventing disruption. By acquiring all freshness & devouring it, bodily.
> "That you can cite a single 20 year old Microsoft case"
OK, do you want some more? How about [1]?
If your point is that the tech giants have not faced enough anti-trust litigation: you'd have to define "enough" as "sufficient to break them up." Because they're still here.
The EU has been all over them, and almost every state AG is joining in an anti-trust suit against them. Congress investigates them every week, and we might eventually see some legislation. Democracy is slow. But yeah, more is better.
Your last two paragraphs rely on a false premise: "a constant ongoing stream of acquisitions." If there are acquisitions going on, it's not for patents -- it's to eliminate competitors. That's not a defect of IP laws; it's a matter for legislation and anti-trust action. Which I support.
Please make your substantive points without name-calling and personal attacks. You broke the site guidelines badly here.
This is particularly important when your view of the underlying issue is actually correct, because if you post like this about it, you end up discrediting not only yourself but also the truth [1], and that hurts everybody. We're really trying to avoid that sort of internet dynamic here.
I certainly appreciate that you have inside knowledge about this topic and are willing to share it with us! That part is great. I also understand (believe me) the frustration that comes up when people make glib claims about a situation they don't have first-hand knowledge of. But if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
> No, Cory, those are not "operating costs," those are called "capital costs." They're treated real differently in Accounting.
I'm guessing he's aware that's how things work currently; it sounded to me like he was arguing that it shouldn't work that way, although I don't know if he literally believes that accounting practices should change or if that was more just for rhetorical effect.
Things like OIN[0] didn't exist when MS and Google bought companies to strip them of their patents. They do exist now, and it's basically a truce over fighting on patents.
The Bork view on anti-trust definitely has favored these companies, and Apple and Google can absolutely be accused of having and using monopoly power to keep competitors out. Google pays to be the default search engine on iOS (keeping competitors out), and Apple denies fair platform access to software it thinks has a chance at competing with it's ecosystem (Tile, etc..). Amazon and Facebook can be accused of this pretty easily too (restricting 3rd party sellers, restricting API access respectively).
The law[1] is pretty clear on this, but bills exactly like [2] and [3] would clear it up more, which I believe Cory Doctrow supports, at least from reading his Twitter.
Those aren't the type of goods these companies are making. All of these companies have durable market power (in search, networking/communication, marketplaces); and can and have used it to expand their own power like the article says, and do it at the expense of smaller competitors. Hence the new anti-rust view being one that stops such anti-competitive actions.
Re [0], there are zillions of these "open patent" initiatives. Every week a new one comes along. It's easy to get lots of tiny companies to sign up for them. It's a lot harder to get anyone with a really valuable patent.
As for the Bork view: all those things you mentioned are "consumer harm" and are not protected. It would be a lot more fruitful to look at the lobbyist spending by the tech giants, and the Astroturf "studies" they fund.
I hope the current lawsuits against these companies over the exactly the things I mentioned should be easily decided then, and we won't need the bills I linked.
Cory Doctorow is ignorant of economics and competition policy. It’s frustrating to see his thoughts shared here so often.
There is no credible economic theory of firm “power seeking”. What’s more, you don’t need such a theory to explain what’s going on here.
If you want to explain why Google paid so much for Motorola, you can do so via the various defects in intellectual property law.
All large firms are at least occasionally involved in patent litigation, frequently with patent trolls (though sometimes with large competitors too). This is familiar enough to everyone on this site. For Google this was a defensive acquisition, but a defense against frivolous litigation. There is no need to invent some theory of firm “power seeking” to make the case.
It's like reading Paul Krugman talking about stuff other than economics. Freaking genius economist with amazing papers and articles (my personal favorite is his joke-but-actually-realistic paper on intergalactic trade). But then he strays into territory where he isn't actually an expert, connects a few dots, and then publishes in his NYT column despite it being mostly rubbish.
> There is no credible economic theory of firm “power seeking”
How is the theory of market power combined with everything else we know not that? [1] It seems obviously in the firms interest even if their primary motive were still profit since it ensures increased rates of profit (modulo risk of a regulatory smackdown.)
Market power is a well defined economic concept. I am an economist who works on that issue. If he wants to talk about market power I think that would be great! (Though not as an explanation for this case.)
Indeed, I said I thought he was ignorant of economics in part bc he brought up this weird “capital as power” thing which has nothing to do (AFAICT) with actual market power as we understand it.
Furthermore, in this particular case I think you get a much better, more direct explanation of Google’s behavior vis-a-vis its acquisition of Motorola via intellectual property and patent litigation than via market power, let alone via “capital as power”.
They seem to be economists too [1] and it seems like he's deferring to them. I haven't read their work but the way Cory presented it makes it sound like it's just basic Machiavellian realism[2] applied to economics and if that's all it is then I'm all in. Is there something specific you didn't like or just that the theory isn't presently popular among economists? What's your alternative story of what happened here? I'm not sure how intellectual property and patent litigation would conflict with what he's saying.
The idea of powerseeking is an outright reification of power that conflates definitions by assuming the worst possible light. Influncing the market doesn't mean complete control over production - that is an obsession of Marx's ideological descendants. Just influncing it in either direction for any reason works. Providing it cheaper than market rates or convincing others to pay more also qualifies.
If everyone in a village economy is capable of growing their own food on the side for about the equivalent of say $15/bushel averaged out but you have the specialization, mechanization to grow it for $1/bushel margins. Even if you wind up the only one growing food others still have their fields.
If we call increasing efficiency "power seeking" then the term has lost any and all meaning and only serves to confuse and make the most mundane actions sinister by interpreting them in the most conspiratorial light. If you drink commodity coffee in the morning you actively to exploit the rural poor, if you go with more expensive fair trade coffee you are engaged in conspicious consumption of veblem goods while people starve, and if you just drink water you are trying to starve the rural poor.
What definitions do you believe are conflated? What "worst possible light" do you believe is being assumed? I don't think influencing the market means complete control over production. I don't know how you see that idea as inherited from Marx though and if it were, it would be fallacious to reject it on those grounds. To be clear though the authors that Cory is citing reject Marx in the first pages of their book and I myself have no interest in Marx other than historical.
We don't call increasing efficiency "power seeking." Yes, I think many anti-capitalists would respond to that by saying that "there is no ethical consumption in capitalism" and that these problems cannot be solved by consumer choices.
> If we call increasing efficiency "power seeking" then the term has lost any and all meaning and only serves to confuse and make the most mundane actions sinister by interpreting them in the most conspiratorial light.
Sure, but simply calling an acquisition like the one discussed in the article "increasing efficiency" interprets it the best possible light, which seems equally in need justification.
"Everything is about power": this reminds me of the 4-year-old who's just discovered a dirty word, and revels in its effect of shocking the grownups, so he yells it at every opportunity.
Yes, boys and girls, "power" is sometimes a motivator. There are other ones, though. Maybe read a few more books.
It's funny to read that thread. There is stuff I agree with there! And more stuff I disagree with or is totally unfounded.
- First of all, I have no interest in or patience for Ayn Rand. I don't know any economists who take her remotely seriously. All of the American economists I know are on the left politically. So are most of the non-American economists I know. There are, of course, prominent exceptions to the rule.
- I don't know why we are accused of having no theory of prices? I teach that in week 2 of my principles of microeconomics class. I don't teach inflation b/c I don't teach macro, but they do have theories.
- We don't assume people have perfect information, with the possible exception of using it as a very simple benchmark case on our way to something more complicated and realistic. Incomplete/imperfect information has been a central feature of all theoretical and empirical work in the profession for more than 40 years now.
- He shares a post about concentration in meatpacking. I agree that we have allowed many markets to become too concentrated, including meatpacking! I am in favor of stronger antitrust enforcement! My entire sub-field is empirical studies of imperfectly competitive industries.
- Skipping several tweets (there is really too much here to argue with every point...) we have talked about the CORE textbook in my department. Most of us put it on our syllabi. It is free, after all. As a comment on Doctorow's take: every Principles textbook mentions the environment because every Principles textbook talks about externalities. I spend a week on the subject.
Again, I confirm my impression that he doesn't know anything about economics or competition policy, but studying it more seriously would be to his benefit, especially in commenting on technology and regulation issues.
Perhaps theory of prices has a totally different meaning from "leftist" contexts? They operate under imperatives and assume there is some sort of ideal formulae that ignores that it makes the Knapsack Problem look log(n).
"What the market will bear." is a nonanswer to them even though it is accurate because reality is messy with human psychology more so.
Of course from mainstream economics perspective their concepts of value and exploitation are between fallacious (universal global value because labor is assumed as the basis) to pants-on-head levels of crazy (the idea that a fair trasaction becomes unfair when the buyer is able to reap later profit).
Patent portfolios aren't typically used as a defense against trolls. Since they're overwhelmingly non practicing entities, they're typically not infringing on anything.
Trolls have no problems finding patents, it's not that limited of a pool that you can suck them all up. And sure about MAD with big companies, but that's orthogonal to my comment on trolls.
The thing I think Doctorow is missing is the motivation at the engineering level to get a patent. There is very minimal strategizing between corporate attorney's about how the patent might be strategic. If something is patentable, the engineering teams will often pursue a patent mostly motivated from a bragging rights perspective. It's a great way to give recognition to engineers. Most of Google's/Microsoft's portfolio are collections of patents like that. Maybe at a portfolio level there is some strategizing, but not at the level of the engineers actually inventing things.
The patents are usually at least nominally related to a product, and the allocation of engineering to product is very intentional. You're correct that there's some loss in that process, and lots of funny business/perverse incentives besides, but engineers aren't generally patenting totally random things.
A general comment about patent trolls ("NPEs") business model. I actually heard a presentation by a (former) troll about this.
They buy a patent which looks good, i.e. applies broadly, hasn't been litigated unsuccessfully, has a few more years to run, ideally has been tested by an unsuccessful IPR.
The whole goal is to make back the investment in a few years. Contrary to what someone said, there is not an infinite supply of those.
Then they pick out easy targets to sue, i.e. companies which just settle without much fuss. Those settlements don't have to be for large amounts, and typically are not.
I should correct the word "sue." Often there is no lawsuit. If a defendant is formally notified that they might be sued, they can seek a Declarative Judgment (DJ) in a friendly venue, which affirms that they're not infringing. The troll does not want to be DJ'ed. So they just threaten without really threatening ("hey, you might want to take a look at this patent!").
Those easy targets build up a war chest, which the troll then uses to go after the bigger and harder targets. These are companies that will fight back, often with an IPR.
So the moral is: make yourself a hard target. Never roll over for those people.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadAnyways, the correct link is https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/vizio-vs-the-world/#capit....
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_fragment
In THEORY, when the fragment is (semantically?) significant, the site could dynamically alter the link rel="canonical" value to include the fragment such that you could check whether to keep it or not, but in practice I think that canonical links are intended for web crawler deduplication and so nearly always strip fragments off.
About the only thing I could suggest would be to add a checkbox to the submission form that controlled fragment-preserving vs stripping, but you would probably need to add a review queue to double check it wasn't being abused (not that abuse is a particularly attractive target, in this case), and I am unsure whether the minor additional code and UI complexity is worth it vs. the ad-hoc process you have now.
A second possible approach would be to invert that suggestion and simply add a review queue to check whether a removed fragment should have been preserved instead (ordering or filtering the queue by the rank of the submission rather than chronological order, for sanity purposes).
"This is a great strategy in light of US anittrust [sic] theories over the past 40 years, during which time antitrust regulators promised to leave companies alone as they formed monopolies, provided they didn't hike price after attaining monopoly dominance."
No, Cory, that's not what happened and there was no "promise." The new theory of anti-trust was "consumer harm." Hiking prices is certainly one form of that, but so was forming a monopoly. Microsoft was prosecuted for forming a monopoly and reducing consumer choices.
"Google's true operating costs aren't captured by adding up its salaries and servers – a correct accounting must include the costs of acquiring companies and with them, patents. That's the cost Google must incur, if is to retain its power."
No, Cory, those are not "operating costs," those are called "capital costs." They're treated real differently in Accounting.
I was part of this "acquire patents" effort at Google. I actually interviewed people to be in Legal whose job would be to acquire patents. The theory (since discarded) was that a heavy patent portfolio would give you a better negotiating position if you were sued. There was no thought of actually asserting these patents against Microsoft, or anyone.
I actually used some of our internal tools to assess our patent portfolio. Most of those Motorola patents were worthless.
Interesting! Can you expand on this topic? Does/has the strategy work?
The main problem with this strategy is patent trolls. Some company that doesn't make anything buys up some broad patents. Then there is nothing you can sue them over because they don't make anything so the strategy doesn't work.
It also makes the whole concept of software patents pretty useless, because the "defensive patents" could equally be used to counter anyone who tries to sue you for violating a "legitimate" patent. So the whole system becomes a bludgeon for larger companies to use against smaller companies, because they have more patents, even if most of them are low quality, which means they can tie up anyone who actually makes anything in court indefinitely.
As for big companies suing smaller ones: citations (in the mobile space), please?
It is within a space of possibilities but a sustained lack of evidence decreases the probability of it being so as numbers increase. It is possible that a given person drove drunk without being caught. But if they drove drunk everyday throughout many different towns and villages? Less likely.
Also, how many times does this have to happen before it's a problem? Maybe it's not thousands of times. If it happens each of the small number of times that someone would otherwise have the opportunity to unseat a monopoly, that's still really bad.
Doesn't it kind of prove part of the argument?
Google apparently felt threatened by patents, enough so to acquire "second strike capabilities" as deterrence.
Seems to me Google though patents aggressive tools with the purpose to hurt other companies or threatening to do so (though defensively in this case).
I am really interested in the "since discarded" part, if someone can recommend some reading.
I'm curious: Have you heard of the state's "monopoly on violence" before? It comes up a lot in political theory discussions, and it applies to this attempted rebuttal by analogy.
Cory is a well networked, fairly thorough, informed blogger. He participates in all sorts of panels on topics of regulation, listens to a wide amount of voices. His views typically reflect & meet with a wide variety of other expert opinions.
It's really unfortunate that such easy, cheap character assassination is being done against someone who has spoken so well, with such unvarnished genuine interest & care for what technology can be in this world.
Disclaimer: I work at Google, and I'm used to keeping things polite when the workforce here is attacked on the forum. So not sure why the reverse can't also be true.
Especially in light of stuff like "Google training documents advise avoiding monopoly language": https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/7/21358441/google-alphabet-t...
The literature says that in mature markets, the major players all have cross-licensing agreements sharing their giant patent portfolios, shutting out the minor players. They form an oligarchy, in other words.
I may be a few years behind, having been retired for a few years, but I don't think this has actually happened. It's possible that Google and Apple and Microsoft really do have cross-licenses now, but I kinda doubt it. It would be too complicated to negotiate. What they have is mutually assured destruction.
> No, Cory, that's not what happened and there was no "promise."
Borkism's "consumer harm" theory has, in almost all cases, been centered around hiking prices. Given the lack of interference we've seen for the past 40 years, whether or not there was this "promise" seems moot: there has been a pathetically low level of anti-trust enforcement. Whether promised or not, there has certainly been a delivery.
That you can cite a single 20 year old Microsoft case does little to convince me that there is efficient & active anti-trust regulation. It was a pretty heinous act, by Microsoft, at a time when there was only one mainstream consumer OS. But now that there's two OSes, there's no need for anti-trust, seemingly, and Apple is allowed to engage in far far far worse behaviors on iOS with regards to only permitting Safari technology to run, hampering the web. Social media companies have faced no scrutiny in their bonanza of competitor purchasing. The semiconductor market has undergone a radical vast wave of consolidation, again, seemingly entirely unchecked. Whatever the new Robert Bork "consumer harm" standard might grant it license to regulate, it certainly doesn't seem to be doing much. Proving those harms is much harder & more specific a task than what came before, and has, imo, been enormously clearly for the worse, as Cory continues to rightly argue.
> No, Cory, those are not "operating costs,"
The entire basis of this post is that the accounting doesn't reflect the truth of the matter. The accounting of acquisitions as a one time capital costs isn't really genuine or fair, when a constant ongoing stream of acquisitions is required to maintain the power & position of dominance. The dominant player has to keep feeding the meter to continue operating from a position of power. Each of those may be a one time cost, but the macro behavior is that this is not so different than the grid hookup keeping the data-centers running. It sustains the dominance of the entity. It's an operating cost, the cost of staying where they are.
Your point about patents is entirely besides the point. This isn't about companies using courts to try to destroy one another- something we haven't ever really seen at scale in the modern world. This is about Saturn Eating His Son. This is about the gigantic titaneous overlords of the planet insuring nothing new ever happens, preventing disruption. By acquiring all freshness & devouring it, bodily.
OK, do you want some more? How about [1]?
If your point is that the tech giants have not faced enough anti-trust litigation: you'd have to define "enough" as "sufficient to break them up." Because they're still here.
The EU has been all over them, and almost every state AG is joining in an anti-trust suit against them. Congress investigates them every week, and we might eventually see some legislation. Democracy is slow. But yeah, more is better.
Your last two paragraphs rely on a false premise: "a constant ongoing stream of acquisitions." If there are acquisitions going on, it's not for patents -- it's to eliminate competitors. That's not a defect of IP laws; it's a matter for legislation and anti-trust action. Which I support.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/151-0065/s...
This is particularly important when your view of the underlying issue is actually correct, because if you post like this about it, you end up discrediting not only yourself but also the truth [1], and that hurts everybody. We're really trying to avoid that sort of internet dynamic here.
I certainly appreciate that you have inside knowledge about this topic and are willing to share it with us! That part is great. I also understand (believe me) the frustration that comes up when people make glib claims about a situation they don't have first-hand knowledge of. But if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
I'm guessing he's aware that's how things work currently; it sounded to me like he was arguing that it shouldn't work that way, although I don't know if he literally believes that accounting practices should change or if that was more just for rhetorical effect.
The Bork view on anti-trust definitely has favored these companies, and Apple and Google can absolutely be accused of having and using monopoly power to keep competitors out. Google pays to be the default search engine on iOS (keeping competitors out), and Apple denies fair platform access to software it thinks has a chance at competing with it's ecosystem (Tile, etc..). Amazon and Facebook can be accused of this pretty easily too (restricting 3rd party sellers, restricting API access respectively).
The law[1] is pretty clear on this, but bills exactly like [2] and [3] would clear it up more, which I believe Cory Doctrow supports, at least from reading his Twitter.
[0] https://openinventionnetwork.com/
[1] https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...
[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3825...
[3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3816...
As for the Bork view: all those things you mentioned are "consumer harm" and are not protected. It would be a lot more fruitful to look at the lobbyist spending by the tech giants, and the Astroturf "studies" they fund.
I hope the current lawsuits against these companies over the exactly the things I mentioned should be easily decided then, and we won't need the bills I linked.
There is no credible economic theory of firm “power seeking”. What’s more, you don’t need such a theory to explain what’s going on here.
If you want to explain why Google paid so much for Motorola, you can do so via the various defects in intellectual property law.
All large firms are at least occasionally involved in patent litigation, frequently with patent trolls (though sometimes with large competitors too). This is familiar enough to everyone on this site. For Google this was a defensive acquisition, but a defense against frivolous litigation. There is no need to invent some theory of firm “power seeking” to make the case.
https://capitalaspower.com/
How is the theory of market power combined with everything else we know not that? [1] It seems obviously in the firms interest even if their primary motive were still profit since it ensures increased rates of profit (modulo risk of a regulatory smackdown.)
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34397551-the-chickenshit...
Indeed, I said I thought he was ignorant of economics in part bc he brought up this weird “capital as power” thing which has nothing to do (AFAICT) with actual market power as we understand it.
Furthermore, in this particular case I think you get a much better, more direct explanation of Google’s behavior vis-a-vis its acquisition of Motorola via intellectual property and patent litigation than via market power, let alone via “capital as power”.
1. https://capitalaspower.com/about/
2. https://iep.utm.edu/polreal/
If everyone in a village economy is capable of growing their own food on the side for about the equivalent of say $15/bushel averaged out but you have the specialization, mechanization to grow it for $1/bushel margins. Even if you wind up the only one growing food others still have their fields.
If we call increasing efficiency "power seeking" then the term has lost any and all meaning and only serves to confuse and make the most mundane actions sinister by interpreting them in the most conspiratorial light. If you drink commodity coffee in the morning you actively to exploit the rural poor, if you go with more expensive fair trade coffee you are engaged in conspicious consumption of veblem goods while people starve, and if you just drink water you are trying to starve the rural poor.
We don't call increasing efficiency "power seeking." Yes, I think many anti-capitalists would respond to that by saying that "there is no ethical consumption in capitalism" and that these problems cannot be solved by consumer choices.
Sure, but simply calling an acquisition like the one discussed in the article "increasing efficiency" interprets it the best possible light, which seems equally in need justification.
Yes, boys and girls, "power" is sometimes a motivator. There are other ones, though. Maybe read a few more books.
He discusses his view of economics in this twitter thread here:
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1450136949327425537?s=20
- First of all, I have no interest in or patience for Ayn Rand. I don't know any economists who take her remotely seriously. All of the American economists I know are on the left politically. So are most of the non-American economists I know. There are, of course, prominent exceptions to the rule.
- I don't know why we are accused of having no theory of prices? I teach that in week 2 of my principles of microeconomics class. I don't teach inflation b/c I don't teach macro, but they do have theories.
- We don't assume people have perfect information, with the possible exception of using it as a very simple benchmark case on our way to something more complicated and realistic. Incomplete/imperfect information has been a central feature of all theoretical and empirical work in the profession for more than 40 years now.
- He shares a post about concentration in meatpacking. I agree that we have allowed many markets to become too concentrated, including meatpacking! I am in favor of stronger antitrust enforcement! My entire sub-field is empirical studies of imperfectly competitive industries.
- Skipping several tweets (there is really too much here to argue with every point...) we have talked about the CORE textbook in my department. Most of us put it on our syllabi. It is free, after all. As a comment on Doctorow's take: every Principles textbook mentions the environment because every Principles textbook talks about externalities. I spend a week on the subject.
Again, I confirm my impression that he doesn't know anything about economics or competition policy, but studying it more seriously would be to his benefit, especially in commenting on technology and regulation issues.
"What the market will bear." is a nonanswer to them even though it is accurate because reality is messy with human psychology more so.
Of course from mainstream economics perspective their concepts of value and exploitation are between fallacious (universal global value because labor is assumed as the basis) to pants-on-head levels of crazy (the idea that a fair trasaction becomes unfair when the buyer is able to reap later profit).
They buy a patent which looks good, i.e. applies broadly, hasn't been litigated unsuccessfully, has a few more years to run, ideally has been tested by an unsuccessful IPR. The whole goal is to make back the investment in a few years. Contrary to what someone said, there is not an infinite supply of those.
Then they pick out easy targets to sue, i.e. companies which just settle without much fuss. Those settlements don't have to be for large amounts, and typically are not.
I should correct the word "sue." Often there is no lawsuit. If a defendant is formally notified that they might be sued, they can seek a Declarative Judgment (DJ) in a friendly venue, which affirms that they're not infringing. The troll does not want to be DJ'ed. So they just threaten without really threatening ("hey, you might want to take a look at this patent!").
Those easy targets build up a war chest, which the troll then uses to go after the bigger and harder targets. These are companies that will fight back, often with an IPR.
So the moral is: make yourself a hard target. Never roll over for those people.