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Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

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Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#51

Post by kauffj »

supremesaboteur wrote: post #29
wildmusings wrote: post #7

I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated. Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users. Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in partic…

> Microsoft's wins are hard fought and fair Was giving Internet Explorer away for free along with Windows and bankrupting Netscape fair ?

Yes.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#52

Post by lisper »

virmundi wrote: post #42
lisper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but it's not clear which way the causality runs. If wealth were more evenly distributed, ordinary people could pool their resources to make the same investments. They can't do that now because they have no disposable income to invest.

At that point the pool is mirroring a large corp. while it's still in the small so to speak, it has the same ends and reaction to the same stimulus

With the major difference that the ultimate decision-making power would be more widely distributed.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#53

Post by jondubois »

lisper wrote: post #38
devuo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, only very large companies are able to make a certain class of investments in infrastructure and services — that push technology and society forward as a whole — that small to mid companies due to lack of capacity never could, and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would.

That's true, but it's not clear which way the causality runs. If wealth were more evenly distributed, ordinary people could pool their resources to make the same investments. They can't do that now because they have no disposable income to invest.

True, and startups seem to be where most of the innovation is happening right now. I think universities (and the Internet) do a pretty good job when it comes sharing the deep domain knowledge required to innovate.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#55

Post by wayn3 »

weirdstuff wrote: post #49
friedman23 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have any evidence that your suggestions will actually improve the consumer experience or are you just suggesting killing businesses because of a gut feeling and some anti corporate sentiment? >If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to mirror the economies within these large corporations. None of these companies can be said to be monopolies. > We will gradually lose freedom of…

To my mind, something as subjective as consumer experience is difficult to objectively measure. I'm not sure what would count as valid evidence.

i believe that happy customers would count as valid evidence.

when i use google or amazon, im usually pretty happy with the service they provide.

when i have to stand at a walmart cashier for half an hour while the lady has to yell for the manager because she needs to issue a $1.20 refund, im not as happy.

when I have to go to the library of alexandria to find a piece of infomration that im looking for but then they tell me that it burned down 2000 odd years ago, im not as happy.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#56

Post by eh78ssxv2f »

tyingq wrote: post #5

Feels like it's getting worse too. For example, things like Google Home and Alexa discourage choice. "Order me a pizza" means they are now either kingmakers in the space, or incented to open their own pizza business. I'm not a fan of big government, but at some point depending solely on their goodwill seems dangerous.

Right, but what if I want Google Home or Alexa to make the decision for me because it can make more informed decision than me. Assuming, Alexa/Google has the pertinent information such as user reviews and has approximate data on how many people visit the store.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#57

Post by virmundi »

lisper wrote: post #52
virmundi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point the pool is mirroring a large corp. while it's still in the small so to speak, it has the same ends and reaction to the same stimulus

With the major difference that the ultimate decision-making power would be more widely distributed.

Maybe. Depends if they set themselves up as a co-op. They could instead essentially start as a highly focused VC. At that point the control will probably rest in the hands of the board and management.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#58

Post by gramstrong »

jondubois wrote: post #14

I agree they should be regulated. The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy. If you were to analyze Facebook as if it were a country, the wealth gap among employees would be atrocious - The top 1% would own maybe 99% of the wealth of the country and everyone else would earn a minuscule fraction of the total value t…

You've made a lot of claims. Do you have any evidence to support these:

- Facebook's 1% owning 99% of its wealth

- The economy of nation states mirrors that of its corporations (and not the other way around)

- Social environments of corporations somehow influence the general public

There are many reasons why mega-corporations are bad, and I personally don't think these are them.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#59

Post by scarface74 »

supremesaboteur wrote: post #29
wildmusings wrote: post #7

I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated. Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users. Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in partic…

> Microsoft's wins are hard fought and fair Was giving Internet Explorer away for free along with Windows and bankrupting Netscape fair ?

I think you have rose colored glasses on about Netscape around the time that IE was given away for free. I remember an article that came out in the late 90s comparing how badly NS crashed on every platform that it ran on.

Why is it anti competitive for MS to give away IE for free but not anticompetitive for Google to give away Chrome and Android for free or Apple to give away IOS/MacOS for "free". Every tech company "commoditizes their complements". IBM supports free operative systems to sell hardware and services, Apple gives away IOS updates to sell hardware, Google gives everything away for free to sell ads, etc.

Is it also wrong for open source software to be free?

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#60

Post by friedman23 »

weirdstuff wrote: post #49
friedman23 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have any evidence that your suggestions will actually improve the consumer experience or are you just suggesting killing businesses because of a gut feeling and some anti corporate sentiment? >If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to mirror the economies within these large corporations. None of these companies can be said to be monopolies. > We will gradually lose freedom of…

To my mind, something as subjective as consumer experience is difficult to objectively measure. I'm not sure what would count as valid evidence.

We can't measure it perfectly but there exist statistics that we can at least say approximate it. One of which is price and currently there are price wars occurring all the time between the tech giants.
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