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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?

#101

Post by petra »

mstolpm wrote: post #44
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.

In general, I agree with your warning that Alexa and co. could limit choice. But is really anyone ordering just "a pizza" or "a lightning cable" by voice without further specification? Isn't customer satisfaction key for using the assistant in the future again? If using a virtual assistant for ordering, I'd instruct Alexa (or Google or Siri) to order a specific pizza in a specific size from a specific pizza delivery.…

People choose defaults even when they can change them, even for important products, like a maps app.

So for household commodities ? sure they'll choose the defaults.

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

#102

Post by jfoutz »

devuo wrote: post #35
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…

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.

Not quite sure i follow. Do you mean like self driving cars, neural networks, mapping the human genome, or perhaps the internet?

I guess IC's might be a good example, but the air force was really the only buyer that could afford them.

I dunno, maybe we're moving to a new model. the 20th century way seemed to be to pour massive amounts of money into research at universities, then commercialize whatever whatever happened to work out.

Corporations do interesting work, but they're sooooo resistant to change, it seems like their inventions always die on the vine. Kodak digital cameras for example.

Are you thinking google would be willing to risk their ad revenue for a cool new tech? Or microsoft their os/office money? or apple and phones? etc.

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

#103

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

winstonewert wrote: post #97
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #92

I'm not usually very pro corporate taxes. I think (with some caveats) that it is generally better to tax the owners of businesses than the businesses themselves. However, in order to counter the unfair advantages of overly large companies and promote competition (in tech, in finance or elsewhere) wouldn't it make sense to make corporate taxes slightly progressive where the larger a business is (by revenues), the high…

As with all progressive taxation schemes, it tends to have problems because those people who you are trying to tax more heavily have the best resources to restructure their affairs to avoid the taxation.

But that's true of any tax. I don't think it is specific to progressive ones. To me, the fact that larger entities are better at avoiding paying part of their taxes is an additional argument to make them start at a higher rate.

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

#104

Post by TulliusCicero »

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…

Disclaimer: I work at Google

> The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies.

[citation needed]

A lot of things Google does -- a lot of the things people actually like about Google -- are possible only because it's a huge monolith. Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze, where do you think the money for this stuff all comes from?

Of course, if you're one of the uber technerds that thinks that Google is unabashedly evil and Linux is going to take over the desktop any day now, that probably sounds great to you. I just think the average consumer would have a different take on it.

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

#105

Post by devuo »

akjetma wrote: post #94
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.

it's not 'lack of vision and political will' that stymies government initiatives--that's some TED talk bs. and i shudder to think that we're necessarily dependent on the benevolence and 'vision' of large companies to drive society forward.

Then what does? Most of the innovation we have witnessed and enjoy in our society for the past 20-30 years has not been driven by governmental money or agencies but by private money.

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

#106

Post by 2_listerine_pls »

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…

Also, an increasing amount of people does not tolerate critizism against their beloved Zuckerberg, Bill gates, etc... :

How you dare criticize him when he is bringing free internet to Africa?

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

#107

Post by dgudkov »

hjnilsson wrote: post #85
mstolpm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, I agree with your warning that Alexa and co. could limit choice. But is really anyone ordering just "a pizza" or "a lightning cable" by voice without further specification? Isn't customer satisfaction key for using the assistant in the future again? If using a virtual assistant for ordering, I'd instruct Alexa (or Google or Siri) to order a specific pizza in a specific size from a specific pizza delivery.…

But Alexa extracting a 5-10% (or even 30%) fee on all pizza places through that access definitely hurts all pizza businesses, anywhere. And those that opt out will miss that business.

How is it definitely? It may hurt or may not. Credit card systems also charge a commission and yet every pizza place prefers to pay it rather than accept only cash, because of the benefits credit cards provide.

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

#108

Post by yellow_postit »

eh78ssxv2f wrote: post #56
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.

"AI" bots offering marketplace auctions for fulfillment on things like "order a pizza", "call a car", etc. is the next field in advertising. I'm sure it will lead to lots of money, not sure it will make the world a better place or how much it will further entrench the dominant players.

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

#109

Post by jimmywanger »

dastbe wrote: post #91
jimmywanger wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's called the stock market. You buy a share and you get a vote.

facebook class B shares (the ones that Zuckerberg and other company insiders own) has 10x the voting rights of class A shares which you or I can own. They plan to issue new class C stock that will have no voting rights. this is the same structure in place for alphabet. So it's not nearly as simple as you make it sound.

You can still buy alphabet shares with voting rights, they trade at a ~3% premium. (GOOG vs GOOGL)

Facebook is a different case, but in the examples prominently mentioned in the article, Google and Amazon are featured and they both give voting rights to stockholders, as does Microsoft.

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