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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?

#121

Post by [deleted] »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #104
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, y…

[deleted]

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

#122

Post by mothers »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #104
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, y…

Suppose there was an organization, "Creation", that did mass surveillance on everyone on the planet. They don't disclose what they do with this data.

Let's say as a result of Creation's sharing of this data with local governments, crime is nonexistent.

Based on only what we've said is that a good or bad deal? Also, all of your examples were either purchased or have alternatives, so, yeah.

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

#123

Post by TulliusCicero »

Eridrus wrote: post #112
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…

It's not really obvious that we should prefer small companies to large companies.

Notably, it's potentially easier to hold large companies to account compared to a bunch of small ones equivalent in total size.

For example, bad news about Uber discourages people using Uber all over the world. Bad news about some taxi's behavior only discourages using taxis (or a particular taxi provider) for that one city, usually.

In other words, large companies are more susceptible to reputational threat, which is is why, for example, they tend to be more careful about what their employees say online. If an employee of a random 10-man startup says something racist online, that's nowhere near as big of a deal as if an identified Googler says something really racist online.

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

#124

Post by jorvi »

devuo wrote: post #80
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.

But people do in fact make their own small investments when they opt for one provider of a service or the other. For a multi billion dollar infrastructure project, your capacity to contribute with either 50K or 50$ would still amount to less than a drop in a bucket. For a massive multi billion infrastructure project to succeed it would still rely on either a state actor or a very large number of investors, or, as is…

Not only that, if you (only) have a large number of small investors, there will often be a lot of conflicting ideologies and interests, sometimes diametrically opposed. Hard for a company to have any long-term direction that way.

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

#125

Post by TulliusCicero »

seattle_spring wrote: post #98

From the perspective of a software engineer, I would also say "yes." It's frustrating that 80% of the available positions, even in a tech center like Seattle, are at the huge mega-corporations.

IIRC Seattle actually has an unusually lopsided ratio in terms of megacorp openings vs startup openings, I think it's substantially better in SF/SV, NYC, and Boston.

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

#126

Post by paglia_s »

Asdfbla wrote: post #88

I'm surprised the EU hasn't acted against Google already. Remember when they (rightfully) went after Microsoft and forced them to offer a browser choice? And that wasn't even the peak of the Internet Explorer monopoly. And yet it's allowed that like 80% smartphones sold in Europe come with Android versions that basically lock the user into the Google ecosystem, else you can't use the default store.

It looks like a multibilion fine for Google is coming http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/google-eu-fi...

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

#127

Post by samstave »

devuo wrote: post #105
akjetma wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just stream of thought here:

Why don't we have a "government YC" (yeah, I don't mean DARPA-like, or the other mechanisms for finding funding from the government, which requires way too much navigation f bureaucratic paper-work and hoop-jumping) - an office of the government that can allow any individual to apply for seed funding for ANY idea in ANY industry that they can see through - make the process nimble and quick. Ensure that there is infrastructure/systems to allow for accurate tracking and reporting on the spend of monies given - think an EDD card that the startup entity gets and all expenses are tracked via the transactions on the card. Integrate it with banks and other private and public sector services with credits, like compute credits from amzn/goog etc... tax services, payroll etc...

And when you apply - it effectively sets-up an individual LLC in your name as the defacto entity to track your startups progress with giving you an EIN etc...

Heck, this should be a simple thing to architect if everyone in the business/startup world were truly supportive of, and willing to actually be, the "innovation" unicorn they all claim to be.

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

#128

Post by jrnichols »

Apple & Amazon and the others, probably not. They have their own markets and they're just doing well in them. Google might be a little different in that what they've done in some areas affects so many others, especially in small business communications and now into education. I'm just thinking about how kids are unaware that there is even another email provider out there because all they know is Gmail. To me, that's where things have tipped over into "kind of a problem." The Googleverse is massive, and we don't even know how much data they've collected.

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

#129

Post by 43224gg252 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #104
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, y…

>gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze

I think there are alternatives for all of those, many open source.

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

#130

Post by TulliusCicero »

mothers wrote: post #122
TulliusCicero wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, y…

Suppose there was an organization, "Creation", that did mass surveillance on everyone on the planet. They don't disclose what they do with this data. Let's say as a result of Creation's sharing of this data with local governments, crime is nonexistent. Based on only what we've said is that a good or bad deal? Also, all of your examples were either purchased or have alternatives, so, yeah.

I wouldn't evaluate it on those terms. Whether the ends justify the means depends on the specifics of the means.

Not all bad means are equally bad. E.g. Taxes are a necessary evil that we accept, but we don't, as a general rule, let agents of the government just take whatever they want (hence the recent controversy over civil forfeiture).

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