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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?

#191

Post by devuo »

anigbrowl wrote: post #156
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.

governments due to lack of vision and political will never would Yes, remember that time General Motors sent humans to the moon?

Be fair, we're no longer living in the 60's, and as we all know the impetus to reach "the stars" was driven by as much as national pride as well as show of force and muscle flexing to the rest of the world. I concur that the state has been massively important in terms of research and investment from the 50's to the 90's that enabled most of what we're enjoying today, but if the past 10-20 years are anything to go by, the paradigm has shifted from state driven innovation to private driven innovation.

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

#192

Post by kbwt »

friedman23 wrote: post #153
0x737368 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we assume that allowing Google to exist as a monopoly does bring better services, that's a small price to pay for not having to be subjugated by a conglomerate. Countries can already barely withstand pressure from big companies, by allowing them grow even further everything would just turn in a way that would allow such companies to make even more money, whilst increasing the gap between the rich and the poor…

> Even if we assume that allowing Google to exist as a monopoly does bring better services How is google even a monopoly? Bing exists, yahoo still exists. In Asia Google isn't even the most popular search engine. Want me to show you how google is not a monopoly? A company with monopoly power would be able to raise the price of its service to the price the market can bear . If google put search behind a pay wall, Bing…

> A company with monopoly power would be able to raise the price of its service to the price the market can bear.

The 30% share Google takes from sales of Android applications is completely arbitrary and they could probably even increase it further without suffering any consequences beyond negative PR.

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

#193

Post by weirdstuff »

friedman23 wrote: post #133
weirdstuff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? This needs a citation, as well. This is assuming Google hasn't starved out potential competitors who would have provided the same service, or better service, had…

Congrats on your degree in econ. You would think that someone with a degree in econ would believe it wise to first establish what the negative externalities are and what externalities regulating away the existence of large business would produce before defending the idea of doing so. We already know that with the existence of Google we get free products like search, mail, video, etc. Do you have evidence that when we…

Oh, I take that into account. There's only so much time/effort I can put into HN comments! But there is a lot more to consider besides what I wrote.

> Congrats on your degree in econ.

Thanks.

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

#194

Post by lumost »

friedman23 wrote: post #131
rdlecler1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google doesn't have an effective monopoly then I don't think I understand the word. The only search engine relavant to my search results is Google and I don't here to many people talking about optimizing their SEO for bing.

Google is not a search company they are an advertising company. Their search product is a value add, it is the reason people go to google but it is also not what they sell. A business with a monopoly can raise the cost of their product to the price the market can bear. Google cannot raise the cost of their ads because advertisers will simply go to other ad platforms. TLDR: Google is selling space on its website for a…

While Google monetizes its core web properties such as google, gmail, and youtube via a closed advertising system. That doesn't mean the worth of the company is held in AdWords. If Google decided to shutter AdWords and use a third party the third party would still need to pay billions per year for exclusivity.

However, Google does leverage their ad business into non-google properties via vertical integration eg. I can buy ads on CNN via AdWords but I can't buy ads on Google search from DataXu or other DSPs.

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

#195

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #33
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 No, they were unfairly fought. Don't let the fact that it is your former employer cloud your vision. Not many companies have such a sordid history of unfair competition as Microsoft does.

I'm sorry but I laughed. Amazon and Google are doing things today as we speak that are as sordid as anything Microsoft has done. The warehouse conditions and pressure cooker culture at Amazon have been repeatedly reported to be appalling and Google's planned Chrome ad blocker and compensation scheme is outright abuse of their dominance in search and ads.

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

#196

Post by oneshot908 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #189
oneshot908 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO breaking up Google or Amazon makes as much sense as breaking up a tumor in the body without removing any of its cells and declaring victory. Go ahead, make some arbitrary cuts between Amazon, Lab 126 and AWS. Or go split Google into Android, Search and Cloud. That's a huge buying opportunity in both cases IMO. But if you really want to talk about a current monopoly in the valley, look no further than NVIDIA's 100…

The thing is, there's a lot of us who don't want to join the 1% in the valley. We don't want to join these parasitic companies which are turning the industry into a boring clone-the-other-big-co greedfest. So for a lot of us, just work hard and join the crowd isn't really a solution. Not to mention, if you find Trump a true threat, please realize he is a threat made possible through the echo chambers of SV tech, whic…

So GTFO of Silicon Valley then? The place is feeding on itself at this point IMO and I'm just about ready to leave myself because happiness > $$$$$$$ past a point. See also my libertarian friends who live in SF, constantly kvetching about the politics, but who all refuse to live somewhere else.

Meanwhile, Austin's nice and it's still affordable on a moderate six-figure income. Not to mention the relatively undiscovered gem of Portland and its fantastic food truck culture. Then there's the option of going abroad. It's a big world out there. Don't limit your options.

Overall point: don't fight the herd, you will lose, go start your own instead.

Finally, I don't blame Facebook or Google for Trump in any way whatsoever. I blame the overarching intellectual incuriosity of most of the American people for that one, independent of party affiliation.

Biased evidence: I grew up denied access to advanced math and science courses because I was pegged as someone with ADHD and potentially mildly retarded by the same sort of idiots who elected Emperor Orange. This was because I displayed near OCD w/r to writing code from the age of 6 and little interest in anything not relevant to that task.

That inclination was discouraged by my school system all the way to college whereupon it suddenly became useful and the rest is profitable history.

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

#197

Post by home_boi »

0x737368 wrote: post #152
crowbahr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But none work together so seamlessly. I'm with that guy: the ease of life is amazing with Google. I'll buy movie tickets online then get an alert about driving conditions and when I need to leave to arrive on time. That's something your open source maps program can't do because it doesn't have access to my email. And if it did I wouldn't use it because it'd be sitting there combing my email constantly which isn't eff…

But you need to consider the amount of data Google is amassing from people using solely their services. And then sells that data to advertisers. If this trend continues eventually they'd be able to know more about you than even the closest of your friends. Is this really such a great price to pay for your privacy? For it to be easier to look up your friend's phone number from your email list?

Data selling from big tech companies is the least of your worries tbh. It's all presented in aggregate form and protected very well. It isn't even really data selling, although if you want to argue semantics and model it as such, it would be data selling limited in scope in that the only action an advertiser can use the data for is presenting you with an ad.

It's the financial industry that you have to worry about. The finance industry has atrocious security and access to very personal information on you. Finance companies (your bank, credit card, etc.) sell your information to the highest bargainer with much higher privileges (physical mail and junk emails) and don't allow you to opt out.

Edit: And also the health care industry. Super personal information with archaic tech and paper thin security. Data might not be sold but the risk of bad parties gaining access to your information is high.

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

#198

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

adtac wrote: post #23
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…

I disagree. Advertising has been around since the 1800s and I don't really think it'll be going away anytime soon. And besides, Google is diversifying its portfolio these days anyway (GCP, Google Home, Waymo, and tons of moonshots).

Actually, Google's diversification efforts haven't amounted to much. There was an interesting article recently that compares the revenue streams for the top 5 tech companies:

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-5-tech-giants-make-bil...

Interestingly, Microsoft has the most diversity in that regard.

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

#199

Post by closeparen »

lumost wrote: post #187
closeparen wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily illegal to be a monopoly, it's illegal to behave in certain anti-competitive ways. For example: - Rockefeller made deals with the railroads that shipped Standard Oil to charge higher prices to other prospective oil shippers. - Rockefeller bought any competitor that was undercutting him and raised its prices so it stopped being a threat. - "Competing" firms met and drew up an agreement that neithe…

Carnegie wasn't involved in Standard Oil that was John D. Rockefeller's company.

Thanks, corrected. Get my robber barons mixed up sometimes.

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

#200

Post by bigleagueposter »

cmurf wrote: post #76

Regulating them ultimately doesn't work very well because a.) it's reactive rather than proactive, so there's regulatory lag b.) it injects politics, and political wind c.) because of a and b we get inconsistency, changes in policy, this isn't good for either consumers or employees or investors. I'm not sure what the work around is, but for sure we (Americans) do not apply anti-trust / competition law as aggressively…

Why would you want force companies to use their patents.
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