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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?

#211

Post by l5870uoo9y »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #175
petra wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Search engines, Warehousing infra-structure, operating systems, compute clouds, marketing to achieve critical mass are pretty expensive.

Typically, isnt the largest expense for a tech company payroll? Companies like the big 5 may be anomalies because they operate a number of their own data centers

To my knowledge and you are exempt for expensive industrial equipment. Now you have a sitation where Whatsapp is more worth than a big global enterprise like Sony, but haven't required nowhere near the same amount of workers or capital.

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

#212

Post by 0x737368 »

oneshot908 wrote: post #196
aaron-lebo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 undiscover…

Nice going, man! I'm also a bit in the same boat that all I'd like to do is program, but the current education system doesn't allow one to get what they want unless they jump through hurdles.

It's nice to see someone who made it.

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

#213

Post by l5870uoo9y »

jedmeyers wrote: post #208
l5870uoo9y wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at China, they have because of their protectionist policies practically thriving clones of many big US tech company. It seems likely that the same would happened in other regions if some of Google services were blocked.

Yeah, USSR also had clones of European and US cars produced. Ask anyone who lived there whether they would prefer Lada to a Mercedes.

How about comparing Baidu and Google, Twitter and Sina Weibo or Didi Chuxing and Uber? Don't think the Chinese are underserved in this area. Besides some geopolitical considerations, why not have make it "locally" or nationally?

I am not arguing for protectionism per-se, but more out of a shared concern that wealth (including opportunity, work and power) in the broadest sense should distributed. A few companies dominating prohibit this – Apple has over $260 billions in the bank. Or Amazon having more than half of all online sales.

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

#214

Post by sausman »

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…

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

I would tend to agree. What's troubling to me is central banks pouring money into the big tech companies. How are small companies supposed to compete with a printing press?

Even if a world with lots of smaller companies serves consumers better, consumers' votes don't matter when central banks can steal their votes via a printing press and give money to the big tech companies.

http://www.reuters.com/article/swiss-snb-stocks-idUSL8N1B738...

http://www.businessinsider.com/1-trillion-in-central-bank-as...

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

#215

Post by baddox »

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 can adding the Alexa business harm the pizza place, and opting out also harm them?

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

#216

Post by rdlecler1 »

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…

You say that "a business with a monopoly can raise the cost of their product to the price the market can bear" which seems to be exactly what Google has achieved with their competitive pricing model. If they charged more then they would lose buisiness. If they charged less they'd be leaving money on the table. This leaves no room for a competitor and therefore it is a monopoly, both in theory and in practice no matter how hard you want to argue against it.

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

#217

Post by skookumchuck »

mschuster91 wrote: post #95
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.

> and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would Governments (US and Soviet) went to the moon. The Internet would not exist without massive military (i.e. government) sponsoring. But yes, when I am looking at our governments right now, it's hard to find something as progressive as this, except that marijuana is on the rise, Macron has a 50:50 women government and invited scientists from the US t…

> The Internet would not exist without massive military (i.e. government) sponsoring.

Yes, it would be called FidoNET instead.

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

#218

Post by [deleted] »

jlarocco wrote: post #181
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…

> 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? That's not true. Google is…

[deleted]

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

#219

Post by skookumchuck »

acdha wrote: post #174
paulsutter wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is making tremendous strides in AI research, they're betting the company on it.

This is the same Google which was started to commercialize the NSF-sponsored work that Larry Page and Sergei Brin did? The same one which hired many of the DARPA grand challenge winners to work on self-driving cars? The one whose AI efforts are being performed by a number of prominent researchers whose work and training was significantly supported by federal research grants? Google is great but I see them as an examp…

On the other hand, jet engines were developed by private concerns and only when flying jets were demonstrated were governments interested in it.

The idea that government funding is necessary for funding disruptive new technologies is not supported by historical evidence.

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

#220

Post by narrowrail »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #213
jedmeyers wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, USSR also had clones of European and US cars produced. Ask anyone who lived there whether they would prefer Lada to a Mercedes.

How about comparing Baidu and Google, Twitter and Sina Weibo or Didi Chuxing and Uber? Don't think the Chinese are underserved in this area. Besides some geopolitical considerations, why not have make it "locally" or nationally? I am not arguing for protectionism per-se, but more out of a shared concern that wealth (including opportunity, work and power) in the broadest sense should distributed. A few companies domin…

Wal-Mart's Q1 revenue was $117.5B vs. Amazon's $35.7B ought to put that into perspective.
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