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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?

#241

Post by closeparen »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #231
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…

- Google bought out it's only competitor to Google Wallet at the time (Softcard) and shut it down. - Google just announced that it'll block competitors' ads on it's web browser by default. And charge people who use other ad blockers money. - Google has a secret agreement with every mobile device manufacturer not named Apple to use their product on their terms, and seek their permission for all device releases. And se…

- Trying to own the mobile wallet space is mildly interesting, but only mildly, since there are so many offerings now.

- Do you have reason to believe that Android licensing stifles competition or hurts the consumer in any way? We see Android licensees put out phones with other OSes, though they're not popular and quickly die off. We see carriers that carry Android phones carry others.

- Getting dominance over the browser space and then using it to reinforce its dominance in advertising is probably a compelling antitrust case, and frankly I have no idea how their lawyers didn't tell them so.

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

#242

Post by zanny »

pmoriarty wrote: post #232
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…

"This is assuming Google hasn't starved out potential competitors who would have provided the same service, or better service, had the playing field been more level." There are alternatives to many of these already. Firefox (and other browsers) for Chrome, Openstreetmap for maps. Vimeo for youtube. Flickr for photos. Dropbox for drive. Never heard of waze, so don't know what's an alternative for that, but I would be…

Waze is basically Google maps with a Skinner Box on top to make you contribute data to it for points and gold stars.

Since Google bought them, they canibalized the crowdsourced data for Maps anyway, and have never updated the Waze UI so it looks like a Fisher Price toy today. There is really no reason to use it over Google Maps.

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

#243

Post by redm »

When I look at these monoliths, I can't help but think about the fabled Sci-Fi Mega Corporations of the future that seem to be anything other than positive. [1] [2] [3]

There are of course real life examples from the past.. [4][5][6]

[1] http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Umbrella_Corporation

[2] http://alienfilmspedia.wikia.com/wiki/Weyland-Yutani

[3] http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Tyrell_Corporation

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

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

#244

Post by joshuamorton »

0x737368 wrote: post #222
joshuamorton wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just curious, what data do you believe google gives to advertisers? I work at google, and I see this trope on HN a lot, and I always like to see what data people think is given away, since a lot of the time they seem to be under the impression that either Google's privacy policy is different than it actually is, or that Google's privacy policy isn't actually something that Google follows, or that it doesn't prote…

Alright, let's say that I have a general mistrust of corporations just because from some modest reading of history I know that if someone has power they'll abuse it for their own interest. So my opinions about Google and others are admittedly influenced by that. It has happened before - all it takes is for someone who stands to profit from a law to make it happen, and then suddenly it's the status quo and everyone's…

So, I asked you for examples of Google (or Facebook) sharing your information with third parties. While I agree that Facebook's practice of advertising via "Josh liked XYZ product" is not something I want, it is not an example of facebook sharing your data with advertisers. That happens entirely within the facebook platform.

I think its a misleading way to present the information, but its not sharing any information (your likes) with anyone who didn't already have access to that information (your friends).

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

#245

Post by zanny »

Navarr wrote: post #145
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…

Open source could work together flawlessly like that, but it'd need open, standard protocols to do so - and an adherance to them. A closed system just makes it easier for someone to do - because they don't have to care about any standard protocols and can hack together whatever they want and everyone will just deal with it. I'm not really arguing against you - but I think it's important to note that what we have is p…

It has always bugged me how desktop Linux has never developed a "share" feature akin to what Android has - URIs and URLs that get indexed against a database of services to handle them, then presented to the user as consumers of the data.

There have been a lot of attempts at dbus-based services to advertise or invoke other processes for various tasks but it never became as pervasive as share buttons and never had the UX.

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

#246

Post by jimmywanger »

pikzen wrote: post #228
jimmywanger wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every country that has a functioning democracy that money is not speech. You missed a verb. And in case you missed it, every democracy has elections, and in that case, money is equivalent to speech. Good luck in getting airtime/a platform without paying money. > Have more money than someone else? Well, tough shit, your vote shouldn't be worth more. In a company, that's absolutely not the case. Taken to the logical…

>You missed a verb. As if I such a thing. Thanks. >Good luck in getting airtime/a platform without paying money. Funnily enough, I was talking about that in a previous HN thread. You'll have to explain to me how my country (France) functions then, giving equal air time to candidates, no matter their size, or funds. We even have communists! The state pays part of the campaign, and to give you an idea, the 2012 campaig…

> You'll have to explain to me how my country (France) functions then, giving equal air time to candidates, no matter their size, or funds

Is this article true? https://www.thelocal.fr/20170309/rules-of-the-game-what-rule...

In that case, you'll have to get 500 signatures of elected officials. That seems even more chilling, because then you're on record for having supported a candidate, and if you're backing the wrong horse, there should be repercussions.

Also, it seems that now your airtime is proportional based on your performance in the last polls and election.

> Let's also take a more reasonable amount of shares for a major shareholder, such as 40%.

That is not more reasonable. Major shareholders for most large public company (pension funds etc) have percentages of the company in the low single digits.. Here's GM for example. http://investors.morningstar.com/ownership/shareholders-majo...

Most tech companies are relative newcomers and outliers. And they also seem to be outperforming older companies in the market. Perhaps centralization of control based on money and equity has its upsides?

> If that shareholder decides that he wants to submit to a vote taking all that you're earning through your share and redistribute it to him, should you not have the same say as a shareholder? If no, why? Because he invested more money? And that allows him to get even more money?

That's a good point, and it's addressed in "world on fire" where strict property rights and strict democracy always clash. Like it or not, most societies have a pyramidal society when it comes to power/wealth distribution. They're almost fungible - in communist societies, the powerful become wealthy and in capitalist societies, the wealthy become powerful.

The example you bring up (vote taking all that you're earning and redistribution); how is that any different from voted taxation? The vote of the masses is voting to take away the wealth of a small percentage of very wealthy people to "redistribute" the income.

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

#247

Post by Navarr »

zanny wrote: post #245
Navarr wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source could work together flawlessly like that, but it'd need open, standard protocols to do so - and an adherance to them. A closed system just makes it easier for someone to do - because they don't have to care about any standard protocols and can hack together whatever they want and everyone will just deal with it. I'm not really arguing against you - but I think it's important to note that what we have is p…

It has always bugged me how desktop Linux has never developed a "share" feature akin to what Android has - URIs and URLs that get indexed against a database of services to handle them, then presented to the user as consumers of the data. There have been a lot of attempts at dbus-based services to advertise or invoke other processes for various tasks but it never became as pervasive as share buttons and never had the…

Reminds me a lot of some attempts by google to create a JavaScript API for that sort of thing.

[1]: https://www.w3.org/TR/web-intents/ [2]: https://github.com/WICG/web-share

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

#248

Post by chinathrow »

mciancia wrote: post #47
supremesaboteur wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes.

Why? Also, that's not the view of the court within the EU antitrust case against MS.

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

#249

Post by ThePawnBreak »

cobbzilla wrote: post #233
dvt wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You wanna join the evil 1% in the valley? That's relatively easy. Learn how to code and ship working systems, especially big data and machine learning systems. That ability alone is worth high six-figures income to Google and Facebook (cue people insisting that's not the case because they don't make that kind of money). Lol what the fuck are you smoking? Making 7 figures is de facto NOT relatively easy and NOT stan…

you don't need 7 figures to join the 1%. last i heard it was around $450k/year; there are a lot of people at Apple/FB/Google/etc that make that much or more, but still far less than $1M

He said 1% in the Valley, not in the US. Also, I think it's better to compare total wealth rather than income (which can easily drop dramatically).

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

#250

Post by xherberta »

devuo wrote: post #116
lisper wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but it misses the point. Capitalism and democracy work best when there is competition. Monopolies -- both economic and political -- generally lead to bad outcomes. When ultimate decision-making power becomes too unevenly distributed, it becomes very difficult to prevent monopolies from forming.

I agree, but then that's why we have governments and why monopolies are all but outlawed in most democratic countries.

The US hasn't enforced its anti-trust legislation in over 30 years. Some link Reagan's "assault" on anti-trust to the breakage of the American job market. There's been zero net job creation in the US between 1999 and 2009, a time which also saw significant consolidation.

Small businesses drive net job growth, and they are also more innovative, producing more patents per employee than large firms.

Not to mention, smaller businesses allow more people to own capital. I'm sick of economic discussions that focus on jobs and wages - ownership is what gets people out of serfdom.

But, little guys are feeling the squeeze. "The Goliaths of today are so big and so adept at protecting their turf that they leave few niches open to exploit."

So, this isn't only about privacy, or the false perception that "big is evil." It's about economy as ecosystem. "Biodiversity" in the economy creates robustness against hard times and distributes resources in ways that allow many participants to thrive. Monocultures are extractive, and ultimately fragile.

Edit: source - http://bit.ly/2rhPiXp

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