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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?

#301

Post by 0x737368 »

joshuamorton wrote: post #293
0x737368 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google Now recommends news articles to me, it can give me reminders about upcoming events from my emails and Google gives me some personalized search features (ie. if I type "frequent flyer number" into the default google search bar, my number appears, scraped from an email years ago). Those features have a utility that I couldn't get from an application that didn't track information about me. And I think that's the…

>And I think that's the main difference between our viewpoints. Personally, I'm not ok with a company having so much information about me just for the sake of convenience. I'd rather have to write my own scripts to scrape through news feeds or just continually check blogs that I like rather than a company having all that data about me. This is a fair view to hold (I think the rest of your post goes off into slippery…

Ideally, they should be packaged in an accessible format. Sort of like how in the Linux world Ubuntu is doing pretty well with making Linux accessible even to people who are not technology-inclined.

The problem in "my perfect world" would be not that people with less technical ability won't have access to the tools, but that the tools would be less efficient(but as I've stated in another comment, a program being (F)OSS doesn't necessarily mean it's worse, sometimes quite the opposite), due to not having all that integration.

And I consider it to be a good deal. If some people don't then I'd like for it be an option for both parties to make their decisions based on pros and cons, however, the issue with monopolies/oligopolies is that too often they don't leave you a choice. They'd buy up all the small companies that have good ideas, integrate them into themselves and so on, until there's realistically no other option but to actually start using them.

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

#302

Post by jimmywanger »

pikzen wrote: post #261
jimmywanger wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wron…

>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. Yes and no. It's missing a few details. First off, elected officials that can give their suppor…

> You have to face your electors with the fact that you signed on for a particular candidate, but this is almost universally seen as part of the regular flow of our elections, and very little as partisanship

To the electors perhaps, but aren't there unspoken repercussions from party leadership on not toeing the line? Also, if a particular party/ideology controls the media, it's very easy to enforce conformity with the party line.

> But I prefer that to a single person having the voting power of many.

You're fundamentally going to have that anyways. No matter what, if you have power/money, you're able to influence great quantities of the electorate by throwing around that power.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-idUSBRE...

If the ruling party/entrenched elite is able to influence the elctorate like that, the tyranny of the majority is absolutely terrible. Sure, TVs were really cheap for a few days, but now no TVs are ever imported again.

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

#303

Post by usaphp »

quadrangle wrote: post #278
usaphp wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people could still look up the restaurant directory and learn about the options. Then you will have premium listings in the directory. Businesses will always try to increase their revenue and advertising is and will be a tempting option for them.

Yeah, but maybe you missed my point. In principle , like a union / cartel, a whole sector of businesses in a market could decide together to never advertise, and the reduced overhead for everyone would mean more profit. In practice, it just takes a few deviators / scabs etc. to undermine this for everyone. Reality is more complex. Organizing in solidarity is hard, deviation is easy… the whole non-cooperative games th…

My original comment was an argument for the parent thread which said "The value of online advertising is massively inflated." I was not saying that ads are good.

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

#304

Post by acdha »

skookumchuck wrote: post #219
acdha wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the 20th century's defining technologies started that way, from microchips and the internet to biotech. You don't need to get everything to say that the model can support a few misses.

The jet engine case seems especially hard to claim as an exception since early development was predicated on military sales and, for example, a quick trip to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_jet_engine shows the origins of both the British and German programs being a RAF officer's patent-worthy idea.

Remember, I'm not saying that the government invents everything but that basic reasearch and major long-term development is hard to do when you need to show profits right now. The history of your example shows many examples of that process where the government funding allowed things to reach the point where they could be successfully commercialized for other purposes.

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

#305

Post by skookumchuck »

acdha wrote: post #304
skookumchuck wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the 20th century's defining technologies started that way, from microchips and the internet to biotech. You don't need to get everything to say that the model can support a few misses. The jet engine case seems especially hard to claim as an exception since early development was predicated on military sales and, for example, a quick trip to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_jet_engine shows the o…

The financing of Whittle's and Ohain's jet engines did not come from the government, nor did government finance their incorporation into working, flying aircraft. Whittle's idea he had on his own, not as part of a government research project.

The US military even ordered Lockheed to stop working on a jet engine, and concentrate on piston engines. This changed after being faced with the ME-262.

The transistor, too. Airplanes. Liquid fueled rockets. Communications satellites (Arthur Clarke). Radio. TV. Einstein. C. C++. Java. C#.

And the glaring absense of defining technologies coming from communist economies, where it was 100% government doing the research.

The US government spends megabucks on R+D. It would be astonishing if that produced no results. But it is an error to thereby conclude that new technologies could not otherwise exist.

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

#306

Post by anigbrowl »

devuo wrote: post #191
anigbrowl wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

No. Previous post articulated a general principle which I showed to be flawed. 'Things are different now' is just moving the goalposts.

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

#307

Post by xherberta »

quadrangle wrote: post #263
xherberta wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, smal…

> more innovative, producing more patents per employee than large firms Patents are not correlated with innovation. Tons of innovative things are never patented, and the majority of patents are largely bullshit. The patent system mostly gives tons of money to patent lawyers and power to companies who know how to use their patents to threaten innovators. It may be true that small businesses are more innovative, but we…

Point taken. Thanks for the call out.

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

#308

Post by ocdtrekkie »

joshuamorton wrote: post #236
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple isn't actually much of a competitor where it matters: OEMs only have one choice which OS to license, which is why without major government trustbusting action, dozens of manufacturers have no choice but to build Android phones. Google has no competition in this space, and any company that tried to break from them would go under.

That's a different conversation (hardware licensing vs. app store). Also I'm curious, I see you posting pretty often, and about 80% of your comments are anti-Google specifically, is there a reason for that?

First of all, you need to acknowledge the vertical integration. Google has a lock on manufacturers, who have no option put to license Android, and as a requirement of that, must include the Play Store, where Google has a complete monopoly on all devices in that market.

Second, I wanted to address the accusatory notion of the back half of your comment, and point out the hypocrisy of Googler coming in here and suggesting others have ulterior motives for their comments.

- I do not work for nor am paid for any company with skin in this game. My opinions are very literally my own. I speak a lot about Google because a lot of people disproportionately speak positively about Google even though they should not.

- You are paid by a company being directly suggested to be destroyed/broken up, in this article. As Upton Sinclair once said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

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

#309

Post by bobbington »

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…

I agree 100%. Google has done so much good for the world by creating not only the best search engine, but also the best browser, the best maps, the best free email, an amazing mobile operating system, and all of it for free. Sure they sell ads and that annoys people, but for a free product, how can you complain?

These big guys do amazing things. Yes with an organization that size, there is going to be some problems at some point, but without a doubt, we are much better off for what the guys at google have done.

Unfortunately on HN, people can become so cynical. Any time somebody succeeds, it seems like there are a chorus of people writing off the success as bad in some way or inauthentic. It's almost like people are jealous.

Instead of trying to tear down those who succeed, and who are giving back (like google to the open source world), let's be grateful for the insane amount of good they have done.

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

#310

Post by joshuamorton »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #308
joshuamorton wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a different conversation (hardware licensing vs. app store). Also I'm curious, I see you posting pretty often, and about 80% of your comments are anti-Google specifically, is there a reason for that?

First of all, you need to acknowledge the vertical integration. Google has a lock on manufacturers, who have no option put to license Android, and as a requirement of that, must include the Play Store, where Google has a complete monopoly on all devices in that market. Second, I wanted to address the accusatory notion of the back half of your comment, and point out the hypocrisy of Googler coming in here and suggesti…

>First of all, you need to acknowledge the vertical integration. Google has a lock on manufacturers, who have no option put to license Android, and as a requirement of that, must include the Play Store,

You mean like the Kindle Fire, which runs a custom version of AOSP and doesn't include the play store? You have it backwards. If manufacturers want to access to the play store on device, they need to meet minimum standards, not the other way.

But again, that's beside the point. No matter what, there's less vertical integration on the android side of things than on the Apple side of things, which has no alternate play stores, and which requires you to pay apple to be able to sideload apps.

And even that's mostly beside the point, because what we're talking about is a cut being taken from purchases of paid apps on the play store. That has nothing to do with devices at all. And what I said is true, if the price that Google took from app manufacturers increased, app developers would raise prices or leave the platform, and as a result users would too, and move to iOS or Windows Phone if it came to that. Or, they'd do what many people already do and sideload APKs via other app stores, like the Amazon App store or F-Droid.

So again, there's one ecosystem with multiple hardware provides, multiple appstores, and the ability to sideload apps entirely, and another ecosystem with one hardware manufacturer, one app store, and no ability to sideload apps without paying additional money, and the manufacturer and app store are the same entity, but your argument is that the first example is more vertically integrated?

>Second, I wanted to address the accusatory notion of the back half of your comment, and point out the hypocrisy of Googler coming in here and suggesting others have ulterior motives for their comments.

What hypocrisy? I don't hide that I worked for google, and generally make an effort to reveal that when I'm posting on google-related topics (and I do so in this thread) Ulterior implies hidden motives. I'm not hiding anything.

>I speak a lot about Google because a lot of people disproportionately speak positively about Google even though they should not.

This cleverly avoids actually explaining why you rail against Google so much. You're begging the question.

>You are paid by a company being directly suggested to be destroyed/broken up

Indeed I am. Given that I'm very forthcoming with that, I don't see why that should matter though. Its not like this thread will have any effect on my livelyhood.

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