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Should we break up the big tech companies?

bloomberg.com

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#41

This is funny, because Bloomberg is a big monopoly itself..

At least they are only a monopoly in one relatively small sector. They have 1/3rd the revenue of Facebook, 1/10th the revenue of Google or MS and 1/20th the revenue of Apple, and unlike those companies, they probably won't be able to leverage their monopoly to gain a huge advantage in other sectors.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#42
good background reading is the book "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu. Places current monopolies in historic context. doesn't give them a free pass mind you, just lets you see that monopoly is a very stable and self-perpetuating state of affairs. reminds me of punctuated equalibrium theory.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think Apple should market and distribute apps for free?

I think they should allow people to market and distribute apps on their own without cutting Apple in on it.

Kid, when I started in software development we had to give 50% of our revenues to Ingram-MicroD, plus co-op (marketing) dollars, and pay for printing manuals, boxes, copying disks, and shrink-wrapping out of the rest. Then with what was left we'd pay for advertising, development, and support.

Apple created a market where they host all of your content, give you your own free marketing pages for each product, pay for all the costs of distributing your content world-wide, and pay developers tens of billions of dollars a year. That they only ask 30% is one for the greatest deals software developers have ever had.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#44

Good luck getting other countries to "play along". Doing this is tantamount to handicapping your nation's corporate giants, who will no longer be able to compete as effectively against the corporate giants of nations that don't play along. This line of thinking is how you end up like Europe that today consumes goods and services produced almost entirely by large US tech companies. If you handicap the American tech gi…

Genuinely curious as to why you say Europe has handicapped its business? They are just more regulated. If the businesses are handicapped why is Germany still a giant in manufacturing?

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they should allow people to market and distribute apps on their own without cutting Apple in on it.

Kid, when I started in software development we had to give 50% of our revenues to Ingram-MicroD, plus co-op (marketing) dollars, and pay for printing manuals, boxes, copying disks, and shrink-wrapping out of the rest. Then with what was left we'd pay for advertising, development, and support. Apple created a market where they host all of your content, give you your own free marketing pages for each product, pay for a…

"Kid"

There is no need to be condescending, this is HN not Reddit.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they should allow people to market and distribute apps on their own without cutting Apple in on it.

Kid, when I started in software development we had to give 50% of our revenues to Ingram-MicroD, plus co-op (marketing) dollars, and pay for printing manuals, boxes, copying disks, and shrink-wrapping out of the rest. Then with what was left we'd pay for advertising, development, and support. Apple created a market where they host all of your content, give you your own free marketing pages for each product, pay for a…

The issue isn't whether or not 30% is a reasonable amount. The issue is that no one else is allowed to compete with them to do it better or cheaper. Maybe someone else wants to take a 70% cut will do such a fantastic job of marketing that it would be worth it. They should be allowed to do so. Maybe some larger app developers want to handle distribution and marketing in-house. They should also be allowed to do so.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kid, when I started in software development we had to give 50% of our revenues to Ingram-MicroD, plus co-op (marketing) dollars, and pay for printing manuals, boxes, copying disks, and shrink-wrapping out of the rest. Then with what was left we'd pay for advertising, development, and support. Apple created a market where they host all of your content, give you your own free marketing pages for each product, pay for a…

The issue isn't whether or not 30% is a reasonable amount. The issue is that no one else is allowed to compete with them to do it better or cheaper. Maybe someone else wants to take a 70% cut will do such a fantastic job of marketing that it would be worth it. They should be allowed to do so. Maybe some larger app developers want to handle distribution and marketing in-house. They should also be allowed to do so.

The freedom you want is called jailbreaking. Stores created for it never found much success. Or you can build android or web apps, and find similar freedoms.

Apple built a huge market in part because they provided security and quality. iOS Customers like that Apple vets iOS apps so much more rigorously than Google Play and other Android stores.

You want to take advantage of the huge market Apple built so carefully, by having Apple throw out all those protections for you. Or you want to take advantage of it while denying Apple any of the revenues. Both are cluelessly self centered and selfish.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#48

Good luck getting other countries to "play along". Doing this is tantamount to handicapping your nation's corporate giants, who will no longer be able to compete as effectively against the corporate giants of nations that don't play along. This line of thinking is how you end up like Europe that today consumes goods and services produced almost entirely by large US tech companies. If you handicap the American tech gi…

Genuinely curious as to why you say Europe has handicapped its business? They are just more regulated. If the businesses are handicapped why is Germany still a giant in manufacturing?

One nation out of 28 in the EU?

To answer your question, the reason Germany does best is because they are in the EU. Under the Deutschmark, increased exports would have increased the value of their currency and hurt exports. With the Euro, they generously benefit from the fact that they can export to the entirety of Europe without experiencing currency appreciation and the current account weakness of other European states means that the value of the Euro is kept lower than the Deutschmark would be, meaning that Germany gets an added export advantage in international trade.

How many new major European multi-nationals have been created since the creation of the EU?

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#49
post #34

> "They don’t engage in the predatory behavior of yore, such as selling goods below the cost of production to steal market share and cripple competitors." Doesn't Amazon do exactly that?

Uber (and presumably Lyft) does the same -- the theory being that they can destroy taxi businesses, then set their prices at anything less than a towncar service.
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