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American tech giants are making life tough for startups

economist.com

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Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#141

Post by tannhaeuser »

fnbr wrote: post #135
tannhaeuser wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil law is one thing, and has btw nothing to do with crime and punishment - that would be criminal law. Protecting a market from becoming a monopoly is another thing entirely; punishment isn't a category here but the overwhelming interest to enable everybody to participate in a market within reason. Shielding individuals from the law of the strong (as in the jungle) and the natural tendency for monopolies is the en…

There's two things called civil law: 1. The legal system [1], based on Roman law, that is common in former French colonies across the world (e.g. Quebec, Louisiana, France). 2. In common law legal systems, the branch of the law that deal with non-criminal matters [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(common_law)

IANAL, but this definition leaves a bit to be desired. I thought the term "civil law" is almost universally synonymous with the law other than the criminal, constitutional/non-law-of-nations law even in non Common Law countries. Specifically, it is used for law with roots in the Code civil (as opposed to Code pénal etc.) in those parts of Europe having Napoleonic law traditions, with connotations of Enlightenment and positive right theories.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#142

Post by s73v3r_ »

> Big tech firms are able to shell out huge sums to keep top performers and even average employees in their fold and make it uneconomical for their workers to consider joining startups.

Perhaps startups should look at changing that. Offering more actual money, better options, and stop with the fuckery that makes most people believe that their options would be totally worthless even when the company is acquired/goes public.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#143

Post by dsfyu404ed »

howard941 wrote: post #139
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hypotheticals don't work in law. You don't punish someone who hasn't committed a crime.thats common law. As much as I don't agree with it in certain cases hypothetical very much apply. All sort so things that have a small but nonzero chance of a bad outcome are violations of civil and or criminal law (e.g a speeding ticket).

Minor nitpick. Garden-variety speeding and most other traffic offenses are "strict liability" infractions that aren't crimes in most states. The differences include the severity of the offense and the absence of the mental state (mens rea) element for strict liability offenses vs. crimes.

>Minor nitpick. Garden-variety speeding and most other traffic offenses are "strict liability" infractions that aren't crimes in most states.

There's usually a speed threshold (15 or 20 over in most states) that make it an automatic misdemeanor. No mental state required.

I would call 20+ over garden variety speeding. There's several interstate and state highways in the Boston area where 20+ over is normal traffic speed. The traffic flows at 70-75 because that's the speed that everyone deems safe and reasonable and the highway is posted at 45-55.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#144

Post by s73v3r_ »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #99
iteabagkevin2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t those points sound great for startups and workers? 1) We will give you a large sum of money for your startup. 2) we will pay our workers so much they won’t want to do a startup.

I have a hard time figuring out what to be angry about. One day we're upset at the evil capitalists for paying workers too little. Now I guess we're upset at the evil capitalists for paying people too much.

It's almost like there are different sets of people out there, who have different experiences with things.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#145

Post by s73v3r_ »

whatshisface wrote: post #30
osrec wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think regulators realise we have a monopoly brewing once they see people buying Google branded milk from Googlemarts, having driven there in Googlemobiles, using traffic directions from... Google.

That's not a monopoly - a monopoly would be if for at minimum one of those things, you could only find a Google-controlled version.

For the legal notion of monopoly, you don't need to be the literal only one.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#146

Post by s73v3r_ »

BurningFrog wrote: post #29
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #3

Another reminder, alongside the apparent Microsoft GitHub acquision, that regulators need to step up and prevent large tech firms from acting anti competitively. From another Economist article ("How to Tame the Tech Titans", https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/01/18/how-to-tame-the... ): > Two broad changes of thinking would go a long way towards sensibly taming the titans. The first is to make better use of exist…

> Such scrutiny might have prevented Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and Google’s of Waze, Then again one of the main reasons people start companies like Instagram and Waze is so they can be bought by these giants.

I would argue that's also a problem. Startups who's eventual exit plan is acquisition are more willing to burn VC money giving stuff away for free, rather than coming up with a plan for profitability. If more companies had the idea that they had to survive more and more on their own revenues, I think we'd see stronger companies.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#147

Post by carusooneliner »

The article is an accurate assessment of the landscape today, but is it going to be true next year or five years from now? You can never be too sure!

Using a bit of imagination to think of risks these giants face :

* Antitrust - could happen when it's politically advantageous to publicly bash tech giants

* Stock market - a recession could reduce tech giants’ leverage by a lot

* China - competition from Chinese companies or the Communist party imposes an embargo

* Technology - another AI winter or maybe some other company gets the edge in quantum computing for instance

* Demand - their products today are better versions of what they were ten years ago, not completely new things. What if users turn away from these tech companies as they become the ‘old way of doing things’?

* Startups - Google grew on Microsoft's watch, Amazon on Walmart's, Facebook on Google's, Apple on Nokia's, Snap on Facebook's. What's next?

* Crypto - ethereum, bitcoin, etc. could usher in a whole new internet experience where giants on the 'old' internet find it hard to gain a foothold

While working on a startup today might feel like picking pennies in front of a bulldozer, tech giants face a number of risks of their own. Startups would better focus on internal excellence than fret about tech giant monopoly.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#148

Post by s73v3r_ »

adventured wrote: post #18
rambleraptor wrote: post #2

This is also responsible for geographic inequality throughout the country. The large tech companies are based out of Silicon Valley and Seattle. The majority of their employees and economic activity will be in those areas.

That has gradually changed a lot in the last ten years. A decent house is $150,000 to $200,000 where I'm at. That's 2,000-2,500 sq feet, 0.75 to 2 acres of land. The murder rate here is almost zero, violent crime is very low, and I have access to high speed Internet and normal shopping / consumer goods. I can day trip to multiple major metros. Public housing here is actually nice, safe, clean. The homeless rate is ne…

The problem is, telecommuting is still not common. Hell, the running joke is that Slack, a company who's entire purpose is improving communication among teams to enable more remote work, does not allow remote work themselves.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#149

Post by jfk92n8 »

nicodjimenez wrote: post #74

The tech giants have learned to think on longer time horizons than capital markets have. Which means that big companies and VC's (their vendors) ultimately end up dominating most startups, which in turn means that the original core essence of the company that made it successful in the first place gets weeded out for short term gain. The companies that can resist these powerful dynamics are very rare. They tend to be…

Nonsense

MS already did this

Walmart already did this

ATT already did this

The newer tech companies are just replaying American Business 101

There’s no more mystery or nuance needed

Own it all is the meme in American enterprise going back decades

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