My theory is that apple is intentionally targeting the profitable 10% and ignoring the rest just so they don't have to deal with monopoly laws. They still essentially have a monopoly on profit since they have the most profitable users, but nobody can say that 10% market share is a real monopoly.
Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
101–110 of 175 posts
Re: Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is the market so disfunctional that a single company has effectively swallowed all competition? This is actually pretty common in hypercompetitive commodity markets. The largest player has a slight cost advantage due to economies of scale, so they have the best price and everyone buys from them. But they still have no market power because their market share doesn't come from barriers to entry. > Err, yes. It's…
> This is actually pretty common in hypercompetitive commodity markets. The largest player has a slight cost advantage due to economies of scale, so they have the best price and everyone buys from them. This is not true at all. Looking at actual competitive commodity markets for things like lumber, oil, copper, etc, we see a lot of players in the market. I can't think of a single commodity market where there is a mon…
Strange you ignored the greatest monopoly of all time, Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Despite getting split up in 1911, its successor Exxon is the largest non-government owned oil company in the world.
Re: Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
#103It isn't outdated, it is an economics definition of a monopoly, and isn't even that: a monopoly is perfectly fine, AS LONG AS the economic power isn't abused to prevent competition which harms consumers. What the author is proposing is that regulation is no longer based on economics and economic power, but on a vague definition of monopoly, and people are absurdly trigger-happy when calling something a monopoly. The…
China and Russia have major disinformation campaigns running in the United States and around the world. These campaigns have been heavily documented by news organizations and American defense agencies.
A major branch of Russia and China's attack is the ongoing negative PR campaign against tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Can these companies improve? Sure. But their infractions are incredibly minor compared to the dictatorships rising in Russia, China, Turkey, etc that are murdering foreign citizens as well as large numbers of their own. They are stealing billions of dollars from their own citizens and taking the world down a terrifying path.
Please reconsider the easy targets of tech companies and have the courage to face true evil in these dictatorships
Re: Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two arguments, one is about Search as a monopoly the other is about that power as it relates to other parts of the value chain. Google search is fundamentally better than DDG (for most purposes) because it has massive advantages that make it effectively unassailable. For example, I stopped using DDG because I rely on reverse image search. FYI DDG does not have its own crawler, it gets data from other source…
DDG is proof positive that the barriers to entry are extraordinarily low . It is incredibly easy to start a search engine. Now, to make one that is considered good relative to Google, that is hard, because if Google is known for one thing, it's known for executing in search. But if someone wanted to invest billions and billions of dollars, they could take a shot. Microsoft has been taking their shot for years, and so…
DDG doesn't maintain its own indexes. It uses Bing and Yandex, the only two other global-level English language web indexes. So DDG isn't proof positive of anything.
Re: Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
#105It isn't outdated, it is an economics definition of a monopoly, and isn't even that: a monopoly is perfectly fine, AS LONG AS the economic power isn't abused to prevent competition which harms consumers. What the author is proposing is that regulation is no longer based on economics and economic power, but on a vague definition of monopoly, and people are absurdly trigger-happy when calling something a monopoly. The…
China and Russia have major disinformation campaigns running in the United States and around the world. These campaigns have been heavily documented by news organizations and American defense agencies. A major branch of Russia and China's attack is the ongoing negative PR campaign against tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Can these companies improve? Sure. But their infractions are incredibly minor co…
This is the most insane conspiracy nonsense I’ve read on HN.
Facebook had lobbyists targeting every member of Congress. Apple works tirelessly to put their profits in tax shelters. Amazon has well-documented stories of pushing its warehouse workers past their limits. Google’s chairman spent years openly laughing at the idea of “privacy.” You think these companies need help from foreign actors to look bad?
If this line of thinking is common in SV, the echo chamber effect is worse than I suspected.
Re: Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two arguments, one is about Search as a monopoly the other is about that power as it relates to other parts of the value chain. Google search is fundamentally better than DDG (for most purposes) because it has massive advantages that make it effectively unassailable. For example, I stopped using DDG because I rely on reverse image search. FYI DDG does not have its own crawler, it gets data from other source…
DDG is proof positive that the barriers to entry are extraordinarily low . It is incredibly easy to start a search engine. Now, to make one that is considered good relative to Google, that is hard, because if Google is known for one thing, it's known for executing in search. But if someone wanted to invest billions and billions of dollars, they could take a shot. Microsoft has been taking their shot for years, and so…
> Microsoft has been taking their shot for years, and so far it isn't working, but that's not because of barriers to entry. It's because they do not execute as well as Google does.
I think that's a little unfair to Microsoft.
Google has spent way more engineer team on all the infrastructure required to make Search great. Microsoft's main products were a desktop OS and application, so presumably their existing internal tooling probably wasn't as mature for scalable web services.
I work at Google but opinions are my won.
Re: Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The argument goes roughly as follows: Google is able to use its lead in search to exert undue influence on other markets. Google can (and has) ocassionaly placed banners suggesting a switch to chrome, influencing the browser market. Google showcases YouTube videos above other video results, regardless of the relative merits of the videos. Similar things in other verticals. Additionally, search dominance leads to domi…
> Google can (and has) ocassionaly placed banners suggesting a switch to chrome, influencing the browser market. But so can anybody else. Google sells ads on their search engine to anyone. If you asked nicely enough with a large enough pile of money they would presumably even sell you a banner placement. What is the objection supposed to be? That Google didn't pay itself for the ad space? How would it have changed an…
> What is the objection supposed to be?
I work at Google; opinions are my own.
I believe the objection is that it's an unfair competitive advantage and hurts competition. The reasoning is similar to that given when Google was fined for Google Shopping in the EU.
> But so can anybody else. Google sells ads on their search engine to anyone. If you asked nicely enough with a large enough pile of money they would presumably even sell you a banner placement.
You could make the same argument about Microsoft with Internet Explorer then no? I'm sure if someone offered to pay many billions of dollars, Microsoft would have gladly included their browser with Windows too.
Being able to do the same thing with a sufficiently large sum of money doesn't imply that something is not an anticompetitive practice. If anything, it may show that it is indeed anticompetitive..
Re: Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google, Facebook, and Amazon control not only what you can do as a consumer... ??? I'm not sure this is true? I don't feel like they are controlling me when I go to Target or Walmart??? But I'm not sure if there is something maybe with the advertising that is making me go to Target and Walmart? Either way, it's totally up to me as a consumer where I spend my money I would think.
Not sure what Target or Walmart have to do with what I said. Amazon doesn't control where you buy random stuff, but they have disproportionate influence in some areas, like books. I'm pretty sure they are already in the position to make or break some brands simply by banning or promoting them.
He's talking about his freedom as a consumer to shop at competitors to Amazon, Google, etc. People probably don't feel the same way about AT&T.
Consumers prefer Google and Amazon, and it would cost them little to switch. Most consumers have no choice but to accept AT&T or Comcast.
Re: Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure what Target or Walmart have to do with what I said. Amazon doesn't control where you buy random stuff, but they have disproportionate influence in some areas, like books. I'm pretty sure they are already in the position to make or break some brands simply by banning or promoting them.
He's talking about his freedom as a consumer to shop at competitors to Amazon, Google, etc. People probably don't feel the same way about AT&T. Consumers prefer Google and Amazon, and it would cost them little to switch. Most consumers have no choice but to accept AT&T or Comcast.
There are alternatives to AT&T or Comcast; you could dismiss concerns by saying consumers prefer their service over wireless or satellite Internet.
Re: Google, Facebook, and Amazon benefit from an outdated definition of “monopoly”
#110TLDR; Anti-trust laws gets only triggered if consumer welfare might be harmed. The way to measure consumer welfare is by prices. So if price of goods/services remain low then anti-trust lawsuits cannot be brought on. In Internet economy, price of many services provided by BigCos is zero.
Personally I think this is only half of the story because consumer welfare is not just prices but also quality which depends on competition. The suppression of competition was primary clause used for free IE on Windows anti-trust lawsuit.
So I think article is not well researched and is spreading half-truths.