Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where Warren’s Wrong

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 290 posts

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#41

Post by mschuster91 »

cm2187 wrote: post #33
chj wrote: post #22

The author is nitpicking. Warren may be wrong about the history of bing and google, but that's not really important. She's 100% right about Amazon, and the author conveniently forgot to mention. Most people in tech industry always strive to build monopoly and dominance. In their eyes, Warren's idea is of course insane. But viewing from another point, in order to protect competition and small businesses, her proposal…

Actually amazon is the one that I would say doesn't have a monopoly. It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space (far from it), nor in the cloud hosting (let alone server hosting) business, nor in online streaming (music/tv). Google on the other hand has close to a monopoly on search (and browsers). Facebook on social medias.

> It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space

For vendors, the situation looks different - and Amazon certainly does abuse their position towards vendors often enough, e.g. with the AmazonBasics program where they take bestselling stuff, produce it at Amazon scales and then outprice the "competition".

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#42

Post by patrec »

Shivetya wrote: post #26
comnetxr wrote: post #16

Agree 95%, but one point he uses to crticize Warren seems wrong: Where Warren says "America’s big tech companies have achieved their level of dominance in part based on two strategies: using Mergers to Limit Competition,..." he argues that they achieved dominance by making good products and were already dominant when they started making major mergers, and that Warren doesn't understand this. It sounds like he's missi…

Sorry, but the idea that Apple needs to be separated from the App store is ludicrous. If you don't like the App store don't buy Apple products. There are hundreds of other phones to choose from and some get equal or better reviews. It would be one thing if Apple was the only cell phone maker in existence but that is so far from the truth. Amazon and online purchases, again, there are so many choices that you never ev…

There are just two phone makers in existence: Google and Apple. If you care about privacy and security, there is just a single phone maker: Apple. The only difference between different brands of Google phones is how much additional insecurity and crap the notional manufacturer adds on top.

Amazon has complete dominance over books in the US and are on their way to abolishing book ownership outright.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#43

Post by replicatorblog »

mschuster91 wrote: post #41
cm2187 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually amazon is the one that I would say doesn't have a monopoly. It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space (far from it), nor in the cloud hosting (let alone server hosting) business, nor in online streaming (music/tv). Google on the other hand has close to a monopoly on search (and browsers). Facebook on social medias.

> It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space For vendors, the situation looks different - and Amazon certainly does abuse their position towards vendors often enough, e.g. with the AmazonBasics program where they take bestselling stuff, produce it at Amazon scales and then outprice the "competition".

That seems like the weakest part of the argument — Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens, Costco, and every other major retailer has a similar program.

All use sales data to determine what sells best and copy it. I did this for a decade, designing store brand medical devices for all the major retailers.

There are plenty of legitimate critiques of Amazon. The "private label" one is by far the weakest.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#44

Post by mtmail »

cm2187 wrote: post #33
chj wrote: post #22

The author is nitpicking. Warren may be wrong about the history of bing and google, but that's not really important. She's 100% right about Amazon, and the author conveniently forgot to mention. Most people in tech industry always strive to build monopoly and dominance. In their eyes, Warren's idea is of course insane. But viewing from another point, in order to protect competition and small businesses, her proposal…

Actually amazon is the one that I would say doesn't have a monopoly. It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space (far from it), nor in the cloud hosting (let alone server hosting) business, nor in online streaming (music/tv). Google on the other hand has close to a monopoly on search (and browsers). Facebook on social medias.

"[Amazon] has captured 43 percent of all internet retail sales in the United States, with half of all online shopping searches starting on Amazon. In 2016, it had over $63 billion in revenue from online sales in the United States — or more than the next 10 top online retailers combined. It controls 74 percent of e-book sales, is the largest seller of clothes online and is set to soon become the biggest apparel retailer in the country." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/opinion/amazon-whole-food...

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#45

Post by mschuster91 »

replicatorblog wrote: post #43
mschuster91 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space For vendors, the situation looks different - and Amazon certainly does abuse their position towards vendors often enough, e.g. with the AmazonBasics program where they take bestselling stuff, produce it at Amazon scales and then outprice the "competition".

That seems like the weakest part of the argument — Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens, Costco, and every other major retailer has a similar program. All use sales data to determine what sells best and copy it. I did this for a decade, designing store brand medical devices for all the major retailers. There are plenty of legitimate critiques of Amazon. The "private label" one is by far the weakest.

The difference between the other major retailers and Amazon is the search. When I go through a physical store I will see everything that they have up for sale and have the choice of buying everything - but on Amazon the sheer amount of products that are showing up in searches is the problem. Hard enough to compete against other vendors for the place on the first two search pages, it's unfair that Amazon gives their own brand an advantage.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#46

Post by Rooster61 »

apcragg wrote: post #31
anon0000 wrote: post #14

Noticeably absent from Warren's target list is Comcast. IMHO, they are more anti-trust than any of the tech companies she is targeting. Comcast also happens to be the 15th biggest donor to her campaign. https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors...

Wow. Your post is so misleading it borders on outright lying. Those $31k contributions come entirely from individuals. Comcast the company did not donate any money to her. Conflating individual contributions with Corporate contributions is massively misleading. Comcast has 164k employees. Do you honestly expect that most employees of Corporations agree with the political goals and objectives of their parent companies…

Your argument is equally misleading. Does the fact that those contributions come from individuals somehow make them less profound? It's exceedingly important to point out who these individuals are associated with employment-wise.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#47

Post by fcarraldo »

replicatorblog wrote: post #43
mschuster91 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space For vendors, the situation looks different - and Amazon certainly does abuse their position towards vendors often enough, e.g. with the AmazonBasics program where they take bestselling stuff, produce it at Amazon scales and then outprice the "competition".

That seems like the weakest part of the argument — Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens, Costco, and every other major retailer has a similar program. All use sales data to determine what sells best and copy it. I did this for a decade, designing store brand medical devices for all the major retailers. There are plenty of legitimate critiques of Amazon. The "private label" one is by far the weakest.

Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens and Costco are not marketplaces, they're retailers, and they have contracts with suppliers and pay distributors to purchase goods to resell to consumers. Amazon is a marketplace where any retailer can list their goods for sale.

I believe Warren's argument is that Amazon is abusing their position as the marketplace platform owner by listing their own goods at prices that undercut marketplace retailers.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#48

Post by crankylinuxuser »

_red wrote: post #36
chj wrote: post #22

The author is nitpicking. Warren may be wrong about the history of bing and google, but that's not really important. She's 100% right about Amazon, and the author conveniently forgot to mention. Most people in tech industry always strive to build monopoly and dominance. In their eyes, Warren's idea is of course insane. But viewing from another point, in order to protect competition and small businesses, her proposal…

The redefinition of the term 'monopoly' to just be 'large marketshare' is very dangerous. However, as a bit of schadenfreude, its nice to see the leftist big-tech receive the unintended consequences of their beliefs. Sadly, the realities is that they will just hire ex-regulators as 'consultants' to help enshrine their businesses into quasi-state protected monopolies.

Then use the proper term for the FAANG companies: A criminal conspiracy.

And we have laws against conspiracies. RICO act for starters.

And collusion is also a crime, no? How many execs have gone to prison for the wage fixing that FAANG was accused of and lost?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#49

Post by abalone »

I’m worried about breaking up Apple. Control of the App Store is how they keep the iPhone secure and malware free. They make money on things sold through the store, yes, but they make most of their money in the phone itself. Break that up and now whoever runs the store has a lot more pressure to make money by exploiting your data, cutting back on curation, etc.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#50

Post by sib »

mtmail wrote: post #44
cm2187 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually amazon is the one that I would say doesn't have a monopoly. It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space (far from it), nor in the cloud hosting (let alone server hosting) business, nor in online streaming (music/tv). Google on the other hand has close to a monopoly on search (and browsers). Facebook on social medias.

"[Amazon] has captured 43 percent of all internet retail sales in the United States, with half of all online shopping searches starting on Amazon. In 2016, it had over $63 billion in revenue from online sales in the United States — or more than the next 10 top online retailers combined. It controls 74 percent of e-book sales, is the largest seller of clothes online and is set to soon become the biggest apparel retail…

Exactly, so, not a monopoly in ecommerce. And only a single-digit share of commerce.

And, of course, there is literally nothing inherently illegal (in the US, at least) about building a monopoly in any case.

Post reply on HN