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

161–170 of 290 posts

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#161

Post by cgriswald »

scarface74 wrote: post #152
cgriswald wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out? > It wasn’t government intervention that caused the once The Beleaguered Computer Company that was about to be crushed by MS what it is today. The criticisms of Microsoft weren't that it was preventing Apple from selling computers; but that it was using it's monopoly in the operating system to prevent competition agains…

Spotify doesn’t pay an “Apple Tax”. You can’t subscribe to Spotify within the App store.

> Spotify doesn’t pay an “Apple Tax”. You can’t subscribe to Spotify within the App store.

Spotfy is an example. Plenty of Apps do pay the "Apple tax." I'd get into the complexity of how the "Apple tax" affects Spotify even though it doesn't pay it, but you seem to have already made up your mind about all this regardless of the facts.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#162

Post by jforman »

baddox wrote: post #141
sib wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> there is literally nothing inherently illegal (in the US, at least) about building a monopoly in any case. This is not true, despite being repeated extremely often. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alcoa

Huh, that ruling was pretty broad. Only pertains to the 2nd circuit as it wasn't reviewed by SCOTUS, but still. Do you know if it was a key cite in cases in other circuits?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#163

Post by scarface74 »

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…

There is no world besides maybe Beats where any of the acquisitions that Apple made would have ever ended up being competitors.

The entire reason for almost any investor backed company to exist is to be acquired. You don’t have to look any further than YC. In its entire history only one company that it has invested in has ever gone public.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#164

Post by everdev »

chc wrote: post #139
everdev wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

43% is a massive market share but a monopoly by the definition of the word has near 100% control of a market. I think the modern test is is it possible for someone to compete with Amazon? Costco and Wallmart certainly do. If you break up Amazon, I think online retail will just move to the next biggest player.

This definition kind of punts the question on to the definition of "compete." Microsoft in the 1990s was probably the most clear-cut monopoly in most of our lifetimes, and they still had multiple competitors (e.g. the then-beleaguered Apple), which they did try to use as a defense. I think the key factor is more about whether you believe the competitors are a credible threat. If it doesn't seem like a company is real…

And in retrospect, it would have been a mistake to break up Microsoft. No one is advocating breaking them up today. And that happened just through market forces and time, no government intervention needed.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#165

Post by root_axis »

zepto wrote: post #143
root_axis wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical antitrust concerns around monopolies don't really apply to google (currently). Google hasn't used its position to create barriers to entry for competitors, it is only that google has a reputation for producing a superior product in this domain. I've also heard some argue that google has a monopoly on advertising eyeballs, but this is clearly false (i.e. there are lots of platforms that make a lot of money…

This is patently false. Google’s monopoly is on resources required to be a search competitor. It has a giant stash of patents related to search, and it also has an enormous collection of historical data that can never be obtained by a new competitors. On top of that it continues to extract behavioral and structural data about both users and the web from things like analytics, Android, etc. with gigantic reach. These…

> It has a giant stash of patents related to search

Patents are not an antitrust violation. Breaking up google doesn't revoke their patents.

> On top of that it continues to extract behavioral and structural data about both users and the web from things like analytics, Android, etc. with gigantic reach.

Breaking up google doesn't mean all this insight disappears. We need better data privacy laws to address this.

> These are gigantic barriers to entry and Google created them.

You haven't described a barrier to entry, you've described a product that is so far ahead of the rest of the market that it's difficult to compete, but there is nothing preventing a competitor from giving it their best shot. If somehow a group of genius polymath programmers developed a superior search product, nothing about google's current business practices (besides brand awareness) would hinder their success.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#166

Post by vharuck »

jmrobertson wrote: post #24

Reading her stuff, it seems like proposals to separate Apple from the App store indicate a total lack of awareness about InfoSec, and at best a poorly researched policy proposal from a technical standpoint. The only reason the App Store isn't a simmering cesspool of malware is that Apple heavily moderates what gets on there, and Google does somewhat the same. That doesn't mean that there perhaps isn't a less MSFT + I…

So nobody but Apple and Google can handle security? The first days of free-for-all would be rough, but there'd eventually be a lineup of safe marketplaces.

Hardware is a key part of security, too, but Intel doesn't have to run the marketplace.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#167

Post by azeotropic »

mschuster91 wrote: post #45
replicatorblog wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

As a consumer, I'd say search is Amazon's weakest link. It's often easier to find products on Amazon through Google or DuckDuckGo than through Amazon's own website. Product metadata is so poorly curated that Amazon's filters are pretty useless; compare sometime to specialist retailers like Microcenter or NewEgg where curation is much more complete. I often search for the combination of features I want on other sites and then look for the same exact product number on Amazon to check for a better deal (and Amazon isn't always the cheapest).

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#168

Post by scarface74 »

pixl97 wrote: post #157
scarface74 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out? Every company I named was once dominant. Even Spotify came out of nowhere and made the once dominance iTunes Music Store basically irrelevant without government intervention. It wasn’t government intervention that caused the once The Beleaguered Computer Company that was about to be crushed by MS what it is today.

>So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out? Microsoft is a goddamed convicted monopolist . The conviction significantly changed their internal processes and they were much more careful after that point.

And how did them “being careful” affect the rise of Facebook, Apple, Amazon or Google?

They tried to compete in both the media player, digital music, and phone market and failed.

They are still trying to compete in search.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#169

Post by cm2187 »

mbesto wrote: post #83
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.

> Google on the other hand has close to a monopoly on search (and browsers) Which are both free products/services. How do you have a monopoly on a freely provide service? They have a monopoly on the supply (eyeballs) of the digital advertising market.

They have a monopoly on advertising because they have a monopoly on search, hence traffic, hence knowing what individual people are up to.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#170

Post by scarface74 »

cgriswald wrote: post #161
scarface74 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify doesn’t pay an “Apple Tax”. You can’t subscribe to Spotify within the App store.

> Spotify doesn’t pay an “Apple Tax”. You can’t subscribe to Spotify within the App store. Spotfy is an example. Plenty of Apps do pay the "Apple tax." I'd get into the complexity of how the "Apple tax" affects Spotify even though it doesn't pay it, but you seem to have already made up your mind about all this regardless of the facts.

You mean companies have to pay to be a part of a marketplace? Software distributors use to pay retailers 60% of the retail price to be sold in stores. It was 70% to be distributed in online app stores like the ones that Verizon use to run to distribute J2ME apps.

And you act as if most revenue from online stores is not coming from in app purchases of consumable goods.

Post reply on HN