211–220 of 290 posts
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To be fair, that's inaccurately reframing the argument. Apple with an Apple store for Apple Apps is the equivalent to what you're saying. Tesla doesn't sell Teslas _and_ BMWs.
I don't disagree with you so not sure your point, see my original point. I'm stating that the Tesla comparison doesn't apply to what Apple's specific situation is, and therefore what policy proposals/considerations apply.
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What is the legal definition of a monopoly? As a followup, should that definition remain the legal definition of a monopoly? Do we need a modern appraisal of that definition?
A monopoly is when there is no competition. There can be seller and buyer monopolies. While having a huge market share is a given in such a situation, it's nonetheless not the definition
Stratechery is weirdly insular site. I don't know the background but it looks like the writer/writers just read business news and create their own ideas and don't like to study or read economics. The "Aggregation Theory" is perfect example of this. It's like the author is not aware that the idea he came up has not been under study for decades and has well developed concepts, terminology and research subject.
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> predatory pricing is undercutting a competitor to purposely drive them out of business. That is the purpose of all competition in a free market -- to achieve as large a market share as possible. In a stable market, this necessarily involves removing business from your competitors.
No the entire purpose is to make a profit. The most profitable company in the US is Apple. They didn’t get there by chasing market share.
You argue that Apple does have competition, and that's nominally true if you are very coarse and sloppy with your comparisons, but due to marketing and their walled garden, they are basically a monopoly over the upper / more artistic portions of the market:
https://wccftech.com/apple-iphone-counterpoint-premium-smart...
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The only way that you could make another Facebook client is by allowing third parties to access the social graph. Then you get Cambridge Analytics. When you give a third party access to “your” data with respect to your friends, they also have access to my data that I never gave them permission for.
Making a third party client doesn't require any third party entity to access the data, only third party software -- which it already does. If your friend accesses Facebook via Firefox, Firefox inherently has that data. So does the operating system, the TLS library the browser uses, etc. But it never has to leave your friend's device, and neither would it need to with some different client.
My browser doesn’t have access to scrape all of my Facebook information and all of my friends FB information.
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> Microsoft is still just as dominant in the PC operating system market and the desktop productivity market as it was in 1999. The sanctions were on the way they illegally leveraged that (legally attained) monopoly to monopolize other markets. Something which they've been decidedly less prone to do since. Well, at least for a while, they are now pretty much following the lead of the companies Warren is complaining ab…
You really think they didn’t set out to dominate mobile, search, the gaming market, etc? You really think they had a strategy meeting and said that their strategy was going to be to always be a strong second?
No, I think they were, at a minimum, more restrained in unlawfully leveraging their existing monopolies to do that thsn they were in the 1990s with the browser, not that they didn't try to dominate those markets.
Bullshit. If you don't have VC investment under your belt, no corporation would use your services. I have seen this first hand. They refuse to deal with small bootstrapped players. It doesn't matter how great your tech is.
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A textbook example of this would be Bezos dropping diaper prices through the floor and doing it long enough to nearly drive diapers.com out of business. After which, he squired the company.
Or YC funding a company until its non YC funded competitor went out of business to make its investment worth more. I’m not saying that YC has ever done that. I’m just taking the argument to it’s logical conclusion.
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…
One thing I didn't get about Warren's comment was her assertion that if you provide the store for others to sell in you aren't allowed to sell because you have access to data and product placement that gives you an unfair advantage. Okay according to that line of reasoning Wal-Mart and all major grocery chains should be broken up because they all sell private label merchandise. Or none of them should be allowed to sell private label merchandise because they can give it the best placement and know which products are best to make. Obviously that argument quickly falls apart because a consumer who goes to a grocery store is quickly going to become frustrated and go elsewhere if all they can find are the store's own versions of products that they are shopping for. Amazon and Google have demonstrated a very clear understanding of this since they started, knowing that giving the customer what they want quickly and conveniently is the most important thing. If it happens to be Amazon's own brand of duffel bag or Google's own restaurant reviews based on the search then so be it. But I seriously doubt Google is withholding Yelp results to be anticompetitive. The far more likely explanation in my mind is that a searcher would rather see a Google Map with all of the restaurants and pictures and reviews quickly and reliably and Google knows that. That they might profit by it is a happy accident not because they control the means of search. Sooner or later the better product experience is going to win out regardless of whether it is made by Google or somebody else. Google has tried for a decade to compete in social and has failed despite having far greater resources for most of that time.
In short, I think "monopoly!" is a convenient scapegoat for the Yelp's of the world so they don't have to admit that Google simply built a better product experience than they did.
I have to admit I'm a little taken aback by the focus on how the stated rationale is weak or doesn't fit every company equally while agreeing that there are real problems that would be addressed. Is there a word for this? Its almost nit-picking? Pedantry? Like dismissing someone who is fighting against anti-vaxxers because they didn't quote the most definitive study as rationale. Explanations of policy ideas aren't t…
First phrase: "Senator Elizabeth Warren deserves credit"
Rest of article: Giving Warren no credit, merely quoting her proposal and refuting parts of it.
It's clear this is a proposal, it's like Green New Deal or Medicare for All. There's almost zero chance anything like these policies would not get heavily changed in a legislative process. Politicians just release these to market themselves and guide the policy discussions pre-election.