Where Warren’s Wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#261

Post by fcarraldo » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #259

fcarraldo wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you've invented a product and are producing them at a small scale (100 units per month). What would it take to sell that product at Walmart? What would it take to sell it on Amazon?

Amazon sells all products, Walmart only sells some. Amazon sells online, Walmart sells in retail and online. So Amazon might preference another product, while Walmart both preferences other products and doesn't even accept most. Walmart preferences other products online as well. Yet Amazon is a monopoly? So if Amazon greatly restricted their product offering, they are good to go?

You asked the difference between a marketplace and a retail store. Being a marketplace alone does not incur regulation. Being a dominant marketplace which takes anti-competitive stances is problematic, and taking action against anti-competitive moves by the most dominant marketplace in the US is what's being debated here.

I'm not certain why we seem to be debating the merits of Walmart versus Amazon. I would be willing to venture that Warren supports regulations and potential antitrust action against Walmart, too. Just because she's proposed antitrust action on one type of organization doesn't mean she won't also support another - indeed, she wants the same of many organizations on Wall Street, and previously sponsored legislation to regulate Walmart to prevent poor labor practices [0].

[0] https://thehill.com/policy/finance/224535-warren-puts-pressu...

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#262

Post by _ea1k » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

strange_quark wrote: post #193

_ea1k wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is that a marketplace is a place where it is easier for a third-party to get their goods sold than a retailer? And the distinction is how a supplier gets their product in is the differentiator? And then the argument is that the marketplace (where it is easier to get listed) should be regulated more than the retailer (which often uses control over sales to push prices up)? I'm not onboard with this.

The argument is that retailers take on risk by agreeing to sell a product since they purchase the product upfront. A marketplace like Amazon is different because they can take on 0 risk while still collecting all the data about what's selling and then turn around and undercut the vendor with an Amazon Basics product risk free.

The practical difference between selling a few items in a few test stores vs offering a marketplace is zero. The storespace is a much bigger limiting factor than the perceived difference between a "marketplace" and a "retailer", IMO.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#263

Post by _ea1k » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

extra88 wrote: post #232

strange_quark wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that retailers take on risk by agreeing to sell a product since they purchase the product upfront. A marketplace like Amazon is different because they can take on 0 risk while still collecting all the data about what's selling and then turn around and undercut the vendor with an Amazon Basics product risk free.

First, I think large retailers like Walmart can reduce or even eliminate the risk of selling a product in their contracts with product producers, making it effectively like selling on consignment. How profitable is Amazon Basics anyway? I bet it's small numbers. If dropping it was enough to get regulators to go away, I bet Amazon would drop it in a heartbeat. Other aspects like Prime and AWS are worth fighting over,…

I bet Amazon does pretty good business with "Basics". It is a really interesting concept, IMO, and really different from store brands in the past.

In many cases, the Amazon Basics products compete with essentially brandless (or relatively unknown brand) importers. The Amazon Basics brand works in these cases by having significantly more credibility than (insert random name here) USB cables.

Its really the opposite way that store brand products have worked with traditional products in B&M stores, where the branded product generally has a higher natural reputation.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#264

Post by jklinger410 » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

fcarraldo wrote: post #261

jklinger410 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon sells all products, Walmart only sells some. Amazon sells online, Walmart sells in retail and online. So Amazon might preference another product, while Walmart both preferences other products and doesn't even accept most. Walmart preferences other products online as well. Yet Amazon is a monopoly? So if Amazon greatly restricted their product offering, they are good to go?

You asked the difference between a marketplace and a retail store. Being a marketplace alone does not incur regulation. Being a dominant marketplace which takes anti-competitive stances is problematic, and taking action against anti-competitive moves by the most dominant marketplace in the US is what's being debated here. I'm not certain why we seem to be debating the merits of Walmart versus Amazon. I would be willi…

> Being a dominant marketplace which takes anti-competitive stances is problematic.

Totally agree. The reason I bring up Wal Mart is to illustrate how this is essentially click-bait legislation.

Wal Mart tore through main street providing retail space for products they liked, also making their own versions and selling for much cheaper, preferencing products, etc. Dominating the marketplace and forcing businesses to close. We called that good capitalism. To my knowledge, Warren has not submitted or voted on a bill in her tenure to break up Wal Mart.

However now we are presenting Amazon as a unique type of problem and asking to break it up. With the one chief difference being the perception of fairness in presenting products equally because you can upload the listings yourself and it's on the internet.

I'm just trying to figure out why these relatively young, trendy companies, instead of a whole host of other monopolies that are far more important.

If the legislation comes down to semantics around an internet "marketplace" vs a retail store, then that begs another question of whether or not that is actually fair, and what the functional difference between the two actually is.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#265

Post by root_axis » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #257

root_axis wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A barrier to entry is something a competitor cannot acquire. This is 100% incorrect. By that definition every company's private source code is a barrier to entry for their competitors. Clearly this is wrong. > It is impossible for competitors to acquire the insight that Google has amassed, since it is based on historical data that is not available anymore. I'm sorry but you are just plain wrong about what constitut…

> This is 100% incorrect. By that definition every company's private source code is a barrier to entry for their competitors. Clearly this is wrong. Nope. In the case of source code, a competitor has just as much opportunity to solve the same problem in either the same way or a better way. In the case of data which is no longer available, there is no equivalent way to reproduce it. You either took advantage of it whe…

> In the case of source code, a competitor has just as much opportunity to solve the same problem in either the same way or a better way.

Same is true of google source code.

> In the case of data which is no longer available, there is no equivalent way to reproduce it. You either took advantage of it when it was available, or you never can.

The data is available through the same mechanism that google used to acquire it, i.e. by tracking user behavior; it's a common practice for just about every business with a web presence.

> Google’s code may be replicable, but their data and access to data are not.

True of literally every software company.

> It’s just a straw man that you can keep railing against

It's not a straw man, it's your semantic equivocation in order to make the claim that tracking user behavior to improve the product is somehow disjoint from the product itself. Based on that reasoning we should stop every company from tracking user behavior because that somehow creates a barrier to entry for their competition.

Before you move the goalposts any further away from patents into data collection, any answer for my Tesla question?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#266

Post by zepto » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

root_axis wrote: post #265

zepto wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is 100% incorrect. By that definition every company's private source code is a barrier to entry for their competitors. Clearly this is wrong. Nope. In the case of source code, a competitor has just as much opportunity to solve the same problem in either the same way or a better way. In the case of data which is no longer available, there is no equivalent way to reproduce it. You either took advantage of it whe…

> In the case of source code, a competitor has just as much opportunity to solve the same problem in either the same way or a better way. Same is true of google source code. > In the case of data which is no longer available, there is no equivalent way to reproduce it. You either took advantage of it when it was available, or you never can. The data is available through the same mechanism that google used to acquire…

There is no moving of goalposts. Data collection was part of my argument from the start.

It seems like you have a problem with basic comprehension.

You say “Same is true of google source code“ as a retort to my first paragraph. Can you not see that I am actually saying that? Notice that the first two paragraphs are actually connected as part of an argument.

The argument is that although a competitor can potentially produce code that competes with Google’s code, a competitor cannot collect historical information about the web and searches.

Why do I say they can not collect this information?

Because it’s historical - i.e. it was available in the past, but is no longer available.

Google has the advantage of having not only a huge head start, but all the data available up to how about the structure of the web and user searches.

Patents are a separate issue, I did mention them in my original post, but it doesn’t matter whether we agree or disagree on that, since there it only takes one barrier to entry for you to be wrong.

Google isn’t just an algorithm.

It is also data. Data which is not available to competitors because it isn’t present anymore.

Your statement that we should ban user tracking is another example of you creating an absurd remedy as a strawman.

Nobody is proposing that remedy.

That doesn’t mean we have to deceive ourselves into believing that there are no barriers to entry to compete with Google.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#267

Post by phillmv » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #196

jmrobertson wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I obviously have the view that the walled garden benefits consumers, so my bias shows. And, I think there's a lot of wiggle room on the cost to host in the App store. However, US monopoly law is based on consumer harm, so... I think on a mobile platform, with plenty of competition to not buy an iOS-based phone, a walled garden absolutely benefits consumers more than it hurts. There is so much PII on phones now. Given…

Theres a pretty good argument to be made that it nearly eliminates piracy, and is good for business too.

my dudes: charge yearly $$ to get a cert that allows you to request permissions higher than "access {camera, location while in use, microphone}" and most of the truly harsh PII issues go away afaict

the harm isn't consumer oriented, since it's somewhat diffuse, it's about concentration of market power in the industry.

we could live in a world where you target one distribution platform, and phone vendors compete to police malware, but instead we have walled gardens that police content & economically lock you to their environments and don't even do a good job about malware

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#268

Post by phillmv » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

jmrobertson wrote: post #106

phillmv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people should not be permitted to go to netflix.com to install the netflix app, or to twitter.com etc etc

that gets into interesting Human-Comp Interaction discussions, but a good place to start is that the HCI dynamic of mobile/tablet platforms is totally different (deliberately) from that traditional approach to browsers. So I guess it could be done, but relying on that approach undermines a lot of what make mobile platforms 'mobile platforms.'

different from _desktops_, but pointedly not browsers. from a HCI standpoint it's actually quite similar to browsers: sandboxed point and click

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#269

Post by root_axis » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 11:34 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #266

root_axis wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of source code, a competitor has just as much opportunity to solve the same problem in either the same way or a better way. Same is true of google source code. > In the case of data which is no longer available, there is no equivalent way to reproduce it. You either took advantage of it when it was available, or you never can. The data is available through the same mechanism that google used to acquire…

There is no moving of goalposts. Data collection was part of my argument from the start. It seems like you have a problem with basic comprehension. You say “Same is true of google source code“ as a retort to my first paragraph. Can you not see that I am actually saying that? Notice that the first two paragraphs are actually connected as part of an argument. The argument is that although a competitor can potentially p…

> There is no moving of goalposts. Data collection was part of my argument from the start.

It's moving the goalposts because when I countered the argument you dropped it, ignored it, and redoubled on data collection.

> Because it’s historical - i.e. it was available in the past, but is no longer available.

Every company that collects data collects "historical" data.

> advantage of having not only a huge head start

A headstart is not a barrier to entry for your competitors.

> all the data available up to how about the structure of the web and user searches.

Data collection is not a barrier to entry for your competitors. Google isn't stopping you from crawling the web to determine its structure. Just because google collected data on user searches in the past doesn't mean you can't collect data on user searches on your own platform today.

> Your statement that we should ban user tracking is another example of you creating an absurd remedy as a strawman.

I did not propose it as a remedy, it is a deliberately absurd conclusion meant to illustrate the flaw in your reasoning, i.e. the fact that every company collects user data and nobody ever views that practice as barrier to entry for competitors.

> That doesn’t mean we have to deceive ourselves into believing that there are no barriers to entry to compete with Google.

For someone that deigns to project insults about reading comprehension you sure are bad at it yourself. Re-read what I wrote. I never said there are no barriers to entry, I said that google's business model does not create barriers to entry for their competitors. If we're using every single competitive advantage as an example of a "barrier to entry" then the term is meaningless because it applies to every market leader.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#270

Post by zepto » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

root_axis wrote: post #269

zepto wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no moving of goalposts. Data collection was part of my argument from the start. It seems like you have a problem with basic comprehension. You say “Same is true of google source code“ as a retort to my first paragraph. Can you not see that I am actually saying that? Notice that the first two paragraphs are actually connected as part of an argument. The argument is that although a competitor can potentially p…

> There is no moving of goalposts. Data collection was part of my argument from the start. It's moving the goalposts because when I countered the argument you dropped it, ignored it, and redoubled on data collection. > Because it’s historical - i.e. it was available in the past, but is no longer available. Every company that collects data collects "historical" data. > advantage of having not only a huge head start A…

You just said ‘I never said there are no barriers to entry’.

But earlier you said:

> ‘All you have to do" is produce a better product; just because that is hard does not make it a barrier.’

Which is it - are you claiming there are no barriers to entry, or do you concede that there actually are?

As to your dismissal or the argument about collecting data. That’s also a false comparison.

Lots of people collect data yes, but they don’t have what Google has, and they aren’t trying to use it to compete with Google.

It’s not relevant, and it’s another example of you creating a straw man.

The point is that the corpus that enables Google’s search quality to be so high is not available.