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Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

nytimes.com

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Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#241

Post by kortilla »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #226
pmart123 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15% when the subscription is over a year and the 30% cut only applies to digital goods so Uber, Lyft and food delivery, for instance, are exempt. My guess is these fees will continue to drop naturally over time, but they probably haven't dropped fast enough.

Other than government intervention, what incentive does Apple have to lower their fees, particularly as they intend for "services" to be an increased money maker going forward? Perhaps more importantly, why should consumers be subject to Apple's good will? If consumers were able to acquire software from other sources, the market would naturally determine how much of a cut Apple actually deserves.

When people buy a different phone, obviously. If iPhones are so much more expensive that it’s harming you as a consumer, why don’t you switch to one of the many android options?

Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#242

Post by jhayward »

WalterBright wrote: post #235
jhayward wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it's possible to have a difference of opinion on the meaning of "open". The BIOS was the only bit of the design that IBM had any IP in, and they definitely intended other hardware manufacturers to make compatible products, if not perhaps entire systems. It's important to remember the regulatory environment that IBM had operated in at the time. For more than a decade it had been illegal for IBM to exclude 3r…

> was really the only possibility that IBM had while still holding to those earlier legal restrictions on bundling, tying, and license restriction. How does that fit in with the IBM PS/2 design, which was carefully closed?

The PS2 was released in 1987, 5 years after the US antitrust suit against IBM ended, and after IBM no longer had a monopoly position in the PC market.

It was a different era and the horses had left the barn. The PS/2 was a dead end. The original PC architecture, openly evolved, is still generating hundreds of billions in revenue each year - just not for IBM.

Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#243

Post by cmroanirgo »

arcticbull wrote: post #134
Meekro wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa and Mastercard have a pretty effective duopoly, too! Their fees and chargeback procedures are a drag on the entire economy. Getting banned by them effectively kills your ability to accept payments, and many legal but politically unpopular businesses find themselves in the crosshairs.

Chargebacks are overwhelmingly positive. It allows you to use your credit card fearlessly knowing the card companies have your back. Truthfully, if they decreased payment volume or "dragged the economy" card companies wouldn't offer them.

> Chargebacks are overwhelmingly positive.

Not in my experience! Chargeback can kill small businesses rather easily. My dad used to run a timber store. His biggest chargeback was around $5k. The 'card owner' who we vetted, by giving correct name, home address and cvc. The 'card owner' asked it to be delivered around the corner (which is not unusual). 48hrs after delivery (1 week after ordering) later the bank did a charge back...

A large supplier near us got stung for >40k with a single chargeback.

Both instances had documented proof that the retailer has all the information about the card holder & had all reasonable evidence to assume it was the right person.

Most trade people I know, these days ask for 'staged' payments, to ensure a) cashflow & b) reduce risk of chargeback.

It's made me wonder why any retailer puts up with it.

That said, for internet purchases, I appreciate how awesome it is!

Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#244

Post by kortilla »

stcredzero wrote: post #215
bduerst wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think Oxford Dictionary, Wikipedia, and Investopedia are all too narrow with words? Control of the demand side of a market is called a Monopsony , not Monopoly . It's mentioned in the thread above, more info here: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monopsony.asp

You are correct, sir! I remember now HN has had this discussion before. However, I think most people would refer to both a Monopsony and Monopoly as the latter.

No, that’s not true. People rarely even consider that there is a special term for being the only buyer or controlling all of the buyers.

I can’t think of any scenarios where people referred to the military as having a monopoly on the missile market. It doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t even make missiles.

Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#245

Post by refurb »

bilbo0s wrote: post #196
mailslot wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we include Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to the list of monopolistic anti-competitive financial companies?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but we've almost immediately started down the road that HN user fyoving is cautioning us against. The idea that our government is going to go after financial firms is a bit fanciful. (In all honesty, legally speaking, fyoving is even correct in asserting that they aren't even going after tech firms.) When you're getting people's hopes up by making them think that something is going…

Are you arguing that politicians would spend ten years investigating companies with the full knowledge they won’t get anywhere with it beyond political brownie points?

If so, I agree 100%.

Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#246

Post by peterwwillis »

This is literally politicians co-opting popular rage to make themselves look good, and everyone here is stroking themselves because their old tech fantasies aren't cool anymore (and everyone loves a good car crash).

There are so many horrible companies in the world that are actually anti-competitive, but this is the force of evil that needs to be dealt with? An ad company, a consumer products company, a social media company, and an incorporeal futuristic version of Walmart? The last one is perhaps the most applicable, the rest are just pointless makers of gadgets nobody actually needs, like wanting to break up Hasbro.

Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#247

Post by soup10 »

fyoving wrote: post #95

Allow me to temper some of the glee exhibited in the comments and even in some of the reports but a key line here is: "The divvying of antitrust enforcement does not mean that the agencies have opened official investigations" It is worth keeping in mind that antitrust enforcement in the US doesn't care about whiny competitors but if the enduser and customer is harmed and it doesn't appear to be the case when it comes…

Big tech does many scummy things in the name of corporate greed, far from misguided, this is overdue.

Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#248

Post by SomeOldThrow »

joshuamorton wrote: post #214
SomeOldThrow wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's difficult for me to imagine the Justice Dept being able to argue that "customers" were harmed...using services that were free. C'mon, not offering any choice in how you pay for the service is inherently anti-consumer behavior. It's certainly not free, and they certainly never offer the consumer any insight into exactly how they are paying for it.

> C'mon, not offering any choice in how you pay for the service is inherently anti-consumer behavior. This might be the best take I've heard yet. What constitutes choice in method of payment. Since it appears you consider "forcing users to pay with data" to be anti-consumer, is "forcing users to pay with dollars" equally anti-consumer? Does that make, like, restaurants that don't let you pay with personal info anti-c…

I'm not against paying with currency, except insofar as this inherently benefits a subset of humanity. But the issue is not that ads are inherently bad, it's that the interaction is inherently dishonest. A more honest way would allow you, the end-user, to bid for the same ad spots to allow a proper valuation of the ad to the perspective of the consumer. My impression is that Google goes to large efforts to obscure the 'value' of a web page from consumers. If there were proper exchanges between ads and money this might make sense, though I can only imagine the number of ads you might watch to pay for a meal would drive anyone insane.

Plus, ads try to target users with money, so presumably their value is proportional to your value. That's probably also a key reason why you don't see this anywhere: it's a blatantly classist practice.

Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#249

Post by SomeOldThrow »

kortilla wrote: post #237
SomeOldThrow wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's difficult for me to imagine the Justice Dept being able to argue that "customers" were harmed...using services that were free. C'mon, not offering any choice in how you pay for the service is inherently anti-consumer behavior. It's certainly not free, and they certainly never offer the consumer any insight into exactly how they are paying for it.

Google makes it obvious they make money from advertising. You are not forced to use google products. It’s going to be really hard to make an anti-consumer argument here when you’re essentially saying you want google’s product but don’t want to pay the advertising price. That’s like saying McDonald’s is anti-consumer because they don’t let you buy a cheeseburger by singing a song.

> You are not forced to use google products.

That's like saying "you're not forced to use a car to travel", it's just not practical to use the internet without it for many reasons.

> It’s going to be really hard to make an anti-consumer argument here when you’re essentially saying you want google’s product but don’t want to pay the advertising price.

I'm looking for a transaction rather than pimping your data in a completely opaque manner, which is inherently an anti-social interaction, for the end of selling you products you don't want and don't need, another anti-social interaction. It doesn't need to be this way.

Re: Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In

#250

Post by sgift »

BurningFrog wrote: post #207
istjohn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's almost as if the theory that monopolies inevitably grow to take over the world has serious problems. That's a straw man. No one is saying monopolies are immortal. An economy where monopoly usurps monopoly, one after the other in a continuous cycle is a problem, too. If you want a real debate, make the case that the world wouldn't be better off if these tech giants were split up like Ma Bell was in the 1950's a…

> No one is saying monopolies are immortal But they do! They main complaint about monopolies is that they're impossible to outcompete.

Which holds true for both IBM and Microsoft. Both still hold (virtual) monopolies in their respective markets: Mainframes / desktop OS. It's just that these markets are no longer the most important. That's also the reason the EU antitrust law looks at abusing your current power to get a leg up in a new market (e.g. by manipulating search results to promote your shopping service. One of the many things that got Google in hot water in the EU).
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