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U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#11

Post by lotsofpulp »

capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

> How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace? They should have been forced to divide their busin

Depends on how you define “marketplace”. Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores.

Is their one store the marketplace? It takes considerably more effort to go to a different store than going to a different website.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#12

Post by starfallg »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #11
capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

> How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace? They should have been forced to divide their busin Depends on how you define “marketplace”. Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores. Is their one store the marketplace? It takes considerably more effort to go t…

Antitrust legislation usually kick in when there is a dominant participant in the market that is abusing their position. So shops having their own-brand products competing with products from vendors is fine until the company in question has an effective hold on that market.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#13

Post by capableweb »

LatteLazy wrote: post #10

A lot of this just looks like punishing success to me. Or rather success combined with a lack of political involvement aka donation. If it cares about monopolies go look at comcast or Disney or big chunks of agriculture or Boeing etc. If the house really cares about privacy, it should look at the patriot act. If it cares about workers, go look at Walmart.

> A lot of this just looks like punishing success to me

I guess if you think "success" means companies ending up as monopolies, I guess you're right. In general, capitalism gravitates to a "winner takes it all" situations as with more capital, you can also capture more of the market. But we also generally prefer to have many players in the market so competition still exists.

All this work here is trying to prevent monopolies from forming, because currently the US is very much lacking in any tooling to prevent monopolies, as we see in a lot of industries, not just technology.

A step in the right direction it seems to me.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#14

Post by eecc »

capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

> How is Apple allowed to disallow any other web browsers on their mobile devices? We already went through this with Microsoft in the past but suddenly it's different?

Nope, total Apple and Oranges.

Forbidding other HTML rendering engines on iOS, prevented other massive players (Google) from forcing their browser platform onto Apple’s user base and Electron-ized Apple’s ecosystem making iOS a marginal runtime.

Or worse, Adobe could have spun their own Adobe Flash app “now with web access too!”.

It’s not competitive advantage, it’s strategy

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#15

Post by roenxi »

I support anything that makes life harder for the FAANG style companies - I'm just never going to believe that the US house will do what this article signals they do.

Facebook and Twitter are profound influences on politics. I look on the politically aligned mainstream news, practices like gerrymandering, the general state of political discourse, do some quick joining of dots and ... well. Political involvement isn't going to move the situation in a direction I like.

FAANG is bad. I'll be on the record as saying whatever comes out of the House will be proven worse in time.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#16

Post by jiofih »

The top 10 tech companies have collectively acquired and shut down hundreds of small, successful startups.

I believe this is very detrimental to the web and the economy. Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%?

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#17

Post by jiofih »

eecc wrote: post #14
capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

> How is Apple allowed to disallow any other web browsers on their mobile devices? We already went through this with Microsoft in the past but suddenly it's different? Nope, total Apple and Oranges. Forbidding other HTML rendering engines on iOS, prevented other massive players (Google) from forcing their browser platform onto Apple’s user base and Electron-ized Apple’s ecosystem making iOS a marginal runtime. Or wor…

How different is that from Microsoft and IE?

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#18

Post by capableweb »

eecc wrote: post #14
capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

> How is Apple allowed to disallow any other web browsers on their mobile devices? We already went through this with Microsoft in the past but suddenly it's different? Nope, total Apple and Oranges. Forbidding other HTML rendering engines on iOS, prevented other massive players (Google) from forcing their browser platform onto Apple’s user base and Electron-ized Apple’s ecosystem making iOS a marginal runtime. Or wor…

How does preventing competition in a specific application category lead to Apple preventing Google from "forcing" iOS users to use Chrome? Not sure I follow your argument here or how allowing browsers would somehow make it possible for Google to automatically install Chrome for iOS users.

Imagine if Google suddenly made their Chrome browser behave differently on Google websites compared to others, like 0.5 the performance for no reason. This could be seen as a strategy to increase engagement on Google properties, but I'm fairly sure most of us would see it as an attempt on monopolizing the web in Google's favor. Why is it different for Apple and browsers? They are intentionally making it impossible to create competitors to their own browser, for no technological reason besides "we don't want that".

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#19

Post by lallysingh »

jiofih wrote: post #17
eecc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is Apple allowed to disallow any other web browsers on their mobile devices? We already went through this with Microsoft in the past but suddenly it's different? Nope, total Apple and Oranges. Forbidding other HTML rendering engines on iOS, prevented other massive players (Google) from forcing their browser platform onto Apple’s user base and Electron-ized Apple’s ecosystem making iOS a marginal runtime. Or wor…

How different is that from Microsoft and IE?

iOS isn't 90%+ of the phone market.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#20

Post by capableweb »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #11
capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

> How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace? They should have been forced to divide their busin Depends on how you define “marketplace”. Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores. Is their one store the marketplace? It takes considerably more effort to go t…

It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market. In the case of Amazon, it seems like they have above 52% of the e-commerce market in the US in 2019 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c...) so probably it's even higher now.

When one player now has over half the market, you need to carefully watch what they are doing in order for them not to start exploiting their position. This is why it's different between Amazon and Home Depot, they hold different amount of the market, so even if Home Depot wanted to exploit their position, they probably couldn't. Amazon with their marketshare, can do so much easier.

Then there is the issue of specifically Amazon ranking their own products above others in their search results, even if others have better reviews, more purchases, more page views and so on. Then we start getting into "abusing their market position" territory, and this is what is getting investigated now.

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