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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

#31

Post by atdrummond »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #25
capableweb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Yes, so the issue is not just selling your own products in your own marketplace. > 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. I would say Home Depot has far more control of their markets than Amazon does. Pick any smaller metro, and the only consumer building materials store around…

I’m from a rural county in Illinois and our largest city has Lowes, HD, Menards, Ace, Farm and Home Supply and a number of specialty stores. There’s considerably more competition in Home Depot’s field.

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

#32

Post by yuri91 »

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?

it is worse... at least you could always install a competing browser engine on Windows if you wanted

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

#33

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

pojntfx wrote: post #26
heavenlyblue wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is Apple allowed to disallow any other web browsers on their mobile devices? They now allow it by the way. I don't know why. I am using Firefox on iOS and it was supported for at least half a year AFAIK. Your point still stands obviously.

You're not using Firefox, you're using Safari with another skin. Browser engines other than Apple-approved Safari/WebKit are illegal on Apple platforms, effectively rendering it the biggest blocker for the web right now (no PWAs, no push notifications, no offline support, no support for free audio codecs, extensions ... and the list goes on!)

I wouldn't bury your flag on this argument. Many users don't care about that stuff, and Apple is winning the privacy war through decisions like these.

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

#34

Post by LatteLazy »

capableweb wrote: post #13
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 mo…

The standard in most places (US included) is that monopolies (and duopolies etc) are allowed. But they are not allowed to abuse their positions.

That leaves us with 2 issues I think:

1. If people want competitive markets, that's fine but that's a new policy, and big tech is a bad place to start because it's much more competitive than many many other markets. You can pick 1001 other stores than amazon, but you will be paying with Visa or Mastercard...

2. We need to regulate a lot of new utilities. Are you sure you want the FCC deciding what innovations are allowed in search or social media? Aren't there massive free speech issues there?

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

#35

Post by [deleted] »

atdrummond wrote: post #31
lotsofpulp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so the issue is not just selling your own products in your own marketplace. > 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. I would say Home Depot has far more control of their markets than Amazon does. Pick any smaller metro, and the only consumer building materials store around…

I’m from a rural county in Illinois and our largest city has Lowes, HD, Menards, Ace, Farm and Home Supply and a number of specialty stores. There’s considerably more competition in Home Depot’s field.

[deleted]

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

#36

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

jiofih wrote: post #16

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%?

>Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%?

No they don't. To rephrase, you're suggesting that companies are entitled to getting bought out. That's ridiculous. Owning a company is a privilege, people who abuse that privilege, billionaires, should be stripped of that power. Corporate America is cancerous, consuming and destroying everything indiscriminately for vanity, numbers on a screen, and authoritarian control over the less privileged.

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

#37

Post by thrav »

swebs wrote: post #27
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.

What market is Disney a monopoly in?

Soon to expire copyright material (stories, characters, etc.) that they then block from ever entering the public domain.

https://nyunews.com/opinion/2019/10/01/disney-public-domain-...

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

#40

Post by Mindwipe »

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…

> It’s not competitive advantage, it’s strategy

It's 100% competitive advantage. The main driver of Apple's lack of support for Flash was to damage the web's ability to distribute DRMed video and force it into apps on iOS, where Apple could rent seek a 30% commission from subscription fees.

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