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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

#141

Post by sgc »

kthartic wrote: post #89
marderfarker2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they rank higher because their product is superior? I mean is there really anything better than Google Earth?

I don’t think that was their point. Why is Google Earth ranked higher than, oh I dunno, Earth?

Google earth is just one more website about the earth, and you can't get the real thing through your tiny tubes. If more people searching for earth want to use that website to explore the real earth rather than say, read the wikipedia article about the earth (and most obviously more people use GE than visit that one page on the wiki), it is correct for it to be ranked higher according to most typical search algorithms. OPs point is perfectly valid, it's just not a great example.

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

#142

Post by [deleted] »

pojntfx wrote: post #50
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, the alternative to PWAs is publishing through proprietary app stores - the users might not care to much, but it's incredibly important for us as devs. Also, one really can't trust a proprietary browser like Safari with their personal data - while one might be able to switch from Chrome due to FLOC on Android, Linux, Windows etc., Safari would _force_ the change on their users, with them being unable to switch t…

[deleted]

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

#143

Post by salawat »

throwaways885 wrote: post #129
jiofih wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some markets it’s pretty close (US teenagers for example).

As a teenager I felt pushed out of conversations because I was an Android user, and got written off as a green bubble.

That's the most ridiculous division known to man.

You don't use the right back end, therefore you aren't cool.

It's absolutely absurd. I mean, about on par for teenagers, but gah... I can picture the conversation about "Your "friends" are complete morons, and you shouldn't feel ashamed or ostracized at what is probably one of the most silliest social signaling practices on the planet."

It hurts being an engineer sometimes. These networks are marvels of human ingenuity, and people take them and use superficial differences in UI and completely miss the point.

God bless. I keep thinking UX/UI can't get any worse, but what humanity takes out of it never ceases to amaze.

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

#144

Post by verdverm »

SuchAnonMuchWow wrote: post #140
Black101 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It never made me switch to Chrome (still use Firefox), but I think that it made a lot of people switch... by having a daily popup telling them that they are using the wrong browser.

no, what made people switch was that chrome is the default browser on android

Firefox slowness sent me there and Chromes account management is what keeps me there

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

#145

Post by nradov »

vlovich123 wrote: post #122
bko wrote: post #100

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. It depends on what you call the marketplace. Look at the broader "retail" sector > The eCommerce giant [Amazon] accounted for 3.2 percent of total consumer spending in Q2 (spanning all categories, including retail) and 9 percent of total retail spending... When it comes to c…

If you define the marketplace as the US economy, Amazon looks like a tiny blip. If you define it as in-person retail Amazon is non-existent. The analogy I would use is that e-commerce retail is smart phones in 2008 (maybe a bit later) and the broader retail market includes landlines and feature phones. Even today landlines exist and feature phones are sold. The growth trajectory for e-commerce won’t change and big bo…

We can't regulate competition in online retail over concerns about what might happen in the future based on an analogy to a completely different market.

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

#146

Post by shockeychap »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #131
shockeychap wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, but there’s less predictability (both in timing and valuations) on the way down. It’s also harder to disguise the insider nature of shorts based on upcoming legislation. On top of that, these companies spend millions on lobbying and have SO MUCH INFLUENCE among DC insiders that reform doesn’t have a chance. It’s more corrupt than anything Hollywood ever made about Big Oil.

I’ll agree with your second point. How can we begin fixing it?

I’m not sure, but I think we have to start with Congressional reform. I don’t generally subscribe to the notion that legislating should be a lucrative, lifelong profession.

I think term limits, pay reduction, and abolishment of the Congressional pension would be an excellent start. It would eliminate some of the career aspects of legislating while forcing lobbyists to regularly deal with new people, somewhat limiting their influence.

However, getting this would require Congress to vote on something that’s against their own interest.

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

#147

Post by Robotbeat »

skystarman wrote: post #74
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…

The standard for antitrust enforcement for decades has been when the action of a company harms consumers. How does Amazon harm consumers? I mean precisely, how? Amazon is one of the most highly rated companies in the US by its customers. Its NPS score is 69 and 70 is considered "world class". I can get almost anything online shipped to my house the SAME DAY. If Amazon sends you the wrong item they'll let you keep the…

Yeah, I agree with your point.

I’d rather see legislation that focused on both improving worker wage and making it easier for new companies to enter the marketplace and compete with Amazon rather than punishing Amazon for having a store brand or whatever (store brands very often seem to be a good thing for consumers, even if companies don’t like being undercut).

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

#148

Post by rincebrain »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #103
ohazi wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible for a monopolist to have a great product that allows people to do amazing things that were never previously possible and still be harming the consumer. Microsoft had the leading desktop operating system in the 90s that allowed millions of ordinary people to start using computers for the first time, yet their browser bundling was considered problematic. Bell telephone allowed you to talk to people across…

Microsoft's dirty tricks with DOS, Windows, and other would-be commodity software are legend. They should have gotten parted out into OS, Desktop suite, and probably several other fragments a long time ago. That stuff was a nightmare for me as a consumer.

Should they have, though?

I agree they should have been penalized (ideally more harshly than they were) for their legendary anticompetitive behavior, I'm just no longer as sure that partitioning the company out into distinct divisions would have been a net gain for the consumer as I used to be, especially against the specific behaviors they were accused of.

How, for example, would breaking up Microsoft into distinct divisions prevent, say, the OS division from enforcing the same anticompetitive requirements on companies licensing the OS?

I also think consumer perception of what's reasonable in an OS has shifted since then. I don't think any of us would argue now, for example, that shipping a desktop OS with no browser installed by default would be a reasonable choice. (Likewise probably a media player.)

Should it be impossible to uninstall? Maybe not, but there's a not-unreasonable argument to be made for preventing someone from winding up in a situation where they have no browser installed at all and can't look up how to fix it. (Having no media player installed is obviously less catastrophic.)

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

#149

Post by 0xB31B1B »

skystarman wrote: post #74
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…

The standard for antitrust enforcement for decades has been when the action of a company harms consumers. How does Amazon harm consumers? I mean precisely, how? Amazon is one of the most highly rated companies in the US by its customers. Its NPS score is 69 and 70 is considered "world class". I can get almost anything online shipped to my house the SAME DAY. If Amazon sends you the wrong item they'll let you keep the…

“The standard for decades”... the article is about a new laws being proposed because the current laws don’t properly account for the harms monopoly actors cause.

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

#150

Post by traib »

zffr wrote: post #70
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…

WebKit on iOS has special sandbox privileges not available to other user frameworks. I think it allows it to spawn other processes, and do special stuff to increase its performance and decrease energy consumption. It seems like an engineering challenge to expose these features to arbitrary 3rd party frameworks in a way that doesn’t allow these features to be abused. Not sure of Apple’s full motives, but I think this…

> WebKit on iOS has special sandbox privileges not available to other user frameworks.

Okay so WebKit cannot be used as is, but then why forbid other alternatives [1]? Seems like a Catch-22.

> It seems like an engineering challenge to expose these features to arbitrary 3rd party frameworks in a way that doesn’t allow these features to be abused.

How does literally every single other platform manage this? AFAIK none of Android, Windows, the many Unix-like OSs, even Apple's MacOs have such restrictions on browser apps.

And I think it'd be unfair to characterize the users of those other platforms as being "abused" by their browser apps. E.g. Firefox seems pretty trustworthy.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ - "2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript."

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