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Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

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Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#191

Post by minsc__and__boo »

akiselev wrote: post #35
newsclues wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grocery retail is much more complicated. They may charge shelf space rent.

They take on the vast majority of the inventory risk, which is the fundamental detail everyone seems to miss. They own what they sell. The complications come from trying to manage that risk - manufacturers who have better products or marketing can afford to pay for prime shelf space which also means it'll move faster.

This has been the model traditionally but retailers have been shifting to renting shelf/floor space to wholesalers and manufacturers. You may see certain fully-branded end caps in grocery stores, or kiosks in Best Buy, for example.

It's still not the same as signing up to creating your own store on Amazon though.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#192

Post by 8note »

nerfhammer wrote: post #49
Jaygles wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another difference between Amazon and physical stores is that Amazon has pagination. If a product ends up on the second or third page, it will likely not be seen by the vast majority of customers. With physical stores, your options are always all right in front of you.

for physical stores sellers fight over having products placed on eye-level shelves vs. not

Or at the front of the store, vs a back corner

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#193

Post by hardtke »

bogwog wrote: post #144
dreamcompiler wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to be careful about breakups to prevent re-agglomeration. Although AT&T was broken up, the Baby Bells eventually merged back together again while nobody was looking. The winner was Southwestern Bell, which later renamed itself to AT&T. The AT&T we know today is really just Southwestern Bell with a new name. Fortunately they have competitors but not very many.

I wonder why the DOD/FTC/whatever can't/won't impose specific restrictions on companies in order to correct anti-trust issues? That seems a lot less drastic and risky than a break-up. For example, if Apple is forcing developers to use their payments SDK to collect 30%, why can't a government agency just force them to stop? Maybe there was a long official investigation by antitrust regulators, and that kicked off a lo…

Being large is not illegal. Having a monopoly in a specific product is not illegal. The standard by which the antitrust officials judge companies is whether the company controls a sufficient part of the market such that the consumer is harmed. The problem with the current regulations with respect to Google/Facebook is that their products are "free" to the "consumer," and free can't be harmful (harm is higher prices). The state attorney generals complaint against Google tries to recast the "consumer" as advertisers. The reason Apple and Amazon get a pass is that within their "markets" they are still relatively small. For Apple, their market would be all cell phones (or in the Epic case the Apple lawyers define the market as all game platforms). Since they don't have a majority of these markets and consumers are free to switch within the market they can't be forced to change behavior. "iPhone" is not a market by antitrust definition. Amazon places itself in the total retail market where they are still less that 10%. As the law is currently written and interpreted most of what big tech does is not a violation of antitrust laws -- the laws do need to be changed for everyone.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#194

Post by 8note »

nerdponx wrote: post #117

Somewhat OT, but I love how this "kitchen sink" idiom has become so warped over the last several years. As far as I know (native AmE), the original expression was "everything but the kitchen sink", which evokes the idea of taking everything in the kitchen and using it all in a recipe, only stopping short of dismantling the kitchen itself. Whether through mishearing or laziness, the "everything but the" part has been…

I think dr Seuss added "even the kitchen sink" at some point.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#195

Post by 8note »

klaudius wrote: post #174
joejerryronnie wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve also got to read the room. The mood in the US is not in favor of hard charging mavericks of industry. This approach today would likely backfire spectacularly. Big Tech should be locating large employment centers in strategic locations around the country. And by strategic I don’t mean where the talent, resources, or customers are located but rather where influential Congresspeople, Senators, and Governors are l…

Big Tech should be locating large employment centers in strategic locations around the country. And by strategic I don’t mean where the talent, resources, or customers are located but rather where influential Congresspeople, Senators, and Governors are located. I thought this was one of the problems of a Soviet style command economy. They would locate production not where it was more efficient and made economic sense…

*Less efficient competition if they can't get the government to vote their way

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#196

Post by jimmaswell »

dalbasal wrote: post #141
ethbr0 wrote: post #54

I've come around and landed more on the opinion that we're now enabling our jailors. Light tech regulation was exactly the correct approach in the 1990s (and arguably the 2000s). It enabled mind-boggling rapid and stunning innovation. ... However, the massive corporate fortunes built by the winners of those times are now primarily enabling rent seeking. Google and Facebook's other work is interesting in the same way…

FB is somewhat of an odd man out... I certainly think reversing acquisitions would be a positive, but... With Bell, standard oil and past monopolies... the goal was to decentralise while keeping oil and telecom viable. We wanted what they made, and didn't want disruptions. Do we want what FB makes? Is it scarce? I feel like we would have a sufficient supply of likes, shares, messages and posts regardless. There doesn…

> Do we want what FB makes? Is it scarce?.. doesn't need to be a $trn company

People want a social network that everyone else is on, that works on all their devices, and isn't full of spam bots or bugs. It takes a big company to do this at scale and the network effect makes useful social networks scarce.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#197

Post by bingidingi »

graeme wrote: post #184
crazygringo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the monopoly aspect. Amazon is a quasi-monopoly for sellers in the sense that many sellers can only be profitable selling on Amazon, they have no choice. If Amazon has data on their entire customer base, clones their product and puts them out of business, you can view that as monopoly abuse of power. On the other hand, Ruffles sells their potato chips to hundreds if not thousands of national grocery store chains…

There are basically three large grocery chains in the US, plus Target and Walmart. The e commerce market isn’t so different. Amazon has a 40% share. Walmart is a big player, then Shopify et al enable lots of DTC companies. Amazon is only a monopoly if you redefine the relevant market to be “Amazon” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_i...

I believe Amazon is more like 50%+ now, and to compared to brick & mortar... Wal-Mart is considered huge and still only ~10% of the market.

There are more than 3 grocery chains in your link, I think you may have overlooked the regional chains listed below.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#198

Post by crazygringo »

graeme wrote: post #184
crazygringo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the monopoly aspect. Amazon is a quasi-monopoly for sellers in the sense that many sellers can only be profitable selling on Amazon, they have no choice. If Amazon has data on their entire customer base, clones their product and puts them out of business, you can view that as monopoly abuse of power. On the other hand, Ruffles sells their potato chips to hundreds if not thousands of national grocery store chains…

There are basically three large grocery chains in the US, plus Target and Walmart. The e commerce market isn’t so different. Amazon has a 40% share. Walmart is a big player, then Shopify et al enable lots of DTC companies. Amazon is only a monopoly if you redefine the relevant market to be “Amazon” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_i...

But as you can see from the gigantic list on that page, most grocery stores don't belong to those top 3.

I live in NYC, for example, and I don't know a single grocery store here that belongs to a national chain or even a regional one -- they're all local. (With the sole exception of Target, but that surely doesn't make up even 1% of grocery sales here.)

So the ecommerce market is entirely different. There's no grocery store equivalent of Amazon's 40% share. And people can easily visit different grocery stores, but Prime members tend to shop mostly exclusively on Amazon for the obvious reasons, so it's locked-in in a very unique way.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#199

Post by summerlight »

I think this can be easily defeated by breaking companies into a cartel of smaller companies which effectively operate as is. This $600B cap should go down significantly to prevent this, something like $50B but I don't expect that to happen thanks to Walmart, Verizon and Comcast.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#200

Post by tmp_anon_22 »

dalbasal wrote: post #141
ethbr0 wrote: post #54

I've come around and landed more on the opinion that we're now enabling our jailors. Light tech regulation was exactly the correct approach in the 1990s (and arguably the 2000s). It enabled mind-boggling rapid and stunning innovation. ... However, the massive corporate fortunes built by the winners of those times are now primarily enabling rent seeking. Google and Facebook's other work is interesting in the same way…

FB is somewhat of an odd man out... I certainly think reversing acquisitions would be a positive, but... With Bell, standard oil and past monopolies... the goal was to decentralise while keeping oil and telecom viable. We wanted what they made, and didn't want disruptions. Do we want what FB makes? Is it scarce? I feel like we would have a sufficient supply of likes, shares, messages and posts regardless. There doesn…

I think if Facebook got truly broken up worse apps would take its place, particularly in communities outside US jurisdiction. Say what you will about Facebook, but I believe some random FB employee can't just dive through my personal messages without consequences. Having met several, I believe their data scientists go to great lengths to strip PII and generally secure data sets in transit between teams and outside parties. Don't tell me some 3 person start-up is going to get even remotely close to that level of control.
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