Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#61

Post by LatteLazy » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #59

Targeting the FANGs and not the banking system and telecoms is super annoying. The amount of damage the banking system can do to the economy is orders of magnitude greater than FANGs can, as we recently witnessed. And the telecom regional monopolies that suppress competition and block municipal broadband have much stronger competitive moats than the FANGs do. The government needs to address those first, but they seem…

Banking and Telecoms pay their lobbying tax and their old-media advertising tax. Its a pretty simple protection racket they grew up with. FAANG thought they'd be allowed to operate without it. They're not. As soon as they pump some money into both parties and buy some ads they'll be fine.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#62

Post by eggsmediumrare » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #49

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly agree. We're seeing legislation target the sector of the economy with some of the highest productivity ever seen in human history. Congress needs to look at the sectors with the lowest productivity growth! Home construction, infrastructure, health care, and eduction. Here's a great place for congressional investigators to start: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-c... Though, in reali…

I'm sticking my head out a bit here given that this is HN... But I largely attribute the high productivity of tech to the simple nature of software as opposed to the tech industry being comprised of the most productive workers and efficient management. The flexibility and efficiency of software is insane compared to even just the hardware side of it, much less medicine or home building.

I agree. It's also "new," so there is more room to find opportunities to improve productivity.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#63

Post by yowlingcat » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:16 PM UTC

dundarious wrote: post #39

WalterBright wrote: post #25

Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches? The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.

I'm highly skeptical of that prediction. The EU are hardly slouches with respect to anti-monopoly actions. Chinese and Russian companies are subject to intense fear-mongering (not that every criticism is invalid) and are unlikely to take the place of FAANG. And I don't foresee other Asian, African, Middle-Eastern, or companies from UK or the Americas achieving huge monopolies before actions could be taken against the…

What do you think about ByteDance? The crown jewel of social media no longer belongs to the US.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#64

Post by musicale » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

Just imagine what the internet would be like if we hadn't broken up the AOL/CompuServe monopoly on online services!

As they said in 1997, “The reality is that AOL is cyberspace."[1]

This is an interesting perspective btw on how the Microsoft settlement set the stage for the rise of Google, etc.:

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/6/17827042/antitrust-1990s-m...

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#65

Post by zsz » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

How will breaking up the biggest U.S. tech firms not make them more vulnerable to Chinese influence -- where, notably, the biggest firms like ZTE and Huawei have already since at least 2012 (i.e. based on E.U. agencies reports at the time) been receiving tens of billions (in USD) of funding, specifically for the purpose of outcompeting foreign (i.e. primarily western) contenders? Notably, at the time (I believe around 2012) it was found that Huawei and ZTE were backed by $30 billion and $15 billion in government financing (via central bank), respectively.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#66

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

reidjs wrote: post #36

WalterBright wrote: post #25

Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches? The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.

Don't you think monopolies are bad, though? Maybe they're convenient, but it's better to spread wealth around, right?

[deleted]

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#67

Post by BeFlatXIII » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #38

reidjs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think monopolies are bad, though? Maybe they're convenient, but it's better to spread wealth around, right?

What if the result of breaking up US monopolies is their replacement by non-US monopolies? How is that better? I'd think very, very hard about crippling US companies in a global marketplace. So far, I don't even see any discussion about it.

Considering how many of those big tech companies rely on pushing ads, does it really matter whether they’re based in the US or not? Either way, they’re revenue is from selling out their users.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#68

Post by novok » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

Wish these bills would kill clauses like "most favored nation" as far as pricing goes, anti-steering laws and forcing side loading. Making the pricing premium for using a platform naked would give a direct financial & choice to consumers to go towards the most price efficient venue.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#69

Post by idiotsecant » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:40 PM UTC

LarryEt wrote: post #55

fmajid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tech monopolists are not the entire Tech sector, in fact they are a very small portion of tech employment (and thus productivity). Their rent-seeking behavior stifles innovation and competition, and they coast on the hard work of non-monopolists, e.g. Apple's outrageous 30% cut on app developer revenues.

IMO "monopoly" is possibly an outdated idea. The real problem here is the natural preferential attachment that emerges with tech companies at this scale. "A preferential attachment process is any of a class of processes in which some quantity, typically some form of wealth or credit, is distributed among a number of individuals or objects according to how much they already have, so that those who are already wealthy…

You just defined what a monopoly is without using the word and proposed banning it after saying banning monopolies is outdated.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#70

Post by majormajor » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #25

Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches? The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.

So this assumes that most of the the prospective component companies themselves are not very competent, and that their size and leverage from the dominant units is all that gives them market power.

That, I think, is probably a pessimistic view - Gmail being split off from Google Display Ads and Google Search wouldn't make me any less likely to use Gmail, say. But it would also open the door for US companies to replace them, not simply foreign ones. It's not like countries that crack down on the US services have produced many better companies good enough to compete in the US to date.

I'd accept the risk of some new dominant players from other countries in exchange for limiting the risk of misuse of market power and increasing the chance of new US competition to arise. Competition from inside or outside the US should make the encumbents better. Stagnation is what will let them be replaced by disruptive newcomers.

EDIT: I think a more likely risk is that we lose some money-losing "free" services that are basically loss-leaders, maybe even some vanity project ones. I would LOVE to replace some of those with paid products that a more healthy company could grow around, with better user-facing incentives.