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

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

#101

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 12:05 PM UTC

cryptica wrote: post #96

creato wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a pretty absurd take. These companies are highly profitable and highly visible to the average person, but in terms of revenue, they aren't outliers among the largest companies. They aren't disproportionately impacting "the US dollar".

They are highly profitable because they have an oligopoly over consumers. Consumers are forced to use them and other companies are forced to do business with them. For no other reason than a lack of alternatives. The reason that there are no alternatives is simply because they cannot compete financially... But if they could play on a fair/even playing field, the alternatives would almost certainly win. Their high vis…

Are you talking about banks or tech companies?

I feel like your comments would make more sense about banks.

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

#102

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #21

snicker7 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means that "Apple Music" cannot rely on an "online platform" (large online service) owned by Apple. A more practical example is that Google can't run its ad-tech services in GCP. And Amazon cannot run its online store in AWS. They could, however, use each other's cloud. But not their own.

So Google has to run a second cloud service that's only used internally?

[deleted]

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

#103

Post by yowlingcat » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #75

yowlingcat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

TikTok is a curious one. The Chinese service appears to be a completely separate content silo. And Musical.ly grew in the US without needing antitrust action against FB or Snap or anyone else, in the same way that those companies displaced others. The bar to entry to that marketplace is already low, I don't think it's really relevant to discussions around Amazon or Google or MS or even Apple.

Great points. Social media is a different beast compared to Amazon/MS/Apple but seeing a CN company crack the US advertising duopoly (F/G) is interesting. And I do wonder how much of that pertains to the Musical.ly acquisition. Now, I'm trying to think about the discussion as it pertains to the AAM slice of GAFAM and the conversation gets more interesting for me there.

I can think of substitutes for Apple (Huawei) and Amazon (Alibaba) with US market penetration, but I can't think of any for M. I can think of a couple reasons why off the top of my head but I'm curious as to what you think.

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

#104

Post by RickJWagner » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 2:11 AM 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.

Those FAANG companies occasionally adapt very powerful political stances, putting their best interests ahead of ~50% of the USA. In other words, these are not American companies-- they view themselves as 'above' Americans and don't mind using their weight to try to push policy that benefits themselves.

I'm not disappointed to see them put under scrutiny. I hope big media companies are next.

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

#105

Post by randyrand » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 8:32 AM UTC

If FAANG is required to allow more competition, it will inherently also allow more international competition as well.

It’s going to be a lot of lost tax dollars, and USA incomes.

But I hope it’s for the best.

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

#106

Post by dundarious » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #90

dundarious wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

EU doesn't tend to break up big companies though, just regulate and negotiate with them.

The point is that EU regulations may prevent the creation of monopolies in the first place, so EU countries are unlikely to be a source of alternative monopolies to the existing US ones. So there's cause to think it unlikely that we'd be trading a "devil we know" that is at least partly accountable to US institutions, for a "devil we don't" that is less/not accountable.

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

#107

Post by pedalpete » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 12:29 AM UTC

peytn wrote: post #93

pedalpete wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to get away from this nationalist perspective. All of these companies are global companies, both in where their products are designed/developed, as well as where there users are. You wouldn't pit one state against the other and say "we need to keep California founded monopolies in place or else Oklahoma might end up replacing them". We're all in this world together. Yes there are cultural differences, but we…

> You wouldn't pit one state against the other and say "we need to keep California founded monopolies in place or else Oklahoma might end up replacing them". That’s totally something my local leaders would say. States compete for business here. Practically speaking, my vote influences how US companies operate more than it influences how foreign companies operate. Therefore, all else being equal and since monopoly imp…

That's a really interesting perspective, but does your vote really influence how companies operate? On what level?

For us, and we're about to start producing hardware, we think our purchasing power is more influential than our vote. That's why we're avoiding China for manufacturing.

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

#108

Post by cryptica » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #101

cryptica wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are highly profitable because they have an oligopoly over consumers. Consumers are forced to use them and other companies are forced to do business with them. For no other reason than a lack of alternatives. The reason that there are no alternatives is simply because they cannot compete financially... But if they could play on a fair/even playing field, the alternatives would almost certainly win. Their high vis…

Are you talking about banks or tech companies? I feel like your comments would make more sense about banks.

It's both. Network effects. Same forces behind both. We have an a monetary system which creates the economic environment and all companies compete and succeed (or fail) based on the rules of that environment.

If the environment was different (e.g. using hard money like gold or Bitcoin instead of constantly printing more), then the game would be radically different and completely different companies (IMO, more socially beneficial companies) would be winning this game.