Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#301

Post by hakfoo » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 4:37 AM UTC

cornellwright wrote: post #198

tablespoon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what the formal definitions of any of these things are, but I assume (hope?) that it's important not to equate being successful with being a monopoly by definition. If Ford came out with an amazing new car tomorrow, and suddenly 95% of new cars purchased were Fords, we probably shouldn't initiate trust-busting action against Ford on that basis alone. We want car companies to try to capture market share…

Amazon's search is so bad that it's almost certainly intentional in order to get customers to look at more products. This is a great example of them using their monopoly power to increase their revenue to the detriment of consumers. For an idea of what it could be, try the search on electronic component distributor sites like Digikey[1] and Newark[2]. They are both improving their search in order to attract more cust…

I have to wonder if it's fundamentally appealing to a different type of customer.

You don't window-shop Digi-key. You're pretty much buying on spec sheets alone. I want to see all 330 ohm 1/4 watt through-hole resistors, now sort by price and availability in the quantity I need, then maybe discard products that don't meet some other criteria that I can't directly filter for. There's very little chance of making a sale through a slicker marketing campaign.

Conversely, people buying a single monitor might be browsing, potentially swayed by the right language and graphics on the landing pages. I'm pretty sure those bloody finches sold more ViewSonic monitors than any other aspect of their product line. For a window-shopping customer, getting the customer to see as many of them as possible improves their chances of a sale.

On the other hand, I will concur that Amazon's search is a disaster for computer products. I suspect it's also terrible in other verticals that have clear, well-defined "faceted search" concepts, but we probably have the most experience with that one here. I suspect it may be a casualty of their broadness of categories-- why spend the labour to provide really killer search if it hasn't proven to be an impediment to sales yet?

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#302

Post by wishawa » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

Traditional anti-trust methods would only go so far with big techs because while monopolies in the past are driven by economies of scale (and lobbying and other illegal stuffs, of course), big techs’ monopolies are mainly driven by strong positive feedback loops (search results quality for Google and network effect for Facebook). If Google and Facebook were to play it 100% fair, I doubt they would be smaller than 75% of their current size.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#303

Post by JamesAdir » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:23 AM UTC

Article is from 2019. Should be added to the text link.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#304

Post by lrem » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:03 AM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #42

camjohnson26 wrote: post #9

Trust busting can seem like it’s anti free market, but when a company has a monopoly on a network it stops functioning as a company and basically becomes a government. The problem with Facebook/Amazon/Google is that they have a monopoly on a specific information network, for Facebook the social graph, internet discoverability for Google, and online shopping for Amazon. It’s similar to if a single company owned the ro…

What I want addressed is how we can bust these companies without making the experience worse for consumers or making things less efficient. A railroad that'd require a toll every mile because you split one company into hundreds wouldn't be viable. If I had to visit multiple web pages to get the same result as a google search, that'd also be bad. Amazon online shopping has a "monopoly" almost purely because the monopo…

The general idea would be breaking things into viable businesses and imposing compatibility with competitors. So, for Amazon, spin off the delivery and allow others to do the driving around, provided they can meet the same requirements around picking up from the warehouse and so on. For Google, spin off the DC operations. And so on.

It becomes harder conceptually if you try to break things in the software layer. Working in Google, I just cannot fathom what would it take to actually allow competing ads platforms in search.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#305

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:15 AM UTC

wishawa wrote: post #302

Traditional anti-trust methods would only go so far with big techs because while monopolies in the past are driven by economies of scale (and lobbying and other illegal stuffs, of course), big techs’ monopolies are mainly driven by strong positive feedback loops (search results quality for Google and network effect for Facebook). If Google and Facebook were to play it 100% fair, I doubt they would be smaller than 75%…

Breaking Google/Facebook up geographically for antitrust violations would be ineffective, but breaking them up by line-of-business would not and is well within traditional anti-trust remedies.

The expansion of monopolies into adjacent and related markets is driven by leveraging the existing monopoly to monopolize new markets, which is already within the scope of acts addressed by traditional anti-trust (whether or not one views it as enabled by “network effects” or “feedback loops”), though regulators have been ineffective at addressing it in the internet space. This isn't a defect in traditional anti-trust law, but in anti-trust enforcement.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#306

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 12:14 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #172

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to reply to the parent that we used to have a word for this, and that word is "monopoly", but apparently we now no longer have that shared definition, probably an intentional confusion bought at great expense by monopolists.

At no point has "monopoly" meant anything other than "A single seller". The confusion comes from people trying to steal that term to refer to "big companies".

Monopoly means one seller in the same way that a spherical cow has no friction.

When modelling monopolies economists posit one seller that can set the price because it's simple. Similarly, perfectly competitive markets have an infinite number of competeing firms.

In the real world, monopoly has never been as black and white as that e.g. if someone was granted a monopoly on selling salt, that didn't immediately strike anyone selling salt with a lightning bolt, it just meant you couldn't build an actual business on it since you could hit legal issues.

Similarly, people accused of being monopolies argue that the "market" is bigger (do planes and trains compete for long distance travel?) in a way that is fuzzy and human.

But the bigger issue is how do you tell the difference between someone who doesn't understand something, and someone who refuses to understand something? People pretended that climate change wasn't happening for 3 decades and counting to protect big corporations, so really there's no limit to what their influence can buy.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#307

Post by rapind » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 12:22 PM UTC

noslenwerdna wrote: post #256

rapind wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies Imagine thinking that google doesn’t have a monopoly on search. That Amazon doesn’t have a monopoly on selling goods online, etc. Now these companies do lots of other things that they don’t monopolize, but they ARE monopolies in specific high value spaces and they leverage those monopolies in their other endeavours.

Facebook does not have a monopoly on social networking

I didn’t mention Facebook. I can’t really put my finger on it. They definitely have a lion’s share of a certain type of social networking, but I’m not sure it constitutes a monopoly. Maybe social graph as GP states, but I honestly don’t know enough about it to chime in with an opinion about that.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#308

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 12:43 PM UTC

camjohnson26 wrote: post #9

Trust busting can seem like it’s anti free market, but when a company has a monopoly on a network it stops functioning as a company and basically becomes a government. The problem with Facebook/Amazon/Google is that they have a monopoly on a specific information network, for Facebook the social graph, internet discoverability for Google, and online shopping for Amazon. It’s similar to if a single company owned the ro…

This book sounded interesting to me, but it appears the author is controversial because he doesn't believe in evolution amongst other things which dampens my enthusiasm:

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Gilder

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#309

Post by PixyMisa » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 1:21 PM UTC

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #217

cornellwright wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's search is so bad that it's almost certainly intentional in order to get customers to look at more products. This is a great example of them using their monopoly power to increase their revenue to the detriment of consumers. For an idea of what it could be, try the search on electronic component distributor sites like Digikey[1] and Newark[2]. They are both improving their search in order to attract more cust…

I’m skeptical that making users spend a long time trying to find the right monitor would actually be good for Amazon’s revenue or that Amazon would intentionally optimize for it. If the typical user really experienced that struggle, many would probably give up without making a purchase. To hazard a guess, I’d speculate that apparent poor quality of search results is more likely Amazon trying to push customers toward…

Amazon has ads in search results.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#310

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #254

Supermancho wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The confusion comes from people trying to steal that term to refer to "big companies". This is an oligopoly. Because companies are arbitrary constructs, it's a defacto monopoly by multiple sellers. The terminology is useful, but not in the sense that it is then end-all of qualification.

I truly feel like I just read a paragraph from 1984. You're tying yourself in knots to rationalize using language to mean something you want it to mean, but which it does not actually mean. Yes, oligopoly is a fine word to use, but you can't just wave your hands around to transmute that into monopoly.

[deleted]