91–100 of 160 posts
The people this is going to hurt the most are the citizens and businesses in France. No company or entrepreneur is going to want to setup shop in a country where success is punished. No creator, achiever or pursuer of excellence will desire to go to France if they risk being sued the moment they become successful enough to be worth it. Argue all you want that this is about "monopolies" and "anti-competitive" behavior…
The people this is going to hurt the most are the citizens and businesses in France. No company or entrepreneur is going to want to setup shop in a country where success is punished. No creator, achiever or pursuer of excellence will desire to go to France if they risk being sued the moment they become successful enough to be worth it. Argue all you want that this is about "monopolies" and "anti-competitive" behavior…
> Competition dies when rewards are removed If a monopolist offers a product for free just because they have plenty of cash to do so, all rewards to compete in that market are removed. That kills competition stone dead, and that's why we have laws against it all over the world, including Silicon Valley. Guarding the free market against monopolist abuse is standard operating procedure in all capitalist countries. Bott…
Is this a theoretical or empirical claim?
No google has been found guilty of not being a French company - or not employing the right grads from ENA whose "Papa" went to ENA with the right people whose "Papa" also went to ENA Same way it was the was non french companies that got raided over the 35 hours working time laws
How come we assume that Google is going to start charging as soon as competitors died? I draw analogies with the IE vs Netscape history. When IE became bundled for free in Windows, Netscape open-sourced its code to survive. Where would the browser be today had a judge ruled that Microsoft cannot do this and that Microsoft (and Netscape) should continue charging for their product?
Google are already charging for Google Maps access.
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That's ridiculous. How can they be punished for something you think they might do?
They did that. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/27/google_maps_api_no_l...
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Actually, this kind of law does not make any sense. In the case of carrefour, since they are charging such high prices nowadays, what prevents a bunch of farmers to associate themselves and open their own mall to sell cheaper and regain market share? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They just can't be bothered. Lack of competition is not only about big brands killing small ones. It's also part of the culture. It's been a…
Actually, this kind of law does not make any sense. In the case of carrefour, since they are charging such high prices nowadays, what prevents a bunch of farmers to associate themselves and open their own mall to sell cheaper and regain market share? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They just can't be bothered. Nothing? Never had any experience in retail business ownership, right? For starters, because Carrefour has a HU…
Thanks, this argument for antitrust laws is new to me. Is this a standard argument in economics, and do proponents of the free market have some standard answer to it?
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Actually, this kind of law does not make any sense. In the case of carrefour, since they are charging such high prices nowadays, what prevents a bunch of farmers to associate themselves and open their own mall to sell cheaper and regain market share? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They just can't be bothered. Nothing? Never had any experience in retail business ownership, right? For starters, because Carrefour has a HU…
> So, if they threaten it, it can lower it's prices for a while to compete, until it destroys them. Thanks, this argument for antitrust laws is new to me. Is this a standard argument in economics, and do proponents of the free market have some standard answer to it?
Thomas Sowell gives a nice introduction on predatory pricing here: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0503/6309089a.html From Sowell's article: It is a commentary on the development of antitrust law that the accused must defend himself, not against actual evidence of wrongdoing, but against a theory which predicts wrongdoing in the future. It is the civil equivalent of "preventive detention" in criminal cases -- punis…
In the case of online maps, none of those is true. Which is why so many HN readers are surprised by this.
As the comments on the article point out, this seems to be about the enterprise maps service to businesses which ordinarily is at a cost. From Le Monde[1]: "As such, it considered that Google Maps distorted the rules of free competition by providing the same service to businesses while it undergoes costs to design the product." ["A ce titre, elle considérait que l'application Google Maps faussait les règles de la con…
I just wanted to change your translation (Google translate?) a bit. I think this is truer to the original French: Hence they (Bottin Cartographes) considered that the Google Maps application broke competition rules by offering the same service to businesses for free, even though Google itself incurred costs to build the product."
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The general consensus is not that IE was a bad thing in the long run. Perhaps nobody likes IE today, but that does not mean it's a bad thing at all. Certainly it was the impetus for Firefox being born and they introduced XmlHttpRequest. Those are important (and GOOD) things. Also, Netscape certainly did not open source their product until they were thoroughly beaten in the market, ~1998. Before that, they were still…
Netscape open sourced their browser so the browser would survive, not so they would. They were continuing to make money off their server products, but they couldn't justify the large investment in a browser anymore.