Well, that was pretty clear more than a decade ago.
Proprietary technology has a monopolizing effect in capitalism.
Since technology by definition has an exponential growth rate of efficiency, the monopolizing effect grows with it.
Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
11–20 of 352 posts
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#12I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated. Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users. Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in partic…
As a business owner whose entire revenue comes from adwords leads at this point, I can tell you it isn't a massively inflated cost. Sure, it's 90% of my expenses and half of what I even make, but I pay this because I still make money.
This may not apply to all types of ads, but I'm happy paying what I do, and I can't imagine anyone else would be paying if they weren't making money.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#13I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated. Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users. Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in partic…
But online advertisement is what drives sales of the companies which produce products. You won't sell your product if you don't advertise them. Especially for new businesses that sell products it's almost impossible to get noticed unless you advertise
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#14I agree they should be regulated. The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies.
These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy.
If you were to analyze Facebook as if it were a country, the wealth gap among employees would be atrocious - The top 1% would own maybe 99% of the wealth of the country and everyone else would earn a minuscule fraction of the total value that they produced.
If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to mirror the economies within these large corporations.
What's worse is that the social aspects will also be mirrored. We will gradually lose freedom of speech, in the same way that employees of large corporations don't have the freedom to say what they really think to their bosses.
Many who have worked for a big corporation will know how suppressing the environment can be. I'm really glad that I live in a time when there are still alternatives.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#15Well, that was pretty clear more than a decade ago. Proprietary technology has a monopolizing effect in capitalism. Since technology by definition has an exponential growth rate of efficiency, the monopolizing effect grows with it.
Yeah like IBM in the 80's and Microsoft in the 90's, no, wait...
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#16I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated. Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users. Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in partic…
Google earns a lot from advertisement, but they're not just showing ads, there is a difference. You're actually paying them to find the right customer to show the ad. And that probably will always be valuable. Much different from a game that exists for the sole purpose of showing ads from google between games.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#17I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated. Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users. Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in partic…
Google earns a lot from advertisement, but they're not just showing ads, there is a difference. You're actually paying them to find the right customer to show the ad. And that is probably always be valuable. Much different from a game that exists for the sole purpose of showing ads from google between games.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#18It does concern me when people say that the internet should be unregulated, especially given the recent vote in the US and the likely upcoming votes in the UK. Monopolies are very easy to form on the internet, and in the interest of improving everyone's use, we need to try to avoid them. Walled gardens currently trap people into one service and limit the ability to swap between them, similar to "forcing" you to use j…
When looking at the UK government it is good they are not in control. They want to regulate the Internet and control what you see on the net and want to have access to what you text e.g. in WhatsApp messages. In 99% of all the cases it is worse when a state wants to control the Internet.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#19No. This MAGA (Microsoft, Apple, Goggle, Amazon), is actually making American tech great.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#20Feels like it's getting worse too. For example, things like Google Home and Alexa discourage choice. "Order me a pizza" means they are now either kingmakers in the space, or incented to open their own pizza business. I'm not a fan of big government, but at some point depending solely on their goodwill seems dangerous.
"order me a pizza from domino's." "order me a pizza from papa john's."