Anyone who thinks Google is out there demoting Yelp results is a moron. The much simpler explanation that Yelp is a cancer that everyone hates is more likely. It's sad that Warren falls for FUD like this and we shouldn't forget that these memes originate from Microsoft-funded AstroTurf campaigns designed to mislead European regulators, which worked because eurocrats are gullible. The last thing we need in this election are people without the critical thinking skills needed to see through a disinformation campaign. We need a candidate who can clearly see that Google owning a small thermostat maker is not one of the country's main issues.
Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
141–150 of 735 posts
Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I don't think she realizes that splitting up amazon and amazon basics will do little to nothing. I think amazon : amazon basics is a great example of antitrust/unfair monopoly the same as google search : almost all consumer facing google products. Both amazon and google search are the dominate online market leaders in their respective categories. In amazons case they unfairly use their market position to begin offer…
I agree. But if we are going to split up the store platform and the store brands, now youre going to have to split up Target, Walmart etc. Anyone besides Ikea who sells their own store brand and runs as a platform for others to sell their products. Any grocery store can do the same thing amazon is doing, use data about sales to push clones and store brands of popular products. What percent of products at Target are s…
The difference is that none of those examples dominate their market. The problem isn't "Amazon uses their platform to promote their own products" it's "Amazon uses their market dominance to promote their own products which might not otherwise be competitive"
Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
#143This is an excellent goal, and Paul Graham has articulated the reasoning pretty clearly: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/886953410356011008 > Here's how to explain to people the distinction between fighting poverty and fighting economic inequality. If you're fighting poverty, you might say "Let's have universal health care." If you're fighting economic inequality, you have to say "Let's have universal health care. A…
So if a very capable, a hard working, effective person is able to increase their wealth by 20x, and in so doing increases my wealth by 2x without my doing anything, you'd be in favor of using the power of the state to prevent this from happening because it would increase inequality?
You should think in the terms of opportunity cost.
The alternative to what you suggest is not zero growth of wealth. It can be even larger growth of wealth when the markets work better.
The type of anti-markets and pro business approach where big corporations are shielded from the markets and monopoly powers are allowed as long as antitrust felony crimes don't happen is perversion of capitalism. The ideological foundation for this tinking was laid out in Robert Bork's book 'The Antitrust Paradox' (1978) that Reagan administration used as their bible.
Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
This view misunderstands the nature of modern science and R&D. Interesting R&D is shockingly expensive, and you need mega-corps to do it. The cost of a new fab is $10 billion now, and it's been increasing exponentially. The 747 cost $7.5 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars to develop. The 787 cost almost $30 billion. The future of science and technology is not Edison inventing the lightbulb in his private lab. It's…
I agree you need significant amounts of resources / capital to do it. I disagree you need megacorps to do it. It's inefficient for the means of production to be held by a private company looking out for its own interests and wealth and not the good of society: even if you want the military to be more capable, the military-industrial complex is a bad way to do it. And the argument that startups need to spend money on…
At least the U.S. government does an absolutely terrible job with the capital-intensive infrastructure it touches. Having it be in charge of something like a nuclear reactor or a chip fab would end technological progress.
Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
#145Comparisons will be made to Microsoft and Internet Explorer but to me the really crucial part of this isn't market dominance in the "what app are you using" sense, it's data. Facebook, Google and Amazon really do have an unprecedented amount of data on us. And keep vacuuming up more and more of it. Facebook should never have been allowed to buy WhatsApp (and maybe not Instagram though I'm less concerned about that on…
This is also the first idea I've seen that tries to deal with the free speech problem on the internet. A lot of platforms today apply varying amounts of censorship (like youtube's copyright takedown mess), but there isn't really anything we can do because it's a privately owned platform and they can do whatever they want. But when they control such a large amount of mindshare, we end up putting the idea of free speec…
Is this a good idea? Giving "fair time" to not only YouTube malcontents, but also actively bad actors i.e. state funded shills?
I don't see how this could be implemented to the best interest of the USA without "censorship" being involved at some point.
Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You could require freedom of speech apply to industry leaders for example. What does this mean? Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, et al already have their constitutionally protected speech, except for where their roles as executives at public companies restrict them. If they find those restrictions onerous they can leave their roles.
I think they meant requiring industry-leading companies to apply freedom of speech on their platforms. That is, no censoring of comments, videos, reviews, etc. as long as they don't violate the law.
The government cannot compel speech. I don't think that using the power of the government to require some types of speech against the wishes of private entities solves the problem you think it's solving...
Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
#147This is 2019. We have come up with so many correct tech solutions to problems, like inventing the Internet Protocol Suite and so on, where we once needed government. We have email instead of the post office. Desktop printing instead of the printing press. Xerox copiers were a game changer back in the day.
Why do we need government’s help to break up these monopolies? When AOL literally was the place everyone went to just be ONLINE, it semed unstoppable. Then came the Web, with its permissionless nature, and over time it completely took over, and led to trillions of dollars of new value. The Web is the plarform on which Google, Amazon, Facebook, built their businesses, companies that would never get permission do that on top of AOL.
Now we need something similar to disrupt Google, Facebook, Amazon. I believe Wordpress was an early start, and indeed powers 30% of all websites today. But you need four things:
1) Open source and permissionless platform
2) A unified Social Operating System with well designed components for user accounts, permissions, realtime notifications, payments etc. like the graphical OSes had windows, menus and so on. A well-designed cathedral architecture like BSD.
3) A permissionless plugin system and marketplace where anyone could develop their own components and package them into plugins and apps, and sell them to communities.
4) A layer where you could go between many different domains and have a seamless social experience. This is key.
I am really passionate about this. I have put my money where my mouth is - my company Qbix has reinvested half a million dollars over the last seven years to build a platform to do just that.
What I said is just the surface. Please watch this video to understand in depthwhat I mean:
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
#148This is an excellent goal, and Paul Graham has articulated the reasoning pretty clearly: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/886953410356011008 > Here's how to explain to people the distinction between fighting poverty and fighting economic inequality. If you're fighting poverty, you might say "Let's have universal health care." If you're fighting economic inequality, you have to say "Let's have universal health care. A…
> People who say economic inequality is bad and should be decreased don't realize they're saying this, but they are. Which is my point. Sounds like Paul Graham was saying that stopping founders is some unstated but believed goal, and is a poor one.
Depends what you mean by "founders." You can certainly enable people who have interesting ideas for worthwhile projects without enabling them turning into owners of megacorps, and I think he's playing on the confusion. Google the search engine started as a Stanford research project, and we should, as a society (I'm intentionally not saying as government) provide additional support for grad students who want to develop cool projects and make them real who aren't interested in turning into business owners. Saying "Don't start Alphabet Inc." and "Don't start Google the search engine" are very different things.
Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
#149[deleted]
Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
#150From Warren's blog post:
> ... Google’s ad exchange and businesses on the exchange would be split apart. Google Search would have to be spun off as well.
I think maybe her team needs to do a little more research on what Google's business is. Splitting off Android/Play or GCP at least creates potentially viable businesses. Splitting up search and ads creates two non-viable businesses.