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Where Warren’s Wrong

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Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#21

Post by mtgx »

comnetxr wrote: post #16

Agree 95%, but one point he uses to crticize Warren seems wrong: Where Warren says "America’s big tech companies have achieved their level of dominance in part based on two strategies: using Mergers to Limit Competition,..." he argues that they achieved dominance by making good products and were already dominant when they started making major mergers, and that Warren doesn't understand this. It sounds like he's missi…

Yeah, it seems almost like a naive/purposeful misunderstanding of what Warren means. Of course that's what Warren meant - the whole point of even talking about antitrust is that you believe a company used its dominant position to destroy the competition in a way that's less than fair/legal.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#22

Post by chj »

The author is nitpicking. Warren may be wrong about the history of bing and google, but that's not really important. She's 100% right about Amazon, and the author conveniently forgot to mention.

Most people in tech industry always strive to build monopoly and dominance. In their eyes, Warren's idea is of course insane. But viewing from another point, in order to protect competition and small businesses, her proposal is mostly sound. The concept of "Platform Utility" may seem arbitrary, but actually a very helpful check and balance.

The perfect solution is that the platform should be run like an open blockchain, trouble is no one has a clue how to build it yet.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#23

Post by jessedhillon »

anon0000 wrote: post #14

Noticeably absent from Warren's target list is Comcast. IMHO, they are more anti-trust than any of the tech companies she is targeting. Comcast also happens to be the 15th biggest donor to her campaign. https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors...

Wait until you see who #9 is!

(It's Alphabet, parent of Google)

The list you linked shows the common employers of the individual contributors to her 2018 campaign.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#24

Post by jmrobertson »

Reading her stuff, it seems like proposals to separate Apple from the App store indicate a total lack of awareness about InfoSec, and at best a poorly researched policy proposal from a technical standpoint. The only reason the App Store isn't a simmering cesspool of malware is that Apple heavily moderates what gets on there, and Google does somewhat the same. That doesn't mean that there perhaps isn't a less MSFT + IE type of solution, and I don't necessarily disagree with her, but her not mentioning that sort of nuance at all makes it rather clear the policy doesn't extend too far into anything more than populism.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#25

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

anon0000 wrote: post #14

Noticeably absent from Warren's target list is Comcast. IMHO, they are more anti-trust than any of the tech companies she is targeting. Comcast also happens to be the 15th biggest donor to her campaign. https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors...

That’s a great point. I hope someone asks her about that.

The fact that Comcast can institute data caps on broadband while offering a similar service, on-demand video over cable, without caps is absolutely insane.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#26

Post by Shivetya »

comnetxr wrote: post #16

Agree 95%, but one point he uses to crticize Warren seems wrong: Where Warren says "America’s big tech companies have achieved their level of dominance in part based on two strategies: using Mergers to Limit Competition,..." he argues that they achieved dominance by making good products and were already dominant when they started making major mergers, and that Warren doesn't understand this. It sounds like he's missi…

Sorry, but the idea that Apple needs to be separated from the App store is ludicrous. If you don't like the App store don't buy Apple products. There are hundreds of other phones to choose from and some get equal or better reviews. It would be one thing if Apple was the only cell phone maker in existence but that is so far from the truth.

Amazon and online purchases, again, there are so many choices that you never ever have to visit Amazon to buy anything. If they were preventing resellers from selling elsewhere then we would have an issue. Like when Intel was trying to force Dell not to sell AMD. Amazon is in truth their own worst enemy now with so many bad products that venturing off known brands is a risk.

She is doing what politicians do best, using resentment, jealousy, and more, to gain more power and money. Not just at the voting booth but by intimidating companies into contributing more the PACs and political campaigns. We see this all the time and sadly people buy into it because using market tested phrases has become standard operating procedure for politicians. They pay to find out how to divide people.

An example of why PACs are truly bad is a recent political office run revealed that one candidate, who could not see fit to pay their taxes on time, nor their school loans, had been on the part time pay roll of a PAC for nearly 200k a year. Seriously, you want to see how politicians roll in the money look how the shake down really pays them.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#27

Post by gilbetron »

> This is a restriction on competition produced not by market dominance, at least not directly, but rather contracts that OEMs could not afford to say ‘No’ to.

I'm not seeing a significant difference here. They couldn't afford to say "no" because MS was so dominant.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#28

Post by chj »

jmrobertson wrote: post #24

Reading her stuff, it seems like proposals to separate Apple from the App store indicate a total lack of awareness about InfoSec, and at best a poorly researched policy proposal from a technical standpoint. The only reason the App Store isn't a simmering cesspool of malware is that Apple heavily moderates what gets on there, and Google does somewhat the same. That doesn't mean that there perhaps isn't a less MSFT + I…

There are quite some shady stuff going on in the App Store. People have to live with that, because there is no alternative.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/15/sneaky-subscriptions-are-p...

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#29

Post by jmrobertson »

chj wrote: post #28
jmrobertson wrote: post #24

Reading her stuff, it seems like proposals to separate Apple from the App store indicate a total lack of awareness about InfoSec, and at best a poorly researched policy proposal from a technical standpoint. The only reason the App Store isn't a simmering cesspool of malware is that Apple heavily moderates what gets on there, and Google does somewhat the same. That doesn't mean that there perhaps isn't a less MSFT + I…

There are quite some shady stuff going on in the App Store. People have to live with that, because there is no alternative. https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/15/sneaky-subscriptions-are-p...

Right, so imagine separating Apple/Google totally from its current oversight position, and having a totally open app store. Like the world _just_ got past learning not to click 'download here!' on a browser, and that was after 20 years of the internet. I'd be open to alternative proposals, but separating the App Store with no replacement is not a secure solution by any means and causes more problems than it solves, assuming a secure app store is the most important trait of an app store.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#30

Post by objektif »

I would take anything the tech industry and even tech focused journalists say about this topic with a grain of salt. It is very likely that they have a conflict of interest. Either they have shares or their jobs require not alienating big tech.
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