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Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

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

#251

Post by AnthonyMouse »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #189
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad networks don't naturally form monopolies. That's why Google had to buy the other ones. Anything will form a monopoly if you let every company in the industry merge. Just because something has a network effect doesn't make it a natural monopoly. The network effect means the network may need a minimum size in order to be viable, but that doesn't mean there can't be a dozen competing networks of that size that are al…

It does, because the increased efficiency means ads are more profitable on the larger platforms. Bigger matching pools mean better conversion rates. Why would you spend more money to buy a less-well performing ad? Why would you display a less well paying ad on your web property? If you're doing search ads, you cannot fund the megawatts of infrastructure to keep pace with google if you're working with smaller margins.…

> Bigger matching pools mean better conversion rates.

So the smaller networks would make less money than Google. Less money than Google isn't the same as less money than is necessary to run servers.

And servers get cheaper as time goes on. The number of "megawatts" you need to serve a given number of ads is exponentially decreasing over time.

> This is not theoretical - adwords/search has destroyed almost all of the competition, save those who have other ways of funding themselves.

You can't ignore the companies they bought out when you say the others went out of business. They don't have any reason to buy a competitor that was just going to fail anyway, and they empirically have bought several competitors.

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

#252

Post by Robotbeat »

arrosenberg wrote: post #197
Robotbeat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd press your claim of efficiency. As we are learning now, efficiency (in the JIT sense of the word) and robustness are a single sliding scale. Our global supply chain was a wonder of human achievement until it hit a snag, and now it's a complete mess. Using Amazon as an example - the larger they've grown, they've actually become less trustworthy and a worse experience for consumers. Amazon has been stricken with al…

What’s interesting about Amazon is they don’t seem to have been any worse affected from supply chain issues than anyone else. At least not that I have noticed anecdotally.

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

#253

Post by mmcdermott »

niuzeta wrote: post #210
spaced-out wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 2018 it was nearly half, people don't realize how much market share they've lost in the last few years

Wow, what happened? Loss of 10+ percentage of market share is pretty huge. Or did the market simply expand that quickly?

I've definitely run into companies in Amazon-adjacent fields of endeavor employing a "no AWS" rule.

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

#254

Post by sanderjd »

Supermancho wrote: post #180
dahfizz wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

> 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.

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

#255

Post by rapind »

sanderjd wrote: post #46
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…

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

> 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.

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

#256

Post by noslenwerdna »

rapind wrote: post #255
sanderjd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

> 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

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

#257

Post by taurath »

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…

Building another Facebook isn’t hard, but the network effect makes it almost impossible. Then they have their acquisition team to ensure that anything that does make it through doesn’t last long. The idea that they’re out there competing on their own merits is silly.

I think that’s one of the big differences - they have a monopoly on the means of production (the userbase), which is less ephemeral than say owning all the steel plants and mines.

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

#258

Post by bcrosby95 »

munificent wrote: post #233
sanderjd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

I think we need to be clearer by what "product" means when it comes to monopolies in the Information Age. In the Industrial Age, you had a monopoly on paperclips if the only way to buy a paperclips was through your company. But paperclips themselves are commodity-like: there are billions of them out there and each is more or less interchangeable with the others. Information products are not like paperclips. Each piec…

I find this argument pretty interesting. It seems like if social networks decide to adapt open protocols, it would pretty much kill it. Which wouldn't be the worst outcome out there.

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

#259

Post by armchairhacker »

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…

Another problem is that Facebook, Amazon, and Google get special treatment. There are explicit filters in WebKit (and probably mozilla) which allow special features for certain big-name companies. Also the App Store gives exemptions (e.g. VoIP notifications) to certain social apps. And most websites block crawlers but allow Google and Internet Archive.

This IMO is a better argument towards anti-competitiveness. I absolutely get that there needs to be filters for certain privileges, but hard-coding them for big-name apps is not the answer.

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

#260

Post by ncallaway »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #150
ncallaway wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't invalidating the patents of companies that are too powerful and abusive in the market just be another "trust busting" tactic? I don't see how that is separate from "trust busting", but rather just another way to bust trusts?

I guess it could be, but I think his point is that from a libertarian angle, the government should be out of the picture as much as possible. And one of the biggest ways to do this is invalidating software patents which would remove some of the massive barriers of entry needed to compete against the Googles/Facebooks.

That makes sense. If the original complaint wasn't "busting trusts" is opposed to libertarian values, but rather "some of the existing techniques to bust trusts" is opposed to libertarian values, then this makes sense as the libertarian friendly approach to busting trusts.

Thanks for that clarification!

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