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Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

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Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#261

Post by pikzen »

jimmywanger wrote: post #246
pikzen wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You missed a verb. As if I such a thing. Thanks. >Good luck in getting airtime/a platform without paying money. Funnily enough, I was talking about that in a previous HN thread. You'll have to explain to me how my country (France) functions then, giving equal air time to candidates, no matter their size, or funds. We even have communists! The state pays part of the campaign, and to give you an idea, the 2012 campaig…

> You'll have to explain to me how my country (France) functions then, giving equal air time to candidates, no matter their size, or funds Is this article true? https://www.thelocal.fr/20170309/rules-of-the-game-what-rule... In that case, you'll have to get 500 signatures of elected officials. That seems even more chilling, because then you're on record for having supported a candidate, and if you're backing the wron…

>Is this article true? https://www.thelocal.fr/20170309/rules-of-the-game-what-rule....

>In that case, you'll have to get 500 signatures of elected officials. That seems even more chilling, because then you're on record for having supported a candidate, and if you're backing the wrong horse, there should be repercussions.

Yes and no. It's missing a few details.

First off, elected officials that can give their support can include our 36000ish mayors, and around 10000 other servants. The repercussions come from your own electors, yes. But don't be too afraid, unless you're cosigning on the FN's project (in which case you will most likely be a FN mayor yourself), repercussions are limited. You have to face your electors with the fact that you signed on for a particular candidate, but this is almost universally seen as part of the regular flow of our elections, and very little as partisanship.

>Also, it seems that now your airtime is proportional based on your performance in the last polls and election.

This is an absolutely terrible decision that we're fighting the best way we know (which, you guessed it, is protesting), but bear in mind that it only applies to legislative elections, for the national assembly. And since it is based on previous year's results, Macron's party gets something like 5% of airtime, compared to the PS which gets 30ish percent. It seems to be pissing off enough people that things will probably change.

However, I do agree with you, this particular law is utter crap, and should be removed.

>how is that any different from voted taxation? The vote of the masses is voting to take away the wealth of a small percentage of very wealthy people to "redistribute" the income.

The key difference is the mass. Yes, that's tyranny of the majority. But I prefer that to a single person having the voting power of many.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#262

Post by joshuamorton »

0x737368 wrote: post #255
joshuamorton wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I asked you for examples of Google (or Facebook) sharing your information with third parties. While I agree that Facebook's practice of advertising via "Josh liked XYZ product" is not something I want, it is not an example of facebook sharing your data with advertisers. That happens entirely within the facebook platform. I think its a misleading way to present the information, but its not sharing any information…

Even if it happens within a platform it's still a very concerning problem. If a company decided to put cameras in people's homes to improve "customer service" that business would be out of business the next day. And yet companies are able to get much more information about us by having access to what we do on the internet and everyone is fine about it. I understand that this is a result of people not wanting to pay f…

>Even if it happens within a platform it's still a very concerning problem.

I don't necessarily disagree, but "Xcorp is presenting personal data that you've released publically in a misleading way" very different than "Xcorp is giving personal data that you assumed was private away to third parties". I think the second is a lot more serious than the first.

>If a company decided to put cameras in people's homes to improve "customer service" that business would be out of business the next day.

I'm not sure I agree, given the popularity of smart TVs and the recently announced Amazon Echo Look. I make no judgement of whether this is good or bad (I personally don't have any always-on recording devices), but I don't think its true.

>I understand that this is a result of people not wanting to pay for access to websites and online-services but, in my opinion, that's because they don't understand the ramifications.

See, and I disagree here. There are certain kinds of services that money cannot provide. Google Now recommends news articles to me, it can give me reminders about upcoming events from my emails and Google gives me some personalized search features (ie. if I type "frequent flyer number" into the default google search bar, my number appears, scraped from an email years ago). Those features have a utility that I couldn't get from an application that didn't track information about me. Potentially I could self host something with that level of utility, but it would take a research lab and millions of dollars to create.

On the other hand, reddit, which tracks comparatively little information about me, reliably recommends trending posts that are of zero interest to me.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#263

Post by quadrangle »

xherberta wrote: post #250
devuo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but then that's why we have governments and why monopolies are all but outlawed in most democratic countries.

The US hasn't enforced its anti-trust legislation in over 30 years. Some link Reagan's "assault" on anti-trust to the breakage of the American job market. There's been zero net job creation in the US between 1999 and 2009, a time which also saw significant consolidation. Small businesses drive net job growth, and they are also more innovative, producing more patents per employee than large firms. Not to mention, smal…

> more innovative, producing more patents per employee than large firms

Patents are not correlated with innovation. Tons of innovative things are never patented, and the majority of patents are largely bullshit. The patent system mostly gives tons of money to patent lawyers and power to companies who know how to use their patents to threaten innovators.

It may be true that small businesses are more innovative, but we simply can't use patents as a measure of innovation.

I happen to agree with the rest of your comment.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#264

Post by johnchristopher »

zanny wrote: post #242
pmoriarty wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is assuming Google hasn't starved out potential competitors who would have provided the same service, or better service, had the playing field been more level." There are alternatives to many of these already. Firefox (and other browsers) for Chrome, Openstreetmap for maps. Vimeo for youtube. Flickr for photos. Dropbox for drive. Never heard of waze, so don't know what's an alternative for that, but I would be…

Waze is basically Google maps with a Skinner Box on top to make you contribute data to it for points and gold stars. Since Google bought them, they canibalized the crowdsourced data for Maps anyway, and have never updated the Waze UI so it looks like a Fisher Price toy today. There is really no reason to use it over Google Maps.

I don't know about Google maps in the US but in Europe it doesn't warn of dangers on the road (cars on the side of the road, blocked roads, etc.). Waze do.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#265

Post by quadrangle »

bmelton wrote: post #154
devuo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but then that's why we have governments and why monopolies are all but outlawed in most democratic countries.

I don't know about other countries, but in America, being a monopoly is not at all outlawed. The criminality associable to monopoly here is when a monopoly abuses their monopoly power. If I am the only company in America that produces widget x, I have a de facto monopoly, but I am not guilty of anything until and unless I attempt to exert my monopolistic influence to prevent competitors from taking my market share. I…

> If I am the only company in America that produces widget x, I have a de facto monopoly

That's not what monopoly really means. Peter Thiel (for whom I have lots of criticism) makes these things really clear in the way he discusses them. You could open up a British Food restaurant somewhere and be the only one in town. That doesn't make you a monopoly because the actual market is for all types of dining. There's not specific British Food market that you've captured. When businesses want to taut their power and monopoly status (whether to delude themselves or to get investors or whatever), they will pretend that the market is as narrow as their particular product. When they want to convince regulators that they are just one in a competing market, they'll widen the market as much as possible…

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#266

Post by quadrangle »

closeparen wrote: post #118
lisper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but it's not clear which way the causality runs. If wealth were more evenly distributed, ordinary people could pool their resources to make the same investments. They can't do that now because they have no disposable income to invest.

VCs are agents of ordinary people who have pooled their resources to make investments, just separated by many fee-taking layers of Wall Street bureaucracy. Wall Street ultimately gets its money from American workers' retirement investments (whether personal 401k and IRA accounts, or institutional pension funds).

While totally true, there are systemic issues here. Any individual worker has little choice of what to do with their investments for retirement unless they get into taking tons of time and energy to be activist investors or go out of their way to avoid the path of least resistance and invest in unusual ways.

Point is: it's not like workers are all supportive of the VC decisions or anything. It's the concentrated power of the people who manage all the funds that matters, and not the fact that a bunch of otherwise disconnected individual workers have put their money in.

Of course, stuff like openinvest.co seem at least a good direction…

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#267

Post by quadrangle »

usaphp wrote: post #13
wildmusings wrote: post #7

I 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

Naw, we have an attention economy here. This is a zero-sum situation. Newcomers have to compete on the same terms specifically because all the advertising noise from others drowns them out unless they advertise too.

Google lists plain facts like the existence of a business without any advertising even. If all the restaurants in a town decided in solidarity to never advertise on Google, people could still look up the restaurant directory and learn about the options. All the restaurants would save money. But when some advertise at Google and got prominence, they capture more of the market, which forces others to do more advertising in order to not lose market share.

And a restaurant having their own website is informational, but that's not what we mean by online advertising. We mean when third parties pay to have their ad promoted to people who aren't directly connecting with their business.

If all third-party advertising went away, it would be such a shock to the internet economy that it's hard to describe. But ignoring that aspect, we would see net GAINS in new businesses being able to have people notice their products or in customers being able to find the products and resources they want.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#268

Post by dredmorbius »

anth1988 wrote: post #180

> In 2013, the European Commission fined Microsoft for giving preferential treatment to its own browser, Internet Explorer. I don't understand why Microsoft gets fined, but Google gets a pass when they used their other products to push Chrome to a dominant position.

The EU have in large part shifted their attention to Google (and Facebook) at this point.

Microsoft still takes occasional scruitiny as well, though not nearly as much AFAIR.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#269

Post by dandelion_lover »

friedman23 wrote: post #137
43224gg252 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze I think there are alternatives for all of those, many open source.

> many open source please. Name the open source alternatives that don't require my grandma to set up her own VPS.

Email provider: https://posteo.de; online maps: https://openstreetmap.org. More on https://prism-break.org (no affilation with those).

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#270

Post by threepipeproblm »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #104
jondubois wrote: post #14

I 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 t…

Disclaimer: I work at Google > The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. [citation needed] A lot of things Google does -- a lot of the things people actually like about Google -- are possible only because it's a huge monolith. Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, y…

>> > The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. >> [citation needed]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bigger-corporations-are-m...

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