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U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#271

Post by bagacrap »

yoz-y wrote: post #246
ABCLAW wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores. These are almost all 'control brands'; similar or identical products from the same suppliers, but they don't have marketing spend allocated to them. The delta in sales between the control brands and the 'brand-name' ones allows you to calculate goodwill.

Not in my experience. Except for very well known brands like Coca Cola and Mars, the store-brand products are always front and center in all shelves, and all in-store marketing (flyers, catalogs, promotions) is for the store branded products. This is for Carrefour, Franprix and Monoprix, not sure how it is in the US.

Target creates knock offs (Up+Up brand) for almost all the household products they sell. They're placed directly next to the item from the known brand, such as Neutrogena. I would say if anything, the known brand item is more front and center, but it's impossible to ignore the adjacent facsimile that's 2/3 the price.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#272

Post by gorbypark »

fingerlocks wrote: post #240
traib wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was mainly referring to how every browser app on iOS is forced have Safari underneath. The wiki page on Firefox for iOS [1] mentions this in some detail - it cannot use Gecko like it does on desktop and Android, it must use WebKit instead. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS

This is a technical detail most people don’t care about. You still get all the competing browsers with all their specific features on iOS, regardless of the rendering engine.

All non-Safari browsers on iOS use the Safari engine underneath, which doesn't currently support WebRTC. It's a pretty huge blocker for a lot of sites (video conferencing, etc) to have to throw up a "Please use Safari" banner for iOS users using anything other than Safari.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#273

Post by spideymans »

twobitshifter wrote: post #202
capableweb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have been more clear. I'm not talking about the "browser shell" (the UI for tabs, settings and so on) but about the "rendering engine" which in the case of Firefox is Gecko on PC, but since Apple has this arbitrary restriction, is Webkit on iOS, which is the same engine everyone on iOS is forced to use, no matter what. So yes, you're using Firefox, but you're still using the same rendering engine for your br…

On Desktop, how many rendering engines are there out there today? 3? Most browser creators cannot afford to create their own rendering engine, so we get Gecko, WebKit, or Blink. With this in mind, when you’re asking for alternative rendering engines, you’re really asking for Google to be able to get their hooks into iOS. It would be nice if Mozilla were free to develop their own engine but that’s not without downside…

> It would be nice if Mozilla were free to develop their own engine but that’s not without downside and the most likely outcome is an iOS dominated by Chrome and ad-tracking

The impacts go beyond iOS. The reality is that Safari is the only thing standing in the way of Google having IE-style dominance of browser usage share. As of now, Chromium has just under 80% usage share. If Chromium were as dominant as iOS as it is on desktop, it’s usage share would likely exceed 90%

Alternate engines are a fine idea in principle, but we need to consider whether a Chromium monopoly on the web is indeed an improvement from the status quo.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#274

Post by lotsofpulp »

bagacrap wrote: post #271
yoz-y wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in my experience. Except for very well known brands like Coca Cola and Mars, the store-brand products are always front and center in all shelves, and all in-store marketing (flyers, catalogs, promotions) is for the store branded products. This is for Carrefour, Franprix and Monoprix, not sure how it is in the US.

Target creates knock offs (Up+Up brand) for almost all the household products they sell. They're placed directly next to the item from the known brand, such as Neutrogena. I would say if anything, the known brand item is more front and center, but it's impossible to ignore the adjacent facsimile that's 2/3 the price.

FYI, “knock offs” has the same meaning as counterfeit. Target sells “generics” under their Up+Up brands.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#275

Post by darksaints »

gruez wrote: post #231
darksaints wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those companies buy their inventory and take on the full risk of potentially not selling it. They're retailers, not marketplaces.

Not sure about the other stores, but that's not always true for walmart, which has at least some goods on consignment. https://blog.softwareag.com/in-future-retailers-may-be-missi...

Consignment is still a stocking risk. They are on the hook for holding costs.

Amazon doesn't do shit with marketplace inventory. Sellers are either stocking it themselves, or they are explicitly paying amazon to hold it in their inventory.

The difference matters because retail stores always have an incentive to sell the things they stock. Even pure consignment stores will refuse to consign items that they don't think they can sell. Amazon has zero incentive to sell marketplace merchant stock, as they bear zero cost to not sell it. So anytime they start to compete against their merchants, they can effectively hide competitors listings in a back room out of sight and never have to deal with the consequences of doing so.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#276

Post by baq »

zepto wrote: post #224
baq wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't know, do you?

So you just made up a bullshit accusation to discredit Amazon based on no evidence at all, and then claimed I was moving the goalposts?

i know nothing happened in the review and fraud for years, i don't know if it's too expensive to fix - your bullshit against mine. (also, too expensive for amazon? what?)

as to your goalposts, poor service is literally bad for customers/consumers, so i don't even know what to say except that you're quite likely incapable of letting go of your beliefs, because logic can't reconcile the dissonance.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#277

Post by undefined1 »

shockeychap wrote: post #102

Given the volume and profitably of tech trading by members of Congress (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26821601 ) I have ZERO confidence that any useful legislation will come of it. It will just be a bunch of earnest and disingenuous theatre by the very people profiting from a bunch of companies who make Microsoft circa 1995 look like a kitten. For my part, I think the fundamental business model of profitin…

wow, you're not kidding. what are the chances they are going to bite their main investments and key donor class?

"About 98% of political contributions from internet companies this cycle went to Democrats"

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/02/tech-billionaire-2020-electi...

https://observer.com/2020/11/big-tech-2020-presidential-elec...

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/30/21540616/silicon-valle...

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#278

Post by [deleted] »

capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#279

Post by [deleted] »

kube-system wrote: post #183
dontblink wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is in the US though?

Laws that prohibit anticompetitive practices do just as the name implies -- they prohibit companies from acting in a way that inhibits competition with their competitors in the market. The impact on consumers is often used as a justification and evidence of that, but it's not usually a requirement. It is assumed that the act of being anticompetitive itself is harmful to consumers as it limits their options.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#280

Post by com2kid »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #11
capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

> How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace? They should have been forced to divide their busin Depends on how you define “marketplace”. Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores. Is their one store the marketplace? It takes considerably more effort to go t…

For an increasing number of product lines, Walgreens is selling only their house brand.

Last time I needed one, I was unable to buy an effective bandage wrap in person, I had to order online. My local Walgreens only had their own house brand "self stick" type that doesn't really stick at all.

Went to buy some wrist braces, again, only their house brand. Many styles of wrist braces exist, they sold one type, the type I didn't want.

For some house brands, such as Costco, they provide a huge competitive force in the marketplace. An example is Costco Diapers, which are rated really well, and basically establish a price at which other "name brands" have to complete. There is a possibility that they are creating a downwards pressure on the price of diapers overall. (Or that they are colluding to ensure prices don't fall too far, huh, never thought of that angle before!)

My local grocery store's brand is generally untrustworthy. I hate it when they are the only option for buying something. The 3 times I have tried their yogurt coated pretzels I have gotten an upset stomach, and I normally have an iron stomach that allows me to eat street food around the world with aplomb.

Funny enough their house brand "sweetened flavored sparking water" is really my preferred brand, so they get it right some of the time.

But from one perspective, isn't this argument hypocritical of us? If I go to a baker, I kinda expect everything in the bakery to be "store brand", and in fact many bakeries been scandalized for not selling their own goods! Heck if I go to my local farmer's market I expect what the farmer sells what they grew, and again if they are just reselling produce, social media scandal!

This entire idea of stores being a "marketplace" for multiple brands is only a recent aberration.

So maybe what are seeing is just things are just slowly returning to a world where everything is "store branded".

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