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Where Warren’s Wrong

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Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#281

Post by adgasf »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #181
scarface74 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So since most of the things we use everyday on the Internet is free, that means most products we use are run by companies that are using predator pricing. Does that mean that HN should also come under scrutiny because it can price HN free? What if I wanted to start a competitor to HN? Should the government make it so there is an environment that makes that easier?

> So since most of the things we use everyday on the Internet is free, that means most products we use are run by companies that are using predator pricing. Don't forget "if it's free then you're not the customer you're the product" -- which means it's the users who are engaged in predator pricing by not charging for access to their eyeballs. Of course, the users aren't giving their eyeballs for free, they're trading…

"if it's free then you're not the customer you're the product" this ignores non-profit ventures like Wikipedia.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#282

Post by edanm »

lswainemoore wrote: post #272
root_axis wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds ok to me. I think the consumer would be very happy with 200 dollar PCs that were comparable in quality to thousand dollar machines.

Ok...but the point is that after they achieve the monopoly they can jack up the price to well over a thousand dollars without worrying about losing market share.

At which point why would wouldn't a new company form to compete with them? They probably couldn't kill the market forever, and it would be very expensive to try this and fail.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#283

Post by edanm »

RestlessMind wrote: post #279
chj wrote: post #22

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…

> The author is nitpicking You are being charitable to the author. Usually Stratechery articles are decent, but on this one, the author has many ignorant remarks. > Bing Microsoft, if not checked with antitrust investigations, could have shoved Bing (or Live, or MSN Search) down everyone's throat. Just like Google tried to do with Google+. So to credit Warren's point, without antitrust case, we could be living with B…

> Microsoft, if not checked with antitrust investigations, could have shoved Bing (or Live, or MSN Search) down everyone's throat. Just like Google tried to do with Google+. So to credit Warren's point, without antitrust case, we could be living with Bing (or Live or MSN Search).

Bing started in 2009. Google was already amazingly dominant at that point. What did the previous antitrust cases have to do with Bing's success or failure?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#284

Post by scarface74 »

sf_rob wrote: post #151
chumali wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't like the App store don't buy Apple products. The main issue with the App store (in terms of antitrust) isn't one of consumer choice but rather of taking advantage of network effects to enable rent seeking behaviour. App developers face little real choice, this inhibits the development of new app markets which would otherwise create value for consumers/developers beyond the value lost by Apple sharehold…

>isn't one of consumer choice but rather of taking advantage of network effects to enable rent seeking behaviour. If Apple could rely on network effect alone then they could have a hidden setting to enable 3rd party apps to run on the device like Android does. The retort to this is that you're increasing the attack surface of rogue apps but I don't buy that personally.

Seeing what recently happened when Fortnite - a very popular game - went around the Google Play Store. It’s not to hard “to buy”

https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#285

Post by scarface74 »

patrec wrote: post #260
briandear wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also seem to forget that the Apple Bookstore is still a thing. Certainly not as big as Amazon but certainly big enough to matter. Apple also has audiobooks as well. So there is competition.

I'm so glad to hear that should Amazon ever really go overboard with memory-holing ebooks, I can always rely on Apple to distribute the really edgy stuff no one else would dare to publish!

An author can always distribute an ePub book directly from their site. When you click on it, it can be directly imported into the Books app.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#286

Post by hosh »

chj wrote: post #276
hosh wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has written a lot about Amazon, how it gained power, both in that article and in others on that blog. He did not conveniently forget to mention it. The article may seem like nitpicking the history of Bing and Google at the beginning of his article. However, if one were to read through the whole thing, he is showing how Warren is coming from an inadequate frame to make an effective policy. The author analyz…

Warren's Amazon coffee maker argument is pretty convincing, but the author focuses on the history of bing and google, that's a big turn off. Shouldn't the author come from the perspective "Where Warren's Right" if the author's "Aggregation Theory", which I am not familiar with, happens to have the same spirit of Warren's proposal? Is it reasonable that since Warren made a mistake about bing and google, therefore she'…

The author perhaps, should have lead with (paraphrased) "Warren raised this as a discussion, and that is a good thing." He wrote that towards the end.

However, according to (what I understand) as the author's frame, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the tech companies gained power and market dominance. The nitty gritty details about Bing and Google was meant to demonstrate that.

Also keep in mind: this author has been writing a blog related to Aggregation Theory for a long time. Years before Warren had raised this issue to the nation. He had analyzed each of the FAANG companies, including Amazon, in depth. Many of his readers would already be familiar with Aggregation Theory. The key insight here is that the FAANG companies are not like the monopolies of the old.

These are probably a better introduction:

https://stratechery.com/2016/the-amazon-tax/

https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#287

Post by scarface74 »

tathougies wrote: post #271
scarface74 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit is a function of competition. If Apple had competitors, it would not be able to charge as much as it did for its computers. Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in computers ? Apple has been competing against commodity PC makers for 40 years. Or are you saying that Apple doesn’t have competition making MacOS computers? Apple competes with generic PC makers by making a differentiated experience .…

> Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in computers? Of course not. A company need not have a monopoly in every market they compete in. For example, Apple produces an office suite (iWorks), but due to the competitive nature of that industry doesn't make money off of it. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on computers, but it does not make much profit off of them. Most of its profit comes from smartphones, w…

You realize that the Mac revenue alone would put it in the Fortune 100....

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#288

Post by jmrobertson »

phillmv wrote: post #267
basch wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres a pretty good argument to be made that it nearly eliminates piracy, and is good for business too.

my dudes: charge yearly $$ to get a cert that allows you to request permissions higher than "access {camera, location while in use, microphone}" and most of the truly harsh PII issues go away afaict the harm isn't consumer oriented, since it's somewhat diffuse, it's about concentration of market power in the industry. we could live in a world where you target one distribution platform, and phone vendors compete to po…

>the harm isn't consumer oriented, since it's somewhat diffuse, it's about concentration of market power in the industry.

That's true, but that's not how anti-trust law works in the US unfortunately. It's consumer-harm based.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#289

Post by pas »

edanm wrote: post #282
lswainemoore wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok...but the point is that after they achieve the monopoly they can jack up the price to well over a thousand dollars without worrying about losing market share.

At which point why would wouldn't a new company form to compete with them? They probably couldn't kill the market forever, and it would be very expensive to try this and fail.

That'd be the illegal part of being a monopoly. The antitrust laws work by restricting (penalizing) monopolies from abusing their market position/dominance.

Basically, it's not a problem if you happen to be the best in computers. But it's a big no-no to try to force resellers into exclusive contracts and so on. (If you continue to just buy up newcomers to the market that's not a problem, after all investors can just keep funding new competitors and you have to waste money.)

But of course this is a very difficult problem at the intersection of economics, politics, law and sociology.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#290

Post by dnautics »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #185
oflannabhra wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS and Android have far more active devices that Windows 10. As pointed out in the article, Microsoft missed the mobile revolution, and computing has shifted to mobile devices.

And when those users need to sit down at a computer to do actual work... It's by far dominantly a Windows PC. You can't just take mobile and give it equal representation to PC, servers, workstations, etc. It's it's own thing. Did Windows lose mobile, of course. Do mobile users exclusively use Android or IOS and not use Windows - no.

> those users need to sit down at a computer to do actual work

Not all people sit down to do work, and even those that do have more devices than they do desktops.

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