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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?

#31

Post by tyingq »

hammock wrote: post #22
tyingq wrote: post #5

Feels like it's getting worse too. For example, things like Google Home and Alexa discourage choice. "Order me a pizza" means they are now either kingmakers in the space, or incented to open their own pizza business. I'm not a fan of big government, but at some point depending solely on their goodwill seems dangerous.

How is that different from a yellow pages? If you are going to say "amazon only offers you one choice" that is an assumption you could make of yellow pages as well (it's a commercial publication, they don't have to list everything). The yellow pages chooses to accept payment from competitors to offer more choice. Amazon could do the same. And if you are going to say "what is yellow pages?" then damn am I old :)

I'm specifically referring to the voice interface of Alexa and Google Home. Voice doesn't lend itself well to listing out choices. The yellow pages has many listings for pizza.

There are fair ways to implement it, sure. We're depending on their goodwill though.

However, this specific thing is just one of many ways it's getting worse. Google, for example, is slowly, but surely pushing organic results down the page, for their own benefit.

I'm saying that in general, the problem is getting worse, for a variety of reasons.

Edit: Yes, there are workarounds, like using the App. I'm not talking about how to solve this for myself though. I'm talking about the collective effects.

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

#32

Post by FLUX-YOU »

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…

>These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy.

That's weird, I thought they were all building robots to serve the wealthy by replacing everyone's jobs?

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

#33

Post by jacquesm »

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…

> Microsoft's wins are hard fought and fair

No, they were unfairly fought. Don't let the fact that it is your former employer cloud your vision.

Not many companies have such a sordid history of unfair competition as Microsoft does.

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

#34

Post by hammock »

tyingq wrote: post #31
hammock wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from a yellow pages? If you are going to say "amazon only offers you one choice" that is an assumption you could make of yellow pages as well (it's a commercial publication, they don't have to list everything). The yellow pages chooses to accept payment from competitors to offer more choice. Amazon could do the same. And if you are going to say "what is yellow pages?" then damn am I old :)

I'm specifically referring to the voice interface of Alexa and Google Home. Voice doesn't lend itself well to listing out choices. The yellow pages has many listings for pizza. There are fair ways to implement it, sure. We're depending on their goodwill though. However, this specific thing is just one of many ways it's getting worse. Google, for example, is slowly, but surely pushing organic results down the page, fo…

..then use the app? Echo actually gives you multiple options in the app in response to a voice query about commercial establishments as a general rule. Would be a good application for the Echo Show as well

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

#35

Post by devuo »

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…

And yet, only very large companies are able to make a certain class of investments in infrastructure and services — that push technology and society forward as a whole — that small to mid companies due to lack of capacity never could, and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would.

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

#36

Post by friedman23 »

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…

do you have any evidence that your suggestions will actually improve the consumer experience or are you just suggesting killing businesses because of a gut feeling and some anti corporate sentiment?

>If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to mirror the economies within these large corporations.

None of these companies can be said to be monopolies.

> We will gradually lose freedom of speech, in the same way that employees of large corporations don't have the freedom to say what they really think to their bosses.

This is the slipperiest slope I've ever seen.

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

#37

Post by arbuge »

adtac wrote: post #23
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…

I disagree. Advertising has been around since the 1800s and I don't really think it'll be going away anytime soon. And besides, Google is diversifying its portfolio these days anyway (GCP, Google Home, Waymo, and tons of moonshots).

Actually advertising has been around alot longer in one form or another. The need has always existed to somehow inform consumers of the availability of products and services:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising#Pre-mod...

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

#38

Post by lisper »

devuo wrote: post #35
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…

And yet, only very large companies are able to make a certain class of investments in infrastructure and services — that push technology and society forward as a whole — that small to mid companies due to lack of capacity never could, and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would.

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.

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

#39

Post by l5870uoo9y »

devuo wrote: post #35
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…

And yet, only very large companies are able to make a certain class of investments in infrastructure and services — that push technology and society forward as a whole — that small to mid companies due to lack of capacity never could, and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would.

The capital requirements are generally low in the tech sector compared to traditional industry.

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

#40

Post by tyingq »

_cbsz wrote: post #20
tyingq wrote: post #5

Feels like it's getting worse too. For example, things like Google Home and Alexa discourage choice. "Order me a pizza" means they are now either kingmakers in the space, or incented to open their own pizza business. I'm not a fan of big government, but at some point depending solely on their goodwill seems dangerous.

"order me a pizza from domino's." "order me a pizza from papa john's."

Right, but you see the difference from a Google web search for "order a pizza", right?
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