Google and Facebook are monopolies. Does it matter? [audio]

Post by Grazester » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

fokov wrote: post #29

belorn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The service google and facebook provide is access to their captured audience. In the case of google that is the advertisement market with search and the platform of youtube. It is rather commonly known that many video producers are extremely unhappy using youtube but feel locked in since thats where the audience is, and the audience is equally locked in since youtube is where the producers are. New video platforms po…

Replace YouTube with network TV vs cable in the early days. There is a way past YouTube but people must be willing to adapt and/or take the hit building the next thing. Most of the best TV shows have been from network and especially the premium ones like HBO, Showtime, and now Netflix. However, it took many years to get here and most people probably can't afford to compete without net neutrality.

Post by dexterdog » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

gambler wrote: post #40

umvi wrote: post #3

If they are, they are not a traditional monopolies. Traditional monopolies "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted." In this case, the supply of a good or service (social networking, webpage indexing and searching) are not controlled by Facebook and Google because they aren't finite resources. Anyone can index the web and anyone can build a social n…

If your argument was applied to something like money, the conclusion would be that governments do not have any control over the financial system, because anyone can chose to barter and anyone can chose to break the law. >What Facebook and Google have is massive, large scale user loyalty. Google has effective control of web standards. Edit: Also, the podcast directly addresses your comment. In fact, that's what it is…

Post by dddw » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #3

If they are, they are not a traditional monopolies. Traditional monopolies "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted." In this case, the supply of a good or service (social networking, webpage indexing and searching) are not controlled by Facebook and Google because they aren't finite resources. Anyone can index the web and anyone can build a social n…

Post by gajeam » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #13

What matter are laws that are making harder to compete with them. Thanks to GDPR, you’ll probably never see a fb competitor emerge in Europe for example.

Post by gajeam » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #35

SilasX wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I made a similar point recently[1], that a monopoly should be judged by lock-in, not by raw market percentage, which is an arbitrary measure anyway; no one cares that I have a monopoly on SilasX-labor. What matters is whether it's hard for others to offer alternatives to SilasX-labor and whether buyers can switch to that alternative. In that sense, you should worry about monopolies on OSes or rail routes, whi…

> What matters is whether it's hard for others to offer alternatives It is monstrously hard to offer alternatives. The barrier to entry is the massive engineering effort to compete. Google is not just a search engine. It is an email server and client, a calendar, an online office suite, a cloud provider, a mobile platform, and I can go on listing things to fill up several pages of what Google is. Even if DuckDuckGo i…