Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 375 posts

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#51

Post by sovnade »

neaden wrote: post #44
Balero wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is not with smart phones, but with the ecosystem around them. Eg, Apple, and iTunes. Android, and google docs

I think a good example is cars. Imagine having a Ford car that you could only get repaired at Ford dealerships, that only took Ford bumper stickers or other accessories, and only could get filled up with Ford gas at Ford gas stations. I think most people would agree that would be a problem, and we are getting dangerously close to that with smart phones.

We're going in that direction with cars as well (EVs specifically).

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#52

Post by choko »

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #36
choko wrote: post #16

"But social media, Berners-Lee said, was still being used to propagate hate." This is one of the side effects of an open web, and one I feel we should live with in the interests of freedom. The only alternative of which I am aware is to police speech through some kind of authority. I'm not sure that there is an authority in existence that I would trust with that level of power. In a perfect world, we would be able to…

>In a perfect world, we would be able to de-platform those that incite violence against others (for any reason) Should we really do it for any reason? Are there not some groups of which a certain level of violence (enforced by the state) is good? I can think of many groups of people who engage in actions which we agree it is good to respond with some violence to enslave them in cages. Well, that is one interpretation…

I believe that inciting violence against others is wrong, but at no point did I argue that we shouldn't have laws against aggressive behavior. Those are two different concepts.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#53

Post by ghostly_s »

themagician wrote: post #26
stochastic_monk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT&T is a tech giant in precisely the same sense that Google is.

AT&T controls infrastructure and has a monopoly in certain geographic areas. Google does not. Google has a monopoly on search, but that’s about it. There are alternatives though, some of which are as good or better in many ways.

In any meaningful sense, search is infrastructure now. So is email, etc.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#54

Post by jshowa3 »

majani wrote: post #39

I think the main issue that has allowed the likes of Google and Facebook to grow to a dangerous size is the ability to scale globally with minimal resistance from other countries. As time goes by, I start to realize that China's great firewall may have had some visionary thinking behind it, and other countries may follow suit in future to enable their citizens to take part in the digital revolution.

As someone who has been to China. This is the worst part about going there. Try finding or enjoying anything online where half the sites are blocked.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#55

Post by WC3w6pXxgGd »

arendtio wrote: post #20

I am not sure, but sometimes I think splitting the companies is not even what we need. Instead, companies with > $1 billion annual revenue should be bound by law to built federated platforms and provide the software to participate in such a network. I mean, you could split up Google into Search, Youtube, and Mail. But in the end, Youtube would still use Analytics and provide Search with all the data they need for the…

Why do you trust governments so much?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#56

Post by [deleted] »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #21
themagician wrote: post #10

They really don’t. They don’t have monopolies on anything and there is no high barrier to entry to compete, they are just really popular. Facebook is far more akin to Kim Kardashian than Ma Bell or Standard Oil. You don’t need Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any of that other crap. In fact, it turns out if you stop using them nothing bad happens to you at all. I’m many cases your life is better and you actually e…

AT&T is a tech giant in precisely the same sense that Google is.

[deleted]

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#57

Post by ekianjo »

supercanuck wrote: post #7
asaph wrote: post #3

> “If you put a drop of love into Twitter it seems to decay but if you put in a drop of hatred you feel it actually propagates much more strongly. And you wonder: ‘Well is that because of the way that Twitter as a medium has been built?’” How exactly is breaking up the tech giants going to solve this problem?

lower the barriers of entry for competition.

Network effects are hard to tackle when there are established players. The easiest thing is to wait until Twitter and Facebook lose the coolness factor and the next generation is hungry for something else.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#58

Post by bepotts »

gambler wrote: post #29
themagician wrote: post #10

They really don’t. They don’t have monopolies on anything and there is no high barrier to entry to compete, they are just really popular. Facebook is far more akin to Kim Kardashian than Ma Bell or Standard Oil. You don’t need Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any of that other crap. In fact, it turns out if you stop using them nothing bad happens to you at all. I’m many cases your life is better and you actually e…

>You don’t need Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any of that other crap. You didn't need Microsoft products in the 90s. Except you did if you wanted to do serious work. That's why they were targeted by antitrust regulation. Exactly the same situation here, except Facebook and co have much more control over their product and can directly influence public opinion, not just software.

This is a dumb comparison and too many people make this argument. You couldn't use any technology without paying the Microsoft tax. There were no smartphones, no internet-of-things, and the internet was just getting started. Everything you did had to be done on the desktop.

That is no longer the case. You don't want to use Google? Type in www.bing.com. You don't want to use Facebook? Use Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or whatever. Don't like Android? Buy an iPhone.

Microsoft's monopoly isn't analogous to Facebook and Google. Being a monopoly is not a problem - being a monopoly in such a way that harms the end user is; within the United States at least. Nobody is being harmed by Google and Facebook being popular.

Post reply on HN