Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

Post by int_19h » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #304

untog wrote: post #59

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Android is perhaps the closest in comparison to Microsoft/Internet Explorer. Spin off Android into its own company, including the Play Store. There would be nothing stopping Google from keeping their apps in the Play Store, but they would sit on the same level as competing mapping and search apps, and users would choose which one to use instead of have it preinstalled.

You need to remember that android's customers aren't the end users of the phones, its customers are the OEMs. Spinning off android into its own company separate from Google wouldn't mean the end user gets a preference of which mapping or search app to install, it means the company selling the phone (either the phone brand or the cell network) gets to choose.

Post by rayiner » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 7:20 PM UTC

elefanten wrote: post #474

rayiner wrote: post #416

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> With Comcast (and other ISPs), you have only one choice, and they spend tons of money and effort making sure you only have that one choice, and continue to have only that one choice. Comcast recently spent nearly $1M to prevent Fort Collins from creating a municipal ISP[1]. That is actively anti-competitive and monopolistic by definition. I'm sure if the U.S. government was proposing to sell public bonds to build a…

It's municipal, so the magnitude of threat you're implying (oooh Government ) is a misdirection. GP's point is that consistently lobbying to shut down the existence of any competition, public or private, is monopolistic behavior. And it is, pretty much by definition.

Post by cooooooffffeeee » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

ztratar wrote: post #436

cooooooffffeeee wrote: post #422

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You're high if you think someone can compete with Amazon out of their garage now. Hell, you can't even sell a product on Amazon without a good chance that Amazon will just slap their Amazon Basics logo on it and undercut you to death. Similar to Wal-Mart many of their competitors are dead because they optimized their supply chain. No one gets that kind of access out of their garage.

And if Amazon is broken up, whoever thinks the US will still win the global E-commerce market against Alibaba is also quite high. The rules are changing. We need to think about the geopolitics here as well. We need US companies to win global markets in an era of increased competition.

Post by anth_anm » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

psadauskas wrote: post #211

How about going after Comcast and Verizon first, the actual tech monopolies ? I already don’t use Facebook, I buy things online from places other than Amazon, and have email accounts that aren’t hosted by Google. However, all of that goes over Comcast’s network because that’s my only viable choice for Internet service. Also, while FAANG occasionally do things I don’t approve of, they don’t actively lobby congress for…

Post by jamroom » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #452

lotu wrote: post #414

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The problem is this type of vertical splitting doesn't solve the problem of large tech companies. It's like treating a burst appendix with a kidney transplant. The problem of Amazon is that it is effectively the only online shopping place, and thus can act as a Monopsony in hiring it's workers for warehouses, splitting AWS out of that doesn't fix that problem. Maybe you could require that distribution centers be owne…

If we had a progressive corporate tax, I think all the problems would sort themselves out. You want to build a trillion dollar company? Fine. Corporate tax rate of 50%. You're a small business with less than $1M in revenue. Cool. Corporate tax rate of 0%. Big companies will break up to take advantage of the tax code. Problem solved. Instead, the bigger you are, the harder you can lobby for tax breaks. Currently, if y…