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Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

nytimes.com

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Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#61

Post by adrr »

jsutton wrote: post #35
travisoneill1 wrote: post #19

What is the alleged anti-competitive behavior? The article doesn't mention it. It sounds like she is calling for their breakup merely for being big and powerful, and if that were cause enough to break up an entity we would logically start with the government.

For starters, Amazon provided a marketplace platform for third parties to sell goods. They then gathered data on which items sold the best, created their own line of products based off this data, and crushed their customers-turned-competitors using their massive advantage in economies of scale.

If they were the largest retail seller, that would be anti-competitive. Amazon does less than half the revenue of Walmart. Amazon and Costco are the same size.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#62

Post by dekhn »

vlangber wrote: post #48
dekhn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which would be very interesting, as youtube is 100% dependent on Google infrastructure to work (everything from machine learning to data delivery).

Sure, but those issues can be solved, both short-term and long-term.

I can't really see how. It would literally cost billions of dollars, be extremely wasteful in terms of duplicated efforts, consume millions of SRE and SWE hours, and the result would be slower and worse in many ways. Then people would complain that youtube sucked even more.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#63

Post by sgjohnson »

While I agree that we should break apart giant companies (and not just Amazon, telecoms too), the first large entity that we should break apart, is the government.

The only way to stop monopolies from forming is by getting rid of legislation that heavily benefits large businesses.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#64

Post by dekhn »

wernercd wrote: post #33
dekhn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which would be very interesting, as youtube is 100% dependent on Google infrastructure to work (everything from machine learning to data delivery).

And Windows was dependent in Internet Explorer to operate. And that dependence was both created artificially and then abused. Why can't YouTube switch to, say, Azure? Or Oracle Cloud? or whatever other magic exists? Infrastructure exists outside of Google - as did the ability to decouple Internet Explorer from Windows.

windows was never dependent on internet explorer to operate. MS put a simple DLL with HTML and other web tech in the OS, making it easier to serve up help and other content. What they did (IMHO) was completely reasonable in terms of OS integration. Look at ChromeOS today- it's the same idea, taken to its logical conclusion.

People often misrepresent the MS trial.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#65

Post by justaman »

dnissley wrote: post #34
logicchains wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would help give China a fairer chance in the AI race. Due to economies of scale and the sheer amount of resources they command, Facebook and Google are able to conduct research that would otherwise be incredibly expensive (e.g. training AlphaZero), and offer incredibly high salaries to lure in researchers. Apparently 80% of all machine learning engineers work at Google or Facebook! Breaking this concentration of m…

It would also give other companies in the US a better shot at the same goal. The focus on China seems unwarranted.

I don't think its fair to underestimate China. Breaking up Amazon or Google would benefit China more than the west. Sure Amazon and Google are possibly too large, but their Chinese counter parts are equally as large and direct competitors. The idea behind breaking these companies up is to encourage market competition but that competition already exists and will not be broken up in China. Somehow Warren always has the wrong solutions but is generally correct in identifying a problem.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#66

Post by all2 »

untog wrote: post #14

Comparisons will be made to Microsoft and Internet Explorer but to me the really crucial part of this isn't market dominance in the "what app are you using" sense, it's data. Facebook, Google and Amazon really do have an unprecedented amount of data on us. And keep vacuuming up more and more of it. Facebook should never have been allowed to buy WhatsApp (and maybe not Instagram though I'm less concerned about that on…

> Companies with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or more ...

Hiding revenue is something multi-national corporations do really well.

If I ran a company that had a platform as described, and we were approaching the 25bn mark, I'd find ways to make sure we never crossed that line.

Losing IP to what would become a 'public utility' would discourage me from ever trying to develop beyond the 24.9bn mark.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#67

Post by donatj »

wernercd wrote: post #33
dekhn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which would be very interesting, as youtube is 100% dependent on Google infrastructure to work (everything from machine learning to data delivery).

And Windows was dependent in Internet Explorer to operate. And that dependence was both created artificially and then abused. Why can't YouTube switch to, say, Azure? Or Oracle Cloud? or whatever other magic exists? Infrastructure exists outside of Google - as did the ability to decouple Internet Explorer from Windows.

> And Windows was dependent in Internet Explorer to operate.

I mean it was and still is dependent on MSHTML for rendering things like the help system as well as rich text in many pre-XAML apps. You don’t want the icon on your desktop, fine, but it certainly is a core part of the OSs rendering system.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#68

Post by robbick »

untog wrote: post #59
crowbahr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gut reaction: I feel like Android would not survive Google being forced to remove all their apps from the Google play store.

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.

And tbh - most people would still probably download google chrome, google maps, google docs etc - it would just level the playing field

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#69

Post by gipp »

tobr wrote: post #38
dekhn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which would be very interesting, as youtube is 100% dependent on Google infrastructure to work (everything from machine learning to data delivery).

By definition, since it's owned by Google. You can apply the same logic to any proposed split.

Not really; chrome and Android are far more independent.

YT is integrated at every level from infrastructure on up. It depends on Google-internal libraries which are in turn integrated with other parts of the infrastructure... It would pretty much amount to a full from-scratch rewrite of almost the entire product.

Moreover, I'd question whether other providers even have the available public resource capacity to support YT.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#70

Post by partingshots »

To my knowledge, American monopoly laws focus more on the welfare of the consumer and whether customers are being negatively affected rather than the companies themselves. There’s nothing wrong with having a monopoly, but where issues arise is when consumers start to be hurt.

In this context, how do Elizabeth Warren’s comments mesh out?

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