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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

#661

Post by panda88888 »

peeters wrote: post #183
MagicPropmaker wrote: post #167

Microsoft is now worth more than Apple, and it used to be in the target of government regulators. What has it done right?

I'm not sure Apple can claim a monopoly the same way those other three can. How would you "break up" Apple when their business is largely focused to one market that has strong competition?

I would argue that the iOS platform (HW/SW and app store) certainly meets the >25 billion annual revenue specified by Warren and should be split from other Apple services, such as Apple Music and rumored upcoming Apple streaming service.

For example, Spotify would have to pay 15-30% of its monthly subscription fee if user paid it through the IAP (which is why Spotify doesn't offer that option), whereas Apple music can do so without the 15-30% fee. Also, Spotify is not allowed to include a link to its website to pay for subscription, because it's against the Apple app store rules. The same applies to Netflix and other digital content/service providers. Apple either gets the 15-30% price advantage, or it gets the added convenience of In-App purchase for the service.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#663

Post by cooooooffffeeee »

gowld wrote: post #603
cooooooffffeeee wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's called out Comcast before too — don't jump to the conclusion that someone can't chew gum and walk at the same time without at least a 10 second Google.

Forgive us for taking her campaign speeches at face value. She chose to make FAG the highlight of her campaign, not Comcast.

Maybe rethink that acronym.

I figured people would take a couple minutes to educate themselves about the candidates, but I forgot that I wasn't in my home country.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#664

Post by moron4hire »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #452
lotu wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A million of revenue isn't a lot.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#665

Post by bhl »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #384
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…

Separating Google Search and Google's ad business would kill both. Advertising subsidizes search, search supports advertising.

Google isn’t only search and ads. Their adverse is worse in smaller markets like Maps and Cloud, where they use revenue from another market to commoditize and build a moat in another — thereby unfairly competing.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#666

Post by dj_brown_sugar »

giggles_giggles wrote: post #373
psadauskas wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I should have checked the facts before speculating on which company spent more on lobbying. However, the things they are lobbying for/against also matter. As a recent example, Net Neutrality involved massive amounts of lobbing and had very clear "pro-consumer" and "anti-consumer" sides. From https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/net_neutrality/ > Not only was Google the pro-net neutrality organization…

>As a recent example, Net Neutrality involved massive amounts of lobbing and had very clear "pro-consumer" and "anti-consumer" sides This isn't as uncontroversial of an opinion as it might appear to be in a place like HN. What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.

> What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.

The original point of anti-trust law was to make things better for the consumer. If Comcast is using their power to lobby for anti-consumer practices then they should be broken up. Naturally consumers are going to disagree with anti-consumer practices.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#667

Post by bhl »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #47
jsutton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are allowed to crush your competitors with economy of scale provided that you don't do it by selling at a loss. That's actually the entire point of economy of scale. The reference in the article is to passing a law against this so clearly what Amazon did is legal now. Furthermore, we don't need a law for this as this type of thing is well handled by a non-compete clause, which I am surprised wasn't in the seller'…

The larger issue is that Amazon does not treat each product equally. When you search for an item, they don’t necessarily even show you the “best item” — most bought or highest reviews. Products which buy advertisements or Amazon’s own brands are bubbled up: its not an even playing field in this sense.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#668

Post by sytelus »

will_brown wrote: post #326
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…

>But no, because Comcast has -bribed- donated to way more congresspeople than Google... Lobbying is tracked and google spent over 33% more than Comcast - in your own words - bribing members of Congress. The bulk of Google’s lobbying expenditure was for immigration, tax reform and antitrust. I’d say Google’s far better “at playing the game” after all no one is randomly sticking up for Comcast.

This "tracked" lobbying is drop in the dark matter of political money. There are huge numbers of "career" congressman with disproportionate amount of wealth even though their only supposedly legal income was less than $200K. Magic? You don't get private dinners with presidents with just legal lobbying money.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/hawkings/congress-richer-ever-...

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#669

Post by bhl »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #393
basch wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If youre going to break up Amazon, AWS, and Whole Foods for being vertically integrated, how can you not break up the oil companies or the agriculture companies or the chemical companies.

You could also argue that Apple is "too vertically integrated" and separate them into either a Laptop / Phone company or a Hardware / software company. Or break out music / media / Beats into it's own company too.

That would be horizontal integration. But that’s even a hard argument to make since Apple doesn’t have a monopoly or large market share of any of those segments — remember how Apple’s growth was supposed to slow down since their customer base has been saturated? Maybe luxury products but that’s a stretch. Apple isn’t vertically integrated since they outsource some of their manufacturing and assembly to other companies.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#670

Post by sarbaz »

Kaveren wrote: post #579
charmides wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you are just repeating the same specious point that OP was refuting. Right now, it feels like companies like Google are mostly silencing hate speech, violent extremists, and pornography, but there is no guarantee that their censorship will remain that way in the future. In a not-so-hypothetical future where a single private company has taken almost whole control over online media and starts imposing hea…

Yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Your opinion has no right to exist on any platform. Don't like it? You can move off of it. Bring other people to a platform that goes by rules you like. I don't use Gab, I am not interested in it, but it exists and has rules you may prefer if this hypothetical situation were to occur. I like diverse viewpoints being allowed. It is unacceptable, however, to be so entitled as t…

I used to think like you do, but what changed my mind was that I tried to consider whether a hands-off approach will maximize total freedom.

If, by regulating the way people do business, we can increase total freedom in the world, I think that it's a worthwhile exchange. The way we do business is already regulated, and is one of the powers that we explicitly grant the government in the constitution.

The way I see it, forcing social platforms to accept free speech is really just a commercial regulation, and not a speech regulation. After all, we all understand that this post doesn't reflect the opinions of YC, and thus forcing YC to accept this post doesn't restrict anyone's freedom of speech.

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