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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

#721

Post by JVIDEL »

brmgb wrote: post #528
rayiner wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's working terribly in France. France has some of the slowest broadband in the OECD: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... . Just 18% of French households have connections faster than 15 mbps, versus 48% of American households.

That's mostly because France never used copper cable as a TV distribution system and is going straight to fiber. Deployment is admittedly slower than it should be especially in the countryside where it will never be profitable due to low density. Meanwhile, people are stuck with ADSL and VDSL which give connections closer to 10mbps than 15. Cost wise however, you can't even compare the USA and France. In France, a fu…

Truly unlimited data?

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#722

Post by fluffycat »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #645
ajhurliman wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like they're doing fine https://duckduckgo.com/traffic

No, the reason OP made that comment is because duckduckgo uses Bing by default to power its search. So duckduckgo is literally just Bing with a duck taped over it basically.

Exactly.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#723

Post by mywittyname »

jhall1468 wrote: post #710
mywittyname wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as long as you don't use your position to illegally prevent competition. Which is why I said, literally, "their behavior crosses into anti-competitive." You can compete with vendors, or you can control most of the market. But you can't do both: control the market, then use that advantage to drive competition out of business. > Even in the eCommerce market their share is around 50%. 50% is a staggeringly high market…

> Which is why I said, literally, "their behavior crosses into anti-competitive." Yes, and I'm saying that it isn't true. Merely owning majority market share doesn't make a company anti-competitive. Anti-competitive behavior does. And while it takes the latter following the former to work, it certainly isn't guaranteed. > You can compete with vendors, or you can control most of the market. But you can't do both: cont…

You seem to be breaking up my arguments into segments so that you can ignore the big picture.

A. Amazon controls almost 50% of market-share.

B. Amazon uses their platform data to determine which products vendors sell are high-margin, then replicates those products and sells them at a lower cost.

C. Amazon-branded products appear higher in search results, which eventually drive the original vendors out of business. Whether this is explicit, or happens by virtue of intimate understanding of Amazon's algorithms is irrelevant.

Individually, A, B, and C are not anti-competitive, but Amazon is doing A and B and C at the same time, which crosses into anti-competitive behavior. Technically, B & C together are enough to warrant anti-trust investigations.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#724

Post by cooooooffffeeee »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #679
cooooooffffeeee wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need US companies to win global markets why

Because otherwise the companies that do win the global markets do the same thing to US companies that you are saying Amazon does to small companies. How is it a good thing for the US to limit their own companies, when foreign companies don't have the same limitations? Giant companies will still exist, they will just cease to be US based companies.

Fair take. The US could penalize/limit/tariff those outside megacorps like China does though, right? I'm not sure trade should be completely free when an outside competitor can skirt your local laws.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#725

Post by igravious »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #655
igravious wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd like to say this is just politics but I'm not even sure it's good politics. How many people are really concerned about the size of Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc Oh, lots and lots. > If people are that concerned, why do so many people I know have Prime? The reason so many of the people you know have Prime is because of Amazon's dominant market position. > The fossil fuel industry continues to run rampant. As doe…

> I'd like to say this is just politics but I'm not even sure it's good politics. How many people are really concerned about the size of Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc Oh, lots and lots. > If people are that concerned, why do so many people I know have Prime? The reason so many of the people you know have Prime is because of Amazon's dominant market position. Yes. But if they are THAT concerned they would be dropping…

> Yes. But if they are THAT concerned they would be dropping Prime and shopping elsewhere.

You know and I know that that's not true. People stick with things because of inertia, convenience, network effects, … To use a tech analogy, many people back in the day hated Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop and server operating system market but very few initially changed to MacOS or Linux. To this day Microsoft still has a stranglehold on the consumer desktop market, the difference being that smartphones and tablets and chromebooks (browser appliances) have given people alternatives.

No, for me (a European) lots and lots refers to the many people outside of the US that would like to see non-US companies taking a bigger slice of the tech pie. Of course Americans are going to have less of a problem with US companies dominating the web.

I hold no firm political allegiance other than it is clear the establishment is happy with the status quo, anybody who promises to tackle concentrations of power in either big media, big tech, big finance, big you name it, gets my approval. If we spent some time talking about concrete issues and policies I bet we'd agree on a lot of things!

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#726

Post by chmielewski »

908087 wrote: post #445
chmielewski wrote: post #168

I choose not to use Amazon. I choose not to use Facebook. Very difficult to not interact with Google... I choose not to use Verizon... however COMCAST is TERRRIBLE and along with Verizon, they have shut down every mom-and-pop ISP and are responsible for the wholesale elimination of robust, in-place copper from the consumer and business markets. Senator Warren, please add Comcast\Verizon to this list. That would get m…

Do you somehow choose to avoid everything hosted on AWS? How do you avoid the wider societal effects of Facebook, and how do you avoid their collection of data on you via third parties?

No I don't (can't) avoid everything hosted on AWS. That's RMS-level commitment. I just don't use them in my work or for projects, and I don't use their marketplace.

I don't avoid the "societal effects" of facebook, I just don't/won't/haven't had a profile. It's not like I would boycott an event if their only RSVP/invite/info page is on facebook, more like voting with my feet when it comes to signing up for and/or utilizing their platform.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#727

Post by ajhurliman »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #645
ajhurliman wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like they're doing fine https://duckduckgo.com/traffic

No, the reason OP made that comment is because duckduckgo uses Bing by default to power its search. So duckduckgo is literally just Bing with a duck taped over it basically.

Oh, I didn't know, thanks for that

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#728

Post by eli_gottlieb »

genericone wrote: post #351
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really good point. Let's nationalize the ISPs!

On the internet it's hard to tell if that is real enthusiasm or sarcasm. Enthusiasm: Telco cartels need more oversight, make them government run, so they are beholden to the people. They serve themselves at a nice profit at everyone's expense, but internet communications have become so intertwined in culture, commerce, national security, that there really is no reason they shouldn't be part of the government apparatu…

Enthusiasm, as a matter of fact.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#729

Post by brmgb »

JVIDEL wrote: post #721
brmgb wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's mostly because France never used copper cable as a TV distribution system and is going straight to fiber. Deployment is admittedly slower than it should be especially in the countryside where it will never be profitable due to low density. Meanwhile, people are stuck with ADSL and VDSL which give connections closer to 10mbps than 15. Cost wise however, you can't even compare the USA and France. In France, a fu…

Truly unlimited data?

For 4G data, your bandwith get capped ridiculously low after 60GB. For broadband, it's seems really unlimited yes. As it's often supposed to be for residential use only, I guess they will start asking you questions if your usage becomes very noticeable. I personally don't know anyone who ever had an issue.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#730

Post by deegles »

giarc wrote: post #117
deegles wrote: post #103

I used to work at Amazon and the idea of spinning out Marketplace just seems unworkable. It's like saying that Microsoft should spin out Xbox... they are 100% dependent on each other.

The easiest target would be for Amazon to spin out AWS.

That's... even less workable.
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