Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
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Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#2It does concern me when people say that the internet should be unregulated, especially given the recent vote in the US and the likely upcoming votes in the UK.
Monopolies are very easy to form on the internet, and in the interest of improving everyone's use, we need to try to avoid them. Walled gardens currently trap people into one service and limit the ability to swap between them, similar to "forcing" you to use just one company for your construction work, no matter the price.
I haven't heard a great answer to this problem yet, if one even exists. Is there a way to attempt to prevent these from forming which can be practically implemented?
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#3Two words: too late.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#4On one hand I absolutely love Google's ecosystem and have an Android phone, use Gmail, have an nVidia Shield TV, use Android Pay, travel using Google Maps for transit every day, use Docs for work, Drive for all cloud storage needs and YouTube is YouTube.
On the other, being so reliant on one company for so much is bound to cause problems at some point.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#5Feels like it's getting worse too. For example, things like Google Home and Alexa discourage choice. "Order me a pizza" means they are now either kingmakers in the space, or incented to open their own pizza business.
I'm not a fan of big government, but at some point depending solely on their goodwill seems dangerous.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#6I trust Google with my life
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#7I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated.
Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users.
Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in particular, as well as a hypothetical alliance/merger of supermarket chains, are well positioned to break Amazon's dominance of e-commerce. But they will need the ambition and ruthlessness that has served Bezos so well. Few large American corporations still have the vigor and virility of Bezos's Amazon.
Microsoft (full disclosure: my former employer) too is strong but not unbeatable. All of their products are facing tough competition from Apple (in OS and hardware sales), Google (in online services), and multiple others (in business software). Microsoft's wins are hard fought and fair, and the competition never lags too much.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#8I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated. Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users. Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in partic…
The problem with that is that those companies can use the ad revenue to dump prices in other field and essentially drive any possible competition out of the market. This can cause a dangerous snowball where a few huge corporations control several markets and competing is impossible because they don't need to earn profit (or earn anything at all) on those secondary markets.
Add vendor lockin and you just created a corporate monopoly which is terrible for consumers.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#9Two words: too late.
One word: yes.
Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
#10If you don't like their services, you have plenty of other options, one of them being that you don't need to use them at all.
On the other hand, you're locked in with your broadband ISP. If I'm going to decry some internet business, I will first point the finger at Comcast and their ilk.