6 ms·

What people also don't seem to realize is that the US has serious anti-monopoly laws on the books (even if enforcement has been kinda lax lately). Remember Micr

by zeteo 10y ago

What people also don't seem to realize is that the US has serious anti-monopoly laws on the books (even if enforcement has been kinda lax lately). Remember Microsoft in the 90s? With Amazon running many competitors' infrastructure (e.g. Netflix is on AWS, FBA shenanigans etc.) I wouldn't be surprised if it got hit with some legal action aimed at breaking it up at this point.

milesward 10y ago
Does monopoly law apply when they have healthy competitors in every sector? This has seemed to be the escape hatch for the large tech companies: go do everything, not just eat one sector.
tribune 10y ago
There is still real competition in the cloud computing space, though. Plus, it's a hard sell that Amazon has done anything with AWS that is anti-consumer or monopolistic. The benefits to consumers are clear, and I don't think there's any reason for regulators to come after them right now.
smallnamespace 10y ago
One area where anti-monopoly law seems vague to me: does law clearly define what a market is? Like, MS got hit for leveraging their 'OS market' monopoly to break into the 'browser market', even though they are both pieces of software. If you draw distinct markets aggressively enough, then everything is its own market and many companies are monopolists in their own narrow niche. Also, what if technological changes turn two originally separate markets into a unified entity -- should it be anticompetitive if a monopolist does that?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dangrossman 10y ago
  This wiki article does a pretty good job at explaining how the "relevant market" gets determined in competition law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevant_market#Definition_and_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevant_market#Definition_and...
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    The article lists demand-side and supply-side substitution as 2 of the 3 key factors, which basically means 'if a monopolist changes the price in this product, how much does it affect supply or demand in the other product', and then says that products at exhibit substitution are in the same markets. The problem with these definitions as applied to the tech industry in particular is that oftentimes the 'price' the consumer pays is non-monetary. For example, should Google's dominance in the search industry preclude it from cross-promoting its other services? If both search and also the product it's cross-promoting are free, how should courts go about figuring out whether that's ok? Presumably Google is getting paid in data, and is turning that data into money via Ads, but the actual accounting of how much that data is worth is only something that Google has access to -- and then to see how this works for competitors, the court would also need the proprietary internal numbers for them too.
toast0 10y ago
Monopolies are ok, anti-competitive behavior from monopolists is not. I think the only thing I've seen that looks anti-competitive from Amazon is when they stopped selling (some?) TV devices without support for Amazon Prime Videos.
- zeteo 10y ago
  Maybe some people think monopolies are OK but the law says they aren't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act#Original_text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act#Original.... Are you suggesting a legalization campaign for monopolies?
  - 794CD01 10y ago
    I think it'd be a good idea, but let's not pretend that any of us need to push for that. The monopolies are perfectly capable of hiring their own lobbyists.
  - k2enemy 10y ago
    I think you are mis-interpreting the Sherman Act. Monopolies are not illegal -- from further down in the article you linked to: The act is not meant to punish businesses that come to dominate their market passively or on their own merit, only those that intentionally dominate the market through misconduct, which generally consists of conspiratorial conduct of the kind forbidden by Section 1 of the Sherman Act, or Section 3 of the Clayton Act. The FTC also has more information: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
    - zeteo 10y ago
      There's nothing in the FTC link that says monopolies are not illegal. In fact they say this: > The Sherman Act outlaws [...] any "monopolization, attempted monopolization, or conspiracy or combination to monopolize." If you look at any felony e.g. selling hard drugs there are always mitigating circumstances and exceptions - but they don't invalidate the general rule. The text of section 2 is pretty clear that monopolies are generally illegal.
dave_sullivan 10y ago
What was the end result of the MS anti-trust stuff? Clearly they weren't broken up; did it have much of an impact on their business? I assume some fines were paid after a long appeals process? It's hard to make a good argument that amazon is (or could be) a monopoly. It's more like google or Walmart where they're just really big and their scale makes them hard (not impossible, maybe unrewarding) to compete with.
- kuschku 10y ago
  The result of the 2007 antitrust case was that microsoft could not ship IE anymore, but instead had to offer users a dialog offering to install chrome, firefox, IE or others from 2010 on. This was part of why Chrome quickly rose after that. The other part was that Google became anticompetitive.
  - subway 10y ago
    Chrome didn't exist until 7 years after the case was decided and settled.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      > Google Chrome is a freeware web browser developed by Google.[11] It was first released in 2008, for Microsoft Windows > BrowserChoice.eu was a website created in March 2010 as the result of the decision in the European Union Microsoft competition case. The case involved legal proceedings by the EU against Microsoft and found that, by including Internet Explorer (IE) with their market-dominant Windows operating system, Microsoft had used their dominance of the operating system market to also create a dominant market position in the web browser market. I’m confused, what are you trying to say? Chrome didn’t exist until 2017?
      - areyousure 10y ago
        The case referenced by most US commenters would be https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C.... I've never known whether European antitrust (or privacy) action against companies like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook has had significant global/US effect. Do you (or anyone else) know of a good source on this?
hacknat 10y ago
> What people also don't seem to realize is that the US has serious anti-monopoly laws on the books Not true. At all. We have a weak Anti-Trust law that most Justice departments are squeamish about enforcing.
- zeteo 10y ago
  The laws are very strong. Back in the day, they would block a merger if it affected 7% of a market, and vertical integration was a big no-no. None of those laws have been repealed. The enforcement guidelines were weakened during the Reagan administration (a big factor in the rise of e.g. Walmart) but they're still strong enough to block plenty of mergers and allow the occasional Sherman Act prosecution. I agree with you that it's a lack of political will, but politics has been very unpredictable lately.
- hueving 10y ago
  A weak law is not the same as an unenforced strong law. An unenforced strong law can become enforced essentially overnight and wipe out those violating it.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cm2187 10y ago
For the moment they are maintaining / gaining market share by offering a better service. As long as it will be the case I would be surprised if they run into anti-trust problems. When they start abusing of this dominant position, then troubles may come.

by zeteo 10y ago

milesward 10y ago

Does monopoly law apply when they have healthy competitors in every sector? This has seemed to be the escape hatch for the large tech companies: go do everything, not just eat one sector.

tribune 10y ago

There is still real competition in the cloud computing space, though. Plus, it's a hard sell that Amazon has done anything with AWS that is anti-consumer or monopolistic. The benefits to consumers are clear, and I don't think there's any reason for regulators to come after them right now.

smallnamespace 10y ago

One area where anti-monopoly law seems vague to me: does law clearly define what a market is? Like, MS got hit for leveraging their 'OS market' monopoly to break into the 'browser market', even though they are both pieces of software. If you draw distinct markets aggressively enough, then everything is its own market and many companies are monopolists in their own narrow niche. Also, what if technological changes turn two originally separate markets into a unified entity -- should it be anticompetitive if a monopolist does that?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dangrossman 10y ago
This wiki article does a pretty good job at explaining how the "relevant market" gets determined in competition law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevant_market#Definition_and_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevant_market#Definition_and...
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  The article lists demand-side and supply-side substitution as 2 of the 3 key factors, which basically means 'if a monopolist changes the price in this product, how much does it affect supply or demand in the other product', and then says that products at exhibit substitution are in the same markets. The problem with these definitions as applied to the tech industry in particular is that oftentimes the 'price' the consumer pays is non-monetary. For example, should Google's dominance in the search industry preclude it from cross-promoting its other services? If both search and also the product it's cross-promoting are free, how should courts go about figuring out whether that's ok? Presumably Google is getting paid in data, and is turning that data into money via Ads, but the actual accounting of how much that data is worth is only something that Google has access to -- and then to see how this works for competitors, the court would also need the proprietary internal numbers for them too.

toast0 10y ago

Monopolies are ok, anti-competitive behavior from monopolists is not. I think the only thing I've seen that looks anti-competitive from Amazon is when they stopped selling (some?) TV devices without support for Amazon Prime Videos.

zeteo 10y ago
Maybe some people think monopolies are OK but the law says they aren't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act#Original_text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act#Original.... Are you suggesting a legalization campaign for monopolies?
- 794CD01 10y ago
  I think it'd be a good idea, but let's not pretend that any of us need to push for that. The monopolies are perfectly capable of hiring their own lobbyists.
- k2enemy 10y ago
  I think you are mis-interpreting the Sherman Act. Monopolies are not illegal -- from further down in the article you linked to: The act is not meant to punish businesses that come to dominate their market passively or on their own merit, only those that intentionally dominate the market through misconduct, which generally consists of conspiratorial conduct of the kind forbidden by Section 1 of the Sherman Act, or Section 3 of the Clayton Act. The FTC also has more information: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
  - zeteo 10y ago
    There's nothing in the FTC link that says monopolies are not illegal. In fact they say this: > The Sherman Act outlaws [...] any "monopolization, attempted monopolization, or conspiracy or combination to monopolize." If you look at any felony e.g. selling hard drugs there are always mitigating circumstances and exceptions - but they don't invalidate the general rule. The text of section 2 is pretty clear that monopolies are generally illegal.

dave_sullivan 10y ago

What was the end result of the MS anti-trust stuff? Clearly they weren't broken up; did it have much of an impact on their business? I assume some fines were paid after a long appeals process? It's hard to make a good argument that amazon is (or could be) a monopoly. It's more like google or Walmart where they're just really big and their scale makes them hard (not impossible, maybe unrewarding) to compete with.

kuschku 10y ago
The result of the 2007 antitrust case was that microsoft could not ship IE anymore, but instead had to offer users a dialog offering to install chrome, firefox, IE or others from 2010 on. This was part of why Chrome quickly rose after that. The other part was that Google became anticompetitive.
- subway 10y ago
  Chrome didn't exist until 7 years after the case was decided and settled.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > Google Chrome is a freeware web browser developed by Google.[11] It was first released in 2008, for Microsoft Windows > BrowserChoice.eu was a website created in March 2010 as the result of the decision in the European Union Microsoft competition case. The case involved legal proceedings by the EU against Microsoft and found that, by including Internet Explorer (IE) with their market-dominant Windows operating system, Microsoft had used their dominance of the operating system market to also create a dominant market position in the web browser market. I’m confused, what are you trying to say? Chrome didn’t exist until 2017?
    - areyousure 10y ago
      The case referenced by most US commenters would be https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C.... I've never known whether European antitrust (or privacy) action against companies like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook has had significant global/US effect. Do you (or anyone else) know of a good source on this?

hacknat 10y ago

> What people also don't seem to realize is that the US has serious anti-monopoly laws on the books Not true. At all. We have a weak Anti-Trust law that most Justice departments are squeamish about enforcing.

zeteo 10y ago
The laws are very strong. Back in the day, they would block a merger if it affected 7% of a market, and vertical integration was a big no-no. None of those laws have been repealed. The enforcement guidelines were weakened during the Reagan administration (a big factor in the rise of e.g. Walmart) but they're still strong enough to block plenty of mergers and allow the occasional Sherman Act prosecution. I agree with you that it's a lack of political will, but politics has been very unpredictable lately.
hueving 10y ago
A weak law is not the same as an unenforced strong law. An unenforced strong law can become enforced essentially overnight and wipe out those violating it.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cm2187 10y ago

For the moment they are maintaining / gaining market share by offering a better service. As long as it will be the case I would be surprised if they run into anti-trust problems. When they start abusing of this dominant position, then troubles may come.