21 ms·

Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

249 points by happy-go-lucky 9y ago

seattle_spring 9y ago
From the perspective of a software engineer, I would also say "yes." It's frustrating that 80% of the available positions, even in a tech center like Seattle, are at the huge mega-corporations.
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  IIRC Seattle actually has an unusually lopsided ratio in terms of megacorp openings vs startup openings, I think it's substantially better in SF/SV, NYC, and Boston.
codefined 9y ago
It 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?
- therealmarv 9y ago
  When looking at the UK government it is good they are not in control. They want to regulate the Internet and control what you see on the net and want to have access to what you text e.g. in WhatsApp messages. In 99% of all the cases it is worse when a state wants to control the Internet.
- skummetmaelk 9y ago
  There is a difference between regulating to protect the consumer and give them more options versus regulating to restrict their options and protections. Usually talk of "regulating the inter" falls into the latter category.
- nine_k 9y ago
  China, Turkey, Russia, etc control the way the internet is seen by their populaces. Would you enjoy your internet being controlled the same way?
  - codefined 9y ago
    I'm talking about regulation, not control. Companies are regulated already to stop monopolies and we're not living in North Korea.
therealmarv 9y ago
Two words: too late.
- Piccollo 9y ago
  One word: yes.
  - cwyers 9y ago
    The avalanche has already begun, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.
therobotking 9y ago
On 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.
- stronsay 9y ago
  How about switching to reasonable alternatives when you can (and use the Google product as a fallback)? For example, OSM is fine for daily navigation, there are plenty of cloud storage solutions and email providers. Obviously there's going to be some cost to pay for not being in Google's walled garden, but using the alternatives (and donating to them) stimulates their development.
tyingq 9y ago
Feels 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.
- swolchok 9y ago
  "order me a pizza from domino's." "order me a pizza from papa john's."
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Right, but you see the difference from a Google web search for "order a pizza", right?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- hammock 9y ago
  How is that different from a yellow pages? If you are going to say "amazon only offers you one choice" that is an assumption you could make of yellow pages as well (it's a commercial publication, they don't have to list everything). The yellow pages chooses to accept payment from competitors to offer more choice. Amazon could do the same. And if you are going to say "what is yellow pages?" then damn am I old :)
  - mgkimsal 9y ago
    yellow page publishers don't actually know the details of my orders.
    - hammock 9y ago
      Indirectly they do because the more orders you make through yellow pages, the more a pizza place will pay to be listed Also are you complaining that Amazon will be able to order the options it gives you based on your personal preference?
god_bless_usa 9y ago
I trust Google with my life
marcoperaza 9y ago
I 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.
- soared 9y ago
  So you're skeptical of every TV station and radio station too?
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    Yes! I am. They are getting ravaged by the likes of Netflix and HBO.
    - soared 9y ago
      Good point actually.
- izacus 9y ago
  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.
unityByFreedom 9y ago
If 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.
benevol 9y ago
Well, that was pretty clear more than a decade ago. Proprietary technology has a monopolizing effect in capitalism. Since technology by definition has an exponential growth rate of efficiency, the monopolizing effect grows with it.
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  Yeah like IBM in the 80's and Microsoft in the 90's, no, wait...
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Microsoft and IBM never had the penetration Google has as far as individuals depending on it for individual ideas and decisions, minute by minute. Nor were the network effects of Microsoft's products, however strong for interop/compat, anything close to what Facebook has. Many companies now only publish their information on Facebook. It's becoming harder and harder to even find a phone number for a business without hitting Facebook. Sometimes FB even requires a login before letting me see details (perhaps the business misconfigured their page?) If FB ever bans me (the person) for using a fake account, it'd be very difficult to do many "normal" things. If we get anti-net-neutrality markets going, like FB is already doing in some countries (I see "free WhatsApp/FB with any SIM card" offers all the time), this lockin will become even more powerful Also, MS still has a ton of power. But imagine how much worse it'd be if MS was sevrice-only. What if they decide to ban your company? It might be very difficult to remain in business if they could revoke all your Windows licenses (say, if you're in medical, or need MS compat for another reason). IBM perhaps less-so, since it's more real back-end systems.
jondubois 9y ago
I agree they should be regulated. The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy. If you were to analyze Facebook as if it were a country, the wealth gap among employees would be atrocious - The top 1% would own maybe 99% of the wealth of the country and everyone else would earn a minuscule fraction of the total value that they produced. If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to mirror the economies within these large corporations. What's worse is that the social aspects will also be mirrored. We will gradually lose freedom of speech, in the same way that employees of large corporations don't have the freedom to say what they really think to their bosses. Many who have worked for a big corporation will know how suppressing the environment can be. I'm really glad that I live in a time when there are still alternatives.
- Kenji 9y ago
  I think your comparison of companies with states is really far fetched. An employment contract is completely different from citizenship. The freedom of speech comparison is particularly odd, obviously if you are a trouble maker in your company, they rightfully conclude that your value to them decreases.
  - gramstrong 9y ago
    Agreed. People can talk freely. People can also be dismissed freely. Freedom of speech, freedom of market.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  >These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy. That's weird, I thought they were all building robots to serve the wealthy by replacing everyone's jobs?
- devuo 9y ago
  And yet, only very large companies are able to make a certain class of investments in infrastructure and services — that push technology and society forward as a whole — that small to mid companies due to lack of capacity never could, and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would.
esturk 9y ago
No. This MAGA (Microsoft, Apple, Goggle, Amazon), is actually making American tech great.
notadoc 9y ago
Remember in the 90s when Microsoft was the subject of an antitrust case over bundling a web browser?
gigatexal 9y ago
Regulation only makes the largest companies that much more untouchable. Why not invest what would have been spent on regulation instead on education? That way the next pioneer could be fostered. Or invest in subsidies for health and wellness and food programs so the next Zuckerberg doesn't go hungry and can have the luxury to innovate (terrible analogy since he came from a middle class family but still). Or if you don't want to do that what about allowing foreign nationals with an idea but without capital and a safe and business friendly government to come to the States to create their businesses?
- 659087 9y ago
  If there's a "next Zuckerberg" out there, letting them go hungry would probably be the best course of action. It seriously concerns me that people aspire to be like someone who stole an idea then turned it into a global mass surveillance, manipulation, speech supression and propaganda machine.
  - gigatexal 9y ago
    Read that out loud and tell me you really think you'd rather someone starve than create a social network for mass surveillance when it's use is entirely optional whereas NSA surveillance is not.
    - 659087 9y ago
      Only if starvation is the only option to prevent it from happening. Inclusion in Facebook's data collection is no longer realistically optional, thanks to their collection of data about non-users from friends/family, public records, data brokers, web trackers, etc. Being subjected to the effects of Facebook on society is also not something you can opt out of.
      - gigatexal 9y ago
        I view it like a private school. If you don't like the school then one option is to leave. No one is forced to use facebook. Leaving though is hard. And I'm assuming you'd rather use it but have some sort of do not track. I don't see that happening because their main source of revenue is you the user. So if you want to change the world by limiting Facebook's reach then leave the service. And convince others to do so as well. Or innovate a model whereby a social network could sustain itself without monetising it's users.
someSven 9y ago
If some gov dosn't like the power of those companies then the should feel free to support free software. The same goes for competitors and consumers. Regulation only in rare cases please.
Mendenhall 9y ago
Anything "big" causes me to pause and count the concerns. The bigger any entity is the more damage they can cause. I tend to support "small" things as best I can.
yalogin 9y ago
Are the existing laws enough to regulate them though? The anti competition laws don't apply here as all of them are competing in the same space and all of them are huge.
cmurf 9y ago
Regulating them ultimately doesn't work very well because a.) it's reactive rather than proactive, so there's regulatory lag b.) it injects politics, and political wind c.) because of a and b we get inconsistency, changes in policy, this isn't good for either consumers or employees or investors. I'm not sure what the work around is, but for sure we (Americans) do not apply anti-trust / competition law as aggressively as we should. It just seems wrong to me to allow these big companies to buy up smaller companies and then just obliterate them into nothing, not use their technologies, just destroy them by putting the patents into a vault and sue anyone who infringes but not letting anyone benefit either. They all do this to varying degrees. It's like at a certain market value as a percentage of either global or maybe national wealth, companies should be disallowed from mergers of any kind. And at another level of size, they are required to break themselves up into pieces. Edit: Maybe disallow hoarding patents. If after X years you're not using a patent, it either auto-expires and is relegated to public domain, or it's compulsory to sell it. Use it or lose it!
- bigleagueposter 9y ago
  Why would you want force companies to use their patents.
blairanderson 9y ago
"Too big to control?" Uhhhhmmm I don't want to be controlled. No control necessary. Just guidance.
- nsaslideface 9y ago
  Can you name a government since the Roman Republic that has not had antitrust law?
rdlecler1 9y ago
The problem here is that only one or two of their business lines actually make money. Everything else simply strengthens network effects and gives them optionality for new businesses. It would be hard to break up Google and say: you get to provide search for the US and another company has to do it for Europe. While that may be in the interest of Europe, it's of less interest to the US.
jorblumesea 9y ago
What's to stop the most powerful companies from using regulation to squash business competitors? Almost every industry has abused this to a certain extent. Regulatory capture is a thing, at least here in the US. Regulations are a double edged sword and it's often used to stifle new business and crush possible competition.
Asdfbla 9y ago
I'm surprised the EU hasn't acted against Google already. Remember when they (rightfully) went after Microsoft and forced them to offer a browser choice? And that wasn't even the peak of the Internet Explorer monopoly. And yet it's allowed that like 80% smartphones sold in Europe come with Android versions that basically lock the user into the Google ecosystem, else you can't use the default store.
- paglia_s 9y ago
  It looks like a multibilion fine for Google is coming http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/google-eu-fine-search-9-billion-search-results-rigging-alphabet-shopping-service-a7768621.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/google-eu-fi...
  - Bakary 9y ago
    As usual it will be pocket change for the company, and essentially part of the cost of doing business.
BenoitEssiambre 9y ago
I'm not usually very pro corporate taxes. I think (with some caveats) that it is generally better to tax the owners of businesses than the businesses themselves. However, in order to counter the unfair advantages of overly large companies and promote competition (in tech, in finance or elsewhere) wouldn't it make sense to make corporate taxes slightly progressive where the larger a business is (by revenues), the higher the tax rate? Is there an obvious flaw to this approach? Why don't I see anyone ever suggesting it?
- winstonewert 9y ago
  As with all progressive taxation schemes, it tends to have problems because those people who you are trying to tax more heavily have the best resources to restructure their affairs to avoid the taxation.
  - BenoitEssiambre 9y ago
    But that's true of any tax. I don't think it is specific to progressive ones. To me, the fact that larger entities are better at avoiding paying part of their taxes is an additional argument to make them start at a higher rate.
    - winstonewert 9y ago
      Yes, but its worse with progressive ones. A progressive tax increases the per-dollar incentive to find a loophole as the amount of money increases. Furthermore, by taxing different businesses at different rates it creates just the sort of loopholes that such avoidance takes advantage of. (I.e. a large business will try to find a way to count as two smaller businesses)
- Eridrus 9y ago
  It's not really obvious that we should prefer small companies to large companies.
  - TulliusCicero 9y ago
ilaksh 9y ago
Integrating technologies for both decentralization and common platforms are the answer, not more traditional government or more capitalism or more communism.
TheRealmccoy 9y ago
yet again, one of those posts. all those people who have the ability to do something, discuss and post detailed comments and then wait for next such article, and then rinse and repeat. what is the point of discussion, if we nothing concrete, other than rhetoric can be done?
jrnichols 9y ago
Apple & Amazon and the others, probably not. They have their own markets and they're just doing well in them. Google might be a little different in that what they've done in some areas affects so many others, especially in small business communications and now into education. I'm just thinking about how kids are unaware that there is even another email provider out there because all they know is Gmail. To me, that's where things have tipped over into "kind of a problem." The Googleverse is massive, and we don't even know how much data they've collected.
sr2 9y ago
Things like Mastodon[0] and IPFS[1] are always worth checking out, if you want to get a sense of control over your data. With regards to the argument that these companies are so entrenched in our society that they are very difficult to remove, almost like barnacles, then I agree that something has to be done. The real problem exists when there is no other choice for people. For example, the default search engine on Android phones is most certainly Google and not DuckDuckGo. Another example of terrible monopolistic practice is that Android phones are so fragmented. It seems kind of odd that in order to have the most secure Android installation, that I also have to have the latest hardware. I find it very unfair that legacy devices are locked to a single Android install and can't upgrade properly. These things should be future proof and be able to respond to threat landscapes. I feel very uneasy communicating on legacy devices because there is the uneasy feeling that the device has been infected by either low-level attackers, or nation states. [0] https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
jimnotgym 9y ago
RE Amazon: I think it is problematic that they are now one of the biggest marketplaces, as well as being a trader. Put simply this allows them to watch other peoples sales, and if they look pretty good on a certain product, undercut them. This could be solved by divesting, hiding the transactions nature from Amazon, or more radically, having the data in the open so everyone can use it Re Apple: Technology comes and goes, but the iphone was a good one. The troubling thing for me is the amount of cash they are hording. If this is intended to underwrite Applepay as a new bank, then firstly they must allow open access to all technology platforms to use Applepay. You can't have a new dollar that works better at Walmart than Tesco. Re Google and Facebook: These companies are advertisers. I have no problem with their size or structure at present. I do have a problem with using their easy cross border presence to avoid taxation. You cannot have the biggest revenue generators for advertising paying no tax, when everyone else has to. In the UK Google is headquartered in Ireland so the UK receives no tax from the billions of revenue. This is unsustainable for the country. My real problems with Google and Facebook is they regard everything about us as their to do what they want with.
whyenot 9y ago
What is interesting to me is that according to the article, the five largest companies in the world (by market cap) are all now companies headquartered on the west coast of the US. What a remarkable shift in the world from the way it was just a few decades ago. We are in the midst, of a massive power shift, a revolution. I think it's hard to predict what the results of any regulation would actually be -- everything is changing too quickly.
anth1988 9y ago
> In 2013, the European Commission fined Microsoft for giving preferential treatment to its own browser, Internet Explorer. I don't understand why Microsoft gets fined, but Google gets a pass when they used their other products to push Chrome to a dominant position.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  The EU have in large part shifted their attention to Google (and Facebook) at this point. Microsoft still takes occasional scruitiny as well, though not nearly as much AFAIR.
redm 9y ago
When I look at these monoliths, I can't help but think about the fabled Sci-Fi Mega Corporations of the future that seem to be anything other than positive. [1] [2] [3] There are of course real life examples from the past.. [4][5][6] [1] http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Umbrella_Corporation http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Umbrella_Corporation [2] http://alienfilmspedia.wikia.com/wiki/Weyland-Yutani http://alienfilmspedia.wikia.com/wiki/Weyland-Yutani [3] http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Tyrell_Corporation http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Tyrell_Corporation [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
strin 9y ago
I highly recommend the book "Master Switch" by Tim Wu on this topic. (https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires/dp/0307390993 https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...). It argues that every information networks in the history- telegraph, telephone, radio, cable - follow the pattern of consolidation and disintegration. The new inventions always had the chance to disrupt the old industry, but our modern network - the Internet - might be an exception. Because the Internet is the master switch of all things digitized.
sangnoir 9y ago
If I didn't know better, I would say this is a reaction to "nouveau riche" companies. When was the last time that the BBC proposed reining-in banks or oil companies despite clear consumer antipathy? Even after LIBOR, the 2008 crisis, Deepwater Horizon and HSBC cartel laundering, no one suggested these companies were to big, outside of the phrase "too big to fail". They were punished by being bailed out or given a nominal fine, but these uppity tech companies ought to be broken up. Perhaps they are "too big", but only because they isn't a revolving door between tech companies and the corridors of power (yet?)

From the perspective of a software engineer, I would also say "yes." It's frustrating that 80% of the available positions, even in a tech center like Seattle, are at the huge mega-corporations.

TulliusCicero 9y ago
IIRC Seattle actually has an unusually lopsided ratio in terms of megacorp openings vs startup openings, I think it's substantially better in SF/SV, NYC, and Boston.

codefined 9y ago

It 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?

therealmarv 9y ago
When looking at the UK government it is good they are not in control. They want to regulate the Internet and control what you see on the net and want to have access to what you text e.g. in WhatsApp messages. In 99% of all the cases it is worse when a state wants to control the Internet.
skummetmaelk 9y ago
There is a difference between regulating to protect the consumer and give them more options versus regulating to restrict their options and protections. Usually talk of "regulating the inter" falls into the latter category.
nine_k 9y ago
China, Turkey, Russia, etc control the way the internet is seen by their populaces. Would you enjoy your internet being controlled the same way?
- codefined 9y ago
  I'm talking about regulation, not control. Companies are regulated already to stop monopolies and we're not living in North Korea.

therealmarv 9y ago

Two words: too late.

Piccollo 9y ago
One word: yes.
- cwyers 9y ago
  The avalanche has already begun, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

therobotking 9y ago

On 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.

stronsay 9y ago
How about switching to reasonable alternatives when you can (and use the Google product as a fallback)? For example, OSM is fine for daily navigation, there are plenty of cloud storage solutions and email providers. Obviously there's going to be some cost to pay for not being in Google's walled garden, but using the alternatives (and donating to them) stimulates their development.

tyingq 9y ago

Feels 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.

swolchok 9y ago
"order me a pizza from domino's." "order me a pizza from papa john's."
- tyingq 9y ago
  Right, but you see the difference from a Google web search for "order a pizza", right?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
hammock 9y ago
How is that different from a yellow pages? If you are going to say "amazon only offers you one choice" that is an assumption you could make of yellow pages as well (it's a commercial publication, they don't have to list everything). The yellow pages chooses to accept payment from competitors to offer more choice. Amazon could do the same. And if you are going to say "what is yellow pages?" then damn am I old :)
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  yellow page publishers don't actually know the details of my orders.
  - hammock 9y ago
    Indirectly they do because the more orders you make through yellow pages, the more a pizza place will pay to be listed Also are you complaining that Amazon will be able to order the options it gives you based on your personal preference?

god_bless_usa 9y ago

I trust Google with my life

marcoperaza 9y ago

I 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.

soared 9y ago
So you're skeptical of every TV station and radio station too?
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  Yes! I am. They are getting ravaged by the likes of Netflix and HBO.
  - soared 9y ago
    Good point actually.
izacus 9y ago
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.

unityByFreedom 9y ago

If 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.

benevol 9y ago

Well, that was pretty clear more than a decade ago. Proprietary technology has a monopolizing effect in capitalism. Since technology by definition has an exponential growth rate of efficiency, the monopolizing effect grows with it.

patrickaljord 9y ago
Yeah like IBM in the 80's and Microsoft in the 90's, no, wait...
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Microsoft and IBM never had the penetration Google has as far as individuals depending on it for individual ideas and decisions, minute by minute. Nor were the network effects of Microsoft's products, however strong for interop/compat, anything close to what Facebook has. Many companies now only publish their information on Facebook. It's becoming harder and harder to even find a phone number for a business without hitting Facebook. Sometimes FB even requires a login before letting me see details (perhaps the business misconfigured their page?) If FB ever bans me (the person) for using a fake account, it'd be very difficult to do many "normal" things. If we get anti-net-neutrality markets going, like FB is already doing in some countries (I see "free WhatsApp/FB with any SIM card" offers all the time), this lockin will become even more powerful Also, MS still has a ton of power. But imagine how much worse it'd be if MS was sevrice-only. What if they decide to ban your company? It might be very difficult to remain in business if they could revoke all your Windows licenses (say, if you're in medical, or need MS compat for another reason). IBM perhaps less-so, since it's more real back-end systems.

jondubois 9y ago

I agree they should be regulated. The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy. If you were to analyze Facebook as if it were a country, the wealth gap among employees would be atrocious - The top 1% would own maybe 99% of the wealth of the country and everyone else would earn a minuscule fraction of the total value that they produced. If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to mirror the economies within these large corporations. What's worse is that the social aspects will also be mirrored. We will gradually lose freedom of speech, in the same way that employees of large corporations don't have the freedom to say what they really think to their bosses. Many who have worked for a big corporation will know how suppressing the environment can be. I'm really glad that I live in a time when there are still alternatives.

Kenji 9y ago
I think your comparison of companies with states is really far fetched. An employment contract is completely different from citizenship. The freedom of speech comparison is particularly odd, obviously if you are a trouble maker in your company, they rightfully conclude that your value to them decreases.
- gramstrong 9y ago
  Agreed. People can talk freely. People can also be dismissed freely. Freedom of speech, freedom of market.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy. That's weird, I thought they were all building robots to serve the wealthy by replacing everyone's jobs?
devuo 9y ago
And yet, only very large companies are able to make a certain class of investments in infrastructure and services — that push technology and society forward as a whole — that small to mid companies due to lack of capacity never could, and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would.

esturk 9y ago

No. This MAGA (Microsoft, Apple, Goggle, Amazon), is actually making American tech great.

notadoc 9y ago

Remember in the 90s when Microsoft was the subject of an antitrust case over bundling a web browser?

gigatexal 9y ago

Regulation only makes the largest companies that much more untouchable. Why not invest what would have been spent on regulation instead on education? That way the next pioneer could be fostered. Or invest in subsidies for health and wellness and food programs so the next Zuckerberg doesn't go hungry and can have the luxury to innovate (terrible analogy since he came from a middle class family but still). Or if you don't want to do that what about allowing foreign nationals with an idea but without capital and a safe and business friendly government to come to the States to create their businesses?

659087 9y ago
If there's a "next Zuckerberg" out there, letting them go hungry would probably be the best course of action. It seriously concerns me that people aspire to be like someone who stole an idea then turned it into a global mass surveillance, manipulation, speech supression and propaganda machine.
- gigatexal 9y ago
  Read that out loud and tell me you really think you'd rather someone starve than create a social network for mass surveillance when it's use is entirely optional whereas NSA surveillance is not.
  - 659087 9y ago
    Only if starvation is the only option to prevent it from happening. Inclusion in Facebook's data collection is no longer realistically optional, thanks to their collection of data about non-users from friends/family, public records, data brokers, web trackers, etc. Being subjected to the effects of Facebook on society is also not something you can opt out of.
    - gigatexal 9y ago
      I view it like a private school. If you don't like the school then one option is to leave. No one is forced to use facebook. Leaving though is hard. And I'm assuming you'd rather use it but have some sort of do not track. I don't see that happening because their main source of revenue is you the user. So if you want to change the world by limiting Facebook's reach then leave the service. And convince others to do so as well. Or innovate a model whereby a social network could sustain itself without monetising it's users.

someSven 9y ago

If some gov dosn't like the power of those companies then the should feel free to support free software. The same goes for competitors and consumers. Regulation only in rare cases please.

Mendenhall 9y ago

Anything "big" causes me to pause and count the concerns. The bigger any entity is the more damage they can cause. I tend to support "small" things as best I can.

yalogin 9y ago

Are the existing laws enough to regulate them though? The anti competition laws don't apply here as all of them are competing in the same space and all of them are huge.

cmurf 9y ago

Regulating them ultimately doesn't work very well because a.) it's reactive rather than proactive, so there's regulatory lag b.) it injects politics, and political wind c.) because of a and b we get inconsistency, changes in policy, this isn't good for either consumers or employees or investors. I'm not sure what the work around is, but for sure we (Americans) do not apply anti-trust / competition law as aggressively as we should. It just seems wrong to me to allow these big companies to buy up smaller companies and then just obliterate them into nothing, not use their technologies, just destroy them by putting the patents into a vault and sue anyone who infringes but not letting anyone benefit either. They all do this to varying degrees. It's like at a certain market value as a percentage of either global or maybe national wealth, companies should be disallowed from mergers of any kind. And at another level of size, they are required to break themselves up into pieces. Edit: Maybe disallow hoarding patents. If after X years you're not using a patent, it either auto-expires and is relegated to public domain, or it's compulsory to sell it. Use it or lose it!

bigleagueposter 9y ago
Why would you want force companies to use their patents.

blairanderson 9y ago

"Too big to control?" Uhhhhmmm I don't want to be controlled. No control necessary. Just guidance.

nsaslideface 9y ago
Can you name a government since the Roman Republic that has not had antitrust law?

rdlecler1 9y ago

The problem here is that only one or two of their business lines actually make money. Everything else simply strengthens network effects and gives them optionality for new businesses. It would be hard to break up Google and say: you get to provide search for the US and another company has to do it for Europe. While that may be in the interest of Europe, it's of less interest to the US.

jorblumesea 9y ago

What's to stop the most powerful companies from using regulation to squash business competitors? Almost every industry has abused this to a certain extent. Regulatory capture is a thing, at least here in the US. Regulations are a double edged sword and it's often used to stifle new business and crush possible competition.

Asdfbla 9y ago

I'm surprised the EU hasn't acted against Google already. Remember when they (rightfully) went after Microsoft and forced them to offer a browser choice? And that wasn't even the peak of the Internet Explorer monopoly. And yet it's allowed that like 80% smartphones sold in Europe come with Android versions that basically lock the user into the Google ecosystem, else you can't use the default store.

paglia_s 9y ago
It looks like a multibilion fine for Google is coming http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/google-eu-fine-search-9-billion-search-results-rigging-alphabet-shopping-service-a7768621.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/google-eu-fi...
- Bakary 9y ago
  As usual it will be pocket change for the company, and essentially part of the cost of doing business.

BenoitEssiambre 9y ago

I'm not usually very pro corporate taxes. I think (with some caveats) that it is generally better to tax the owners of businesses than the businesses themselves. However, in order to counter the unfair advantages of overly large companies and promote competition (in tech, in finance or elsewhere) wouldn't it make sense to make corporate taxes slightly progressive where the larger a business is (by revenues), the higher the tax rate? Is there an obvious flaw to this approach? Why don't I see anyone ever suggesting it?

winstonewert 9y ago
As with all progressive taxation schemes, it tends to have problems because those people who you are trying to tax more heavily have the best resources to restructure their affairs to avoid the taxation.
- BenoitEssiambre 9y ago
  But that's true of any tax. I don't think it is specific to progressive ones. To me, the fact that larger entities are better at avoiding paying part of their taxes is an additional argument to make them start at a higher rate.
  - winstonewert 9y ago
    Yes, but its worse with progressive ones. A progressive tax increases the per-dollar incentive to find a loophole as the amount of money increases. Furthermore, by taxing different businesses at different rates it creates just the sort of loopholes that such avoidance takes advantage of. (I.e. a large business will try to find a way to count as two smaller businesses)
Eridrus 9y ago
It's not really obvious that we should prefer small companies to large companies.
- TulliusCicero 9y ago

ilaksh 9y ago

Integrating technologies for both decentralization and common platforms are the answer, not more traditional government or more capitalism or more communism.

TheRealmccoy 9y ago

yet again, one of those posts. all those people who have the ability to do something, discuss and post detailed comments and then wait for next such article, and then rinse and repeat. what is the point of discussion, if we nothing concrete, other than rhetoric can be done?

jrnichols 9y ago

Apple & Amazon and the others, probably not. They have their own markets and they're just doing well in them. Google might be a little different in that what they've done in some areas affects so many others, especially in small business communications and now into education. I'm just thinking about how kids are unaware that there is even another email provider out there because all they know is Gmail. To me, that's where things have tipped over into "kind of a problem." The Googleverse is massive, and we don't even know how much data they've collected.

sr2 9y ago

Things like Mastodon[0] and IPFS[1] are always worth checking out, if you want to get a sense of control over your data. With regards to the argument that these companies are so entrenched in our society that they are very difficult to remove, almost like barnacles, then I agree that something has to be done. The real problem exists when there is no other choice for people. For example, the default search engine on Android phones is most certainly Google and not DuckDuckGo. Another example of terrible monopolistic practice is that Android phones are so fragmented. It seems kind of odd that in order to have the most secure Android installation, that I also have to have the latest hardware. I find it very unfair that legacy devices are locked to a single Android install and can't upgrade properly. These things should be future proof and be able to respond to threat landscapes. I feel very uneasy communicating on legacy devices because there is the uneasy feeling that the device has been infected by either low-level attackers, or nation states. [0] https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System

jimnotgym 9y ago

RE Amazon: I think it is problematic that they are now one of the biggest marketplaces, as well as being a trader. Put simply this allows them to watch other peoples sales, and if they look pretty good on a certain product, undercut them. This could be solved by divesting, hiding the transactions nature from Amazon, or more radically, having the data in the open so everyone can use it Re Apple: Technology comes and goes, but the iphone was a good one. The troubling thing for me is the amount of cash they are hording. If this is intended to underwrite Applepay as a new bank, then firstly they must allow open access to all technology platforms to use Applepay. You can't have a new dollar that works better at Walmart than Tesco. Re Google and Facebook: These companies are advertisers. I have no problem with their size or structure at present. I do have a problem with using their easy cross border presence to avoid taxation. You cannot have the biggest revenue generators for advertising paying no tax, when everyone else has to. In the UK Google is headquartered in Ireland so the UK receives no tax from the billions of revenue. This is unsustainable for the country. My real problems with Google and Facebook is they regard everything about us as their to do what they want with.

whyenot 9y ago

What is interesting to me is that according to the article, the five largest companies in the world (by market cap) are all now companies headquartered on the west coast of the US. What a remarkable shift in the world from the way it was just a few decades ago. We are in the midst, of a massive power shift, a revolution. I think it's hard to predict what the results of any regulation would actually be -- everything is changing too quickly.

anth1988 9y ago

> In 2013, the European Commission fined Microsoft for giving preferential treatment to its own browser, Internet Explorer. I don't understand why Microsoft gets fined, but Google gets a pass when they used their other products to push Chrome to a dominant position.

dredmorbius 9y ago
The EU have in large part shifted their attention to Google (and Facebook) at this point. Microsoft still takes occasional scruitiny as well, though not nearly as much AFAIR.

redm 9y ago

When I look at these monoliths, I can't help but think about the fabled Sci-Fi Mega Corporations of the future that seem to be anything other than positive. [1] [2] [3] There are of course real life examples from the past.. [4][5][6] [1] http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Umbrella_Corporation http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Umbrella_Corporation [2] http://alienfilmspedia.wikia.com/wiki/Weyland-Yutani http://alienfilmspedia.wikia.com/wiki/Weyland-Yutani [3] http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Tyrell_Corporation http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Tyrell_Corporation [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

strin 9y ago

I highly recommend the book "Master Switch" by Tim Wu on this topic. (https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires/dp/0307390993 https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...). It argues that every information networks in the history- telegraph, telephone, radio, cable - follow the pattern of consolidation and disintegration. The new inventions always had the chance to disrupt the old industry, but our modern network - the Internet - might be an exception. Because the Internet is the master switch of all things digitized.

sangnoir 9y ago

If I didn't know better, I would say this is a reaction to "nouveau riche" companies. When was the last time that the BBC proposed reining-in banks or oil companies despite clear consumer antipathy? Even after LIBOR, the 2008 crisis, Deepwater Horizon and HSBC cartel laundering, no one suggested these companies were to big, outside of the phrase "too big to fail". They were punished by being bailed out or given a nominal fine, but these uppity tech companies ought to be broken up. Perhaps they are "too big", but only because they isn't a revolving door between tech companies and the corridors of power (yet?)