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> It's time to break up Google. Just like Apple, Facebook and Amazon?
by ProAm 9y ago
> It's time to break up Google.
Just like Apple, Facebook and Amazon?
- cisanti 9y agoApple and Amazon actually sell you a product, they are not in the business of selling yourself to others.
- blowski 9y agoWhy would that mean they are less deserving of regulation? Microsoft sold products during their regulatory troubles, so did the Rockefeller empire.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoYou see the warning all over the place: "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product" doesn't mean that if you are paying for the product, you're not the product. This is the first time I've seen someone completely ignore, and even directly contradict, that incredibly common warning.
- 659087 9y agoAmazon both sells you products, and turns you into a product.
- QAPereo 9y agoGoogle sells a product, just not to you; they sell to advertisers.
- daveFNbuck 9y agoAmazon does both. https://advertising.amazon.com/ https://advertising.amazon.com/
- wolco 9y agoIn a few more years. Go after the biggest fish first. Don't forget salesforce, microsoft and oracle.
- kuschku 9y agoApple has < 15% marketshare in EU, so that's low priority for now. Facebook? Yes. Amazon? Even more yes.
- ProAm 9y agoApple has 100% market share for Apple users .
- ImSkeptical 9y agoBy this logic, we should break up BlackBerry.
- ProAm 9y agoIt was more of a if you own an iPhone you are required to get all your apps through Apple and are charged accordingly so, reducing competition and ultimately being fleeced with pricing.
- kuschku 9y agoYes, and that's an issue, but it's basically irrelevant compared to Google, with over 2 billion users.
- ProAm 9y agoAbuse is abuse.
- ferentchak 9y agoFirst things first
- Clubber 9y agoYes, but it isn't monopolistic abuse. You can always go to another phone and another ecosystem and probably get the very same apps.
- danharaj 9y agoOne thing regulators could do is force Apple to support the installation of other operating systems on their hardware and allow OS X to be installed on other systems that are reasonably similar to their hardware (i.e. "hackintosh"). Perhaps even demand that Apple support ways to develop iOS that aren't tied to their platform.
- evilduck 9y agoWhy should regulators do that though? Are consumers lacking viable alternatives to any Apple product?
- sulam 9y agoHow exactly would this benefit consumers? Arguably it would suck — either it’s not well tested or they spend so much time and money testing they don’t ship as much anymore. Btw, you can already put Windows on their hardware, or Linux for that matter.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoApple aren't a monopoly, they aren't a problem in the way Facebook and Google are.
- tooltalk 9y agohuh? Facebook and Google are monopolies?
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Apple aren't a monopoly I'm not sure that's the case; Apple isn't as dominant in share of any intuitively-described market as, say, Google and search ads, but a more relevant test for monopoly is pricing power, and I wouldn't be surprised if they in fact have that for some of their products/services.
- Clubber 9y agoWhich? What product do they not have an abundance of competition in? I mean they have the minority market share in every category.
- dragonwriter 9y agoPricing power isn't defined by descriptive categories, it is defined by behavior (whether they can increase prices without sales moving to competitors.) It's a test that exists because there are an infinite number of ways to construct named categories of products, which can create any appearance you want, but none of them tell you if things in that category are genuinely competing with each other.
- AnthonyMouse 9y agoMore to the point, using the category "iOS app distribution" pretty clearly leads to the conclusion that Apple has pricing power there.
- 9y ago
- lsadam0 9y agoYou don’t seem to understand what a monopoly is. Tell me a single category in which apple is a monopoly. High profit margin != monopoly.