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Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple - all need to be shut down in their present form. The biggest problem is that our anti-competitive legislation is ill-equipped t

by modi15 9y ago

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple - all need to be shut down in their present form. The biggest problem is that our anti-competitive legislation is ill-equipped to handle tech monopolies. The extremely complex nature of modern software and its ability to offer unparalled distribution advantage is nothing like the world has ever seen. The ability of Google to push something like a chrome browser comes not only from its galleons of highly paid engineers, but also its ability to advertise/support it for free for decades to come. There simply does not exist another sustainable model to finance a complex product like an internet browser and provide it for free to consumers for decades. The bigger problem is what is the form of regulation that could be applied to such behemoths. Its extremely hard to regulate it by a case-to-case basis, similar to what happenned in telecom, simply because the business models are too complex and different products monetize differently. I think a line of thought which might yield some regulatory possibilities is to limit these companies manpower. No single company should be allowed to employ more than X number of engineers. If they go above, they should be required to spin of into multiple entities, each of which do no more than X number of engineers. I dont know what X is - but that is open for deliberation. The impact that something like this could have on say Google is that Google is forced to split apart its search business with the ads business. This further allows the search business to collaborate with more ad providers to find the best fit. And on the other side, it allows its ads business to experiment with more search providers and open up a market for profitable search engines. This is not something I have completely thought through, but whatever little I have, this seems to be the cleanest approach to fix tech.

specialist 9y ago
I'd be satisfied with radical cashectomies. Fees, taxes, fines, whatever. Level the playing field. Keep the money moving.
danjoc 9y ago
>Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple - all need to be shut down in their present form. I can appreciate the sentiment, but then Baidu, WeChat, Alibaba, and Xiaomi win.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  None of those companies have demonstrated an ability to "win" in Western markets.
  - stevofolife 9y ago
    None of the western companies have demonstrated an ability to "win" in Eastern markets, especially China.
    - gaius 9y ago
      All the companies that crawled away tails between their legs having handed their IP or at least business model over to a local partner say otherwise.
  - threatofrain 9y ago
    Those companies are trending upwards in respectability, strength, and talent. I think Andrew Ng, sometimes described as one of the top minds in ML, is indication that China has a place for such top minds. If the only hope you have is that China and its firms have been weak before, and therefore China will be weak in the future, then this smells like motivated reasoning.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Please don't mistake my comment to mean that Chinese companies are "lesser", by any means. But companies which succeed wildly with the popular there may not succeed with the population here. This is more of a social thing than anything due to superiority. As governments start to realize how powerful these international corporations are, and start laying down more regulations, it will be less and less practical for a company to operate globally anyways.
- modi15 9y ago
  I dont really understand why Baidu, WeChat etc. are allowed to play in outside markets like US/India when China is closed off from outside markets. The Chinese case is special and might be better of with special treatment.
mrexroad 9y ago
> There simply does not exist another sustainable model to finance a complex product like an internet browser and provide it for free to consumers for decades. At least it also funds Chromium and WebKit...
killjoywashere 9y ago
The Alphabet conglomeration seems similar to your proposal, no?
- modi15 9y ago
  Not at all: 1. Even Google itself is too big. It needs to be broken up further. 2. Management control needs to reside in separate individuals. You cant have two different companies having the same/common management control.
evv 9y ago
Do you really expect that sort of regulation to happen in the US, considering that most of the regulators golf with the executives? Its not just about the tech industry here- every industry has conglomerated into a handful of behemoths. These days, large corporations and industries are more powerful than government entities- just look at how they avoid paying taxes. Until we figure out how to get money out of politics, mega-corps will continue to get their way.
- modi15 9y ago
  I agree its extremely unlikely too happen in the US. However, most big tech companies arent seen to be clearly alligned to Trump - so maybe Trump has a perverse incentive to pull it off. That being said, I think with the rise of AI, smaller tech companies are the future. A tech ecosystem comprised of smaller companies will be forced to take a standards based approach to each industry and also aim to maximize efficiency because of constrains on head count. This requirement to maximize efficiency will further result in a boost to SAAS and in the longer term create the springboard for the next big jump in tech.
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    AI in its current deep-learning form tends to reward concentration. The hardest part of building an AI company is collecting training data; big tech companies already have oodles of that, and the products, userbase, and infrastructure to collect more. There may be some new big tech companies as AI lets software push into niches that haven't been computerized yet, but the same market dynamics will likely play out there, leading to one big winner per corpus. It's not economical to collect the same corpus more than once, and right now the first player to collect it has no incentive to share it. The only thing I can think of that would reverse this would be legal regulations that either make all data public (unlikely), or that grant ownership of them to the person they're about rather than the corporate entity that collects them, or a technological solution that can enforce the latter while still allowing large-scale aggregation and machine-learning over multiple people.
- jedmeyers 9y ago
  > large corporations and industries are more powerful than government entities This is simply not true, since only goverment will be able to force compliance with its requests by sending armed people to your door.
juandopazo 9y ago
When did HN become so... radicalized? There's nothing inherently wrong with these companies being big. The problems are with them being too board. Should Google own the creation of content (Blogger, Youtube), finding content (search) and transmitting content (fiber)? Should Comcast transmit content (TV, Xfinity) and create content (NBC, Hulu)? This is where the problems arise like conflicts of interest, diminished competition, etc. We saw this clearly in Argentina, when as soon as the government started working on legislation to prevent the telecoms from becoming monopolies, since they own newspapers and TV news, they started bombarding the public with negative press. It shouldn't be hard to regulate this. Just split them up.
- modi15 9y ago
  > It shouldn't be hard to regulate this. Just split them up. Actually this is exactly what I suggested. The bigger question is 'how' to split them up - and to be able to do it consistently across ever shifting market dynamics. The telecom case is easy to define and split cleanly. The ads/search/browser and the like marketplaces will take the entire US government to make sense of. And then there is stuff like Bitcoin and AI.
- raguuu 9y ago
  I would like Europe to either hack up or straight up block them so we can develop our own products.
  - hetspookjee 9y ago
    Like China does?
    - tmalsburg2 9y ago
      By invoking China you're implying that blocking US monopolies would be bad because everything China does is bad. Doesn't seem like a compelling argument to me.
      - noarchy 9y ago
tensor 9y ago
Why is it not ok for tech companies to be big, but a-ok for telecom, oil, banks, law firms, audit firms, and all the other traditional companies to be huge? The cynic in me wonders if it's simply "old conservative money holders" being upset about the "new liberal rich." Ever since Trump took power, the media has been beating the "evil tech company" drums loudly and clearly.
- modi15 9y ago
  > Why is it not ok for tech companies to be big, but a-ok for telecom, oil, banks, law firms, audit firms, and all the other traditional companies to be huge? The thing which makes tech companies different from every other is the 'infrastructure' effect of software and the absence of 'geographical' limits on monopolies. Banks, law firms, audit firms are fundamentally limited by geography. A law firm in New York will find it very hard to service clients in San Francisco without having employees there. Tech firms arent 'boxed' in by these limits, which are preset for most traditional businesses, thereby greatly expands their ability to become monopolies and strangle competition. The other advantage that tech companies have is the fundamentally additive nature of software. Microsoft made a very good OS few decades back, but its ability to keep releasing a competitive OS builds on the work piled on by decades of engineering. It is simply impossible for a startup to release another version of an OS which can compete with Microsoft Windows. However, if we were to break up Windows into pieces, it opens up the possiblity for a new startup to innovate on a part of the OS and buy existing pieces from the vendors of each part to ship a new offering.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    I mean, what you are effectively arguing is that Microsoft's OS is so freaking awesome and amazing and good for consumers, that no other competitor is able to provide value to consumers as much as microsoft is. And your solution is effectively to make Microsoft's products worse, so that a different, lower quality product is able to compete. What about instead of that, we do the thing that helps consumers, instead of hurting them?
    - 9y ago
justinmk 9y ago
> This is not something I have completely thought through Indeed. "Thar oughtta be a law!" is always the least interesting response to a problem. Essentially your solution to a problem is to outlaw the problem. Then the fun part is always left to committee. "How do we split it up?" "How do we define the thing we are trying to outlaw...?" You could brand it the "War on Problems". The president could appoint a Problems Czar. I'm sure we'll need a Anti-Problems Department, too.
qaq 9y ago
Why would it be in US interest to do this? You have to make sure each country in the world passes same law which is not realistic. Plus what would be the benefit exactly? Large companies as is now create a ton of fundamental OS tools that everyone is using provide good comp. to their employees etc. The level of their owners influence is fairly modest compared to someone like Koch Brothers. Alphabet has a market cap that is bigger than Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner combined yet does not have enough political clout to influence things important to them like Net neutrality.
StreamBright 9y ago
What do you mean by anti-competitive legislation? Amazon and Apple beat competition by innovation. There are plenty of competition for both companies. You can just buy stuff in Wallmart and buy an Android phone from many manufacturers. What are you talking about?
stale2002 9y ago
And why is a company giving away a browser for free a bad thing? Merely because other people aren't able to themselves? All I see is consumers winning as they get free products.
cwkoss 9y ago
Progressive tax on corporations: the bigger the corporation, the higher the tax rate. Would incentivize companies into breaking to smaller organizations, reduce taxes on start ups and small businesses, and minimize 'too big to fail' situations.

by modi15 9y ago

specialist 9y ago

I'd be satisfied with radical cashectomies. Fees, taxes, fines, whatever. Level the playing field. Keep the money moving.

danjoc 9y ago

>Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple - all need to be shut down in their present form. I can appreciate the sentiment, but then Baidu, WeChat, Alibaba, and Xiaomi win.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
None of those companies have demonstrated an ability to "win" in Western markets.
- stevofolife 9y ago
  None of the western companies have demonstrated an ability to "win" in Eastern markets, especially China.
  - gaius 9y ago
    All the companies that crawled away tails between their legs having handed their IP or at least business model over to a local partner say otherwise.
- threatofrain 9y ago
  Those companies are trending upwards in respectability, strength, and talent. I think Andrew Ng, sometimes described as one of the top minds in ML, is indication that China has a place for such top minds. If the only hope you have is that China and its firms have been weak before, and therefore China will be weak in the future, then this smells like motivated reasoning.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Please don't mistake my comment to mean that Chinese companies are "lesser", by any means. But companies which succeed wildly with the popular there may not succeed with the population here. This is more of a social thing than anything due to superiority. As governments start to realize how powerful these international corporations are, and start laying down more regulations, it will be less and less practical for a company to operate globally anyways.
modi15 9y ago
I dont really understand why Baidu, WeChat etc. are allowed to play in outside markets like US/India when China is closed off from outside markets. The Chinese case is special and might be better of with special treatment.

mrexroad 9y ago

> There simply does not exist another sustainable model to finance a complex product like an internet browser and provide it for free to consumers for decades. At least it also funds Chromium and WebKit...

killjoywashere 9y ago

The Alphabet conglomeration seems similar to your proposal, no?

modi15 9y ago
Not at all: 1. Even Google itself is too big. It needs to be broken up further. 2. Management control needs to reside in separate individuals. You cant have two different companies having the same/common management control.

evv 9y ago

Do you really expect that sort of regulation to happen in the US, considering that most of the regulators golf with the executives? Its not just about the tech industry here- every industry has conglomerated into a handful of behemoths. These days, large corporations and industries are more powerful than government entities- just look at how they avoid paying taxes. Until we figure out how to get money out of politics, mega-corps will continue to get their way.

modi15 9y ago
I agree its extremely unlikely too happen in the US. However, most big tech companies arent seen to be clearly alligned to Trump - so maybe Trump has a perverse incentive to pull it off. That being said, I think with the rise of AI, smaller tech companies are the future. A tech ecosystem comprised of smaller companies will be forced to take a standards based approach to each industry and also aim to maximize efficiency because of constrains on head count. This requirement to maximize efficiency will further result in a boost to SAAS and in the longer term create the springboard for the next big jump in tech.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  AI in its current deep-learning form tends to reward concentration. The hardest part of building an AI company is collecting training data; big tech companies already have oodles of that, and the products, userbase, and infrastructure to collect more. There may be some new big tech companies as AI lets software push into niches that haven't been computerized yet, but the same market dynamics will likely play out there, leading to one big winner per corpus. It's not economical to collect the same corpus more than once, and right now the first player to collect it has no incentive to share it. The only thing I can think of that would reverse this would be legal regulations that either make all data public (unlikely), or that grant ownership of them to the person they're about rather than the corporate entity that collects them, or a technological solution that can enforce the latter while still allowing large-scale aggregation and machine-learning over multiple people.
jedmeyers 9y ago
> large corporations and industries are more powerful than government entities This is simply not true, since only goverment will be able to force compliance with its requests by sending armed people to your door.

juandopazo 9y ago

When did HN become so... radicalized? There's nothing inherently wrong with these companies being big. The problems are with them being too board. Should Google own the creation of content (Blogger, Youtube), finding content (search) and transmitting content (fiber)? Should Comcast transmit content (TV, Xfinity) and create content (NBC, Hulu)? This is where the problems arise like conflicts of interest, diminished competition, etc. We saw this clearly in Argentina, when as soon as the government started working on legislation to prevent the telecoms from becoming monopolies, since they own newspapers and TV news, they started bombarding the public with negative press. It shouldn't be hard to regulate this. Just split them up.

modi15 9y ago
> It shouldn't be hard to regulate this. Just split them up. Actually this is exactly what I suggested. The bigger question is 'how' to split them up - and to be able to do it consistently across ever shifting market dynamics. The telecom case is easy to define and split cleanly. The ads/search/browser and the like marketplaces will take the entire US government to make sense of. And then there is stuff like Bitcoin and AI.
raguuu 9y ago
I would like Europe to either hack up or straight up block them so we can develop our own products.
- hetspookjee 9y ago
  Like China does?
  - tmalsburg2 9y ago
    By invoking China you're implying that blocking US monopolies would be bad because everything China does is bad. Doesn't seem like a compelling argument to me.
    - noarchy 9y ago

tensor 9y ago

Why is it not ok for tech companies to be big, but a-ok for telecom, oil, banks, law firms, audit firms, and all the other traditional companies to be huge? The cynic in me wonders if it's simply "old conservative money holders" being upset about the "new liberal rich." Ever since Trump took power, the media has been beating the "evil tech company" drums loudly and clearly.

modi15 9y ago
> Why is it not ok for tech companies to be big, but a-ok for telecom, oil, banks, law firms, audit firms, and all the other traditional companies to be huge? The thing which makes tech companies different from every other is the 'infrastructure' effect of software and the absence of 'geographical' limits on monopolies. Banks, law firms, audit firms are fundamentally limited by geography. A law firm in New York will find it very hard to service clients in San Francisco without having employees there. Tech firms arent 'boxed' in by these limits, which are preset for most traditional businesses, thereby greatly expands their ability to become monopolies and strangle competition. The other advantage that tech companies have is the fundamentally additive nature of software. Microsoft made a very good OS few decades back, but its ability to keep releasing a competitive OS builds on the work piled on by decades of engineering. It is simply impossible for a startup to release another version of an OS which can compete with Microsoft Windows. However, if we were to break up Windows into pieces, it opens up the possiblity for a new startup to innovate on a part of the OS and buy existing pieces from the vendors of each part to ship a new offering.
- stale2002 9y ago
  I mean, what you are effectively arguing is that Microsoft's OS is so freaking awesome and amazing and good for consumers, that no other competitor is able to provide value to consumers as much as microsoft is. And your solution is effectively to make Microsoft's products worse, so that a different, lower quality product is able to compete. What about instead of that, we do the thing that helps consumers, instead of hurting them?
  - 9y ago

justinmk 9y ago

> This is not something I have completely thought through Indeed. "Thar oughtta be a law!" is always the least interesting response to a problem. Essentially your solution to a problem is to outlaw the problem. Then the fun part is always left to committee. "How do we split it up?" "How do we define the thing we are trying to outlaw...?" You could brand it the "War on Problems". The president could appoint a Problems Czar. I'm sure we'll need a Anti-Problems Department, too.

qaq 9y ago

Why would it be in US interest to do this? You have to make sure each country in the world passes same law which is not realistic. Plus what would be the benefit exactly? Large companies as is now create a ton of fundamental OS tools that everyone is using provide good comp. to their employees etc. The level of their owners influence is fairly modest compared to someone like Koch Brothers. Alphabet has a market cap that is bigger than Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner combined yet does not have enough political clout to influence things important to them like Net neutrality.

StreamBright 9y ago

What do you mean by anti-competitive legislation? Amazon and Apple beat competition by innovation. There are plenty of competition for both companies. You can just buy stuff in Wallmart and buy an Android phone from many manufacturers. What are you talking about?

stale2002 9y ago

And why is a company giving away a browser for free a bad thing? Merely because other people aren't able to themselves? All I see is consumers winning as they get free products.

cwkoss 9y ago

Progressive tax on corporations: the bigger the corporation, the higher the tax rate. Would incentivize companies into breaking to smaller organizations, reduce taxes on start ups and small businesses, and minimize 'too big to fail' situations.