3 ms·

IANAL either, but yeah, the practice you're describing, using revenues from other parts of a business to subsidize the areas it wants to compete hard in until t

by ericd 8y ago

IANAL either, but yeah, the practice you're describing, using revenues from other parts of a business to subsidize the areas it wants to compete hard in until the competitors are dead, is typically known as "predatory pricing", which is illegal. IIRC, Standard Oil was a big user of that playbook. I don't know if this qualifies, and I don't know how much appetite there is for prosecuting Google for offering useful things for free. I don't think they've had much of a history of jacking up prices after killing off a market, until relatively recently. Interesting question, though.

paulie_a 8y ago
You never ever need to explain that you are not a lawyer on an internet post. you can outright claim you are a lawyer without any worries. Cooking meth if you have a valid driver's license is actually legal, I am a lawyer this is legal advice
- ericd 8y ago
  Not worried about liability, just letting people know that there's a very good chance that I've completely misinterpreted the law. Maybe you're right and it's not useful.
  - anarazel 8y ago
    FWIW, I find it helpful. Stating the level of confidence, and that's what IANAL is to some degree, is helpful in judging a statement.
    - komali2 8y ago
      Warning: completely unrelated to thread topic. Poor grandparent got nuked in the votes, but I actually think this is an interesting discussion. It ties to my thoughts about politeness and behavior on the internet, which ties to my thoughts about the same IRL. Dale Carnegie, "How to Win Friends" type stuff. Is it effective to "hedge" your arguments/posts/words with a "now I might be wrong" / "you may know more about this than me" / "I'm not a lawyer" ? I spent 4 years hearing sales gurus tell me to not do it, exude confidence. Then I had Dale Carnegie and my favorite manager ever tell me the exact opposite. I've tried both, and the "Carnegie" method seems to work best for me both online and off. It's not just "IANAL" - the most positive responses I've seen on reddit, twitter, and here have some sort of "hedge." When I employ it, I get great responses (and lots of upvotes, which is other than response rate and quality of responses the only measure we can really use). When I don't, I get downvotes. Sometimes the "confident asshole" approach works here and on reddit, but it can backfire HORRIBLY - see the absolute nightmare situation happening over at ArenaNet - some guy didn't quite hedge in the right way and caused a total breakdown of community/developer trust. What a mess. I bet the developer wouldn't have felt quite so attacked if the commentor had hedged a bit better. See also, any email chain Linus Torvald gets involved in. Now this just starts a whole other discussion about whether someone should "have to" hedge, etc etc. I'm just voicing my thoughts here, curious what others think.
      - Retra 8y ago
        A lawyer wouldn't have to hedge and say "IANAL." Why would we expect Torvalds to hedge? He's the expert in change of his project. Etc..
        komali2 8y ago
        A lawyer can be wrong, and so can Torvalds, but yea, they may be more likely to be wrong. Nobody has to, but in my experience, you do seem to get a much more positive reaction when you do. At least in Western culture, it seems a well played "humble" character is admirable, especially when it is known that the particular person has absolutely no reason to be humble. EDIT: I don't expect anybody to hedge "just because", but I expect that a person with extremely good interpersonal communication skills to hedge.
        auslander 8y ago
        In small talk, yes, be polite and humble everywhere. In science and engineering, I prefer it has some meaning. If you're sure in what you're saying, have data to back it up, dealt with it before - say straight. If it's a guess, say it is a guess. So I would not spend time guessing was it politeness of lack of facts behind that hedging. Btw, I upvoted GP :)
        anarazel 8y ago
        Sure, but a lawyer / Torvalds / any SME might want to hedge that their opinion is strong or not. There's a pretty darn big difference between "my gut feeling is that this approach is too complicated, but I've not analyzed the problem sufficiently to know whether my gut is correct" and "there's no way this is the right architecture, it'll have harmful impact, and there's lots of better ways to do it". It's imo especially important to do so from positions of authority where others might be less critical in accepting ones statements as truth.
      - sillysaurus3 8y ago
        This ArenaNet situation sounds interesting. Could you post a link to it? I don't see much in search results.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    There is never a reason to make the disclaimer that you are not a lawyer on the internet ever, this concept needs to die.
- hedora 8y ago
  > Cooking meth if you have a valid driver's license is actually legal, I am a lawyer this is legal advice Saying things like that could get you disbarred.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    I am not actually a lawyer, I am random dude on the internet, that was the point, there is absolutely no need for the disclaimer. I can literally claim to be be a lawyer, recommend extremely terrible advise and not have to worry. "Iamnal" is something that needs to die.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Well, that's cool for you. But you are a relative newcomer here, at least your handle is (yes, pot, meet kettle -- but I've been here 9 years and quite a few people know that) and reputation, merit of the info, etc matters to quite a lot of the members here. It matters in part because truth matters to a lot of people here. Actual reality matters to a lot of people here. It's a bunch of pedants. And if you want to make it a habit of genuinely claiming to be a lawyer when you aren't and intentionally giving bad advice, you might eventually find that the mods will ban you for trolling.
      - paulie_a 8y ago
        There is literally no reason to ever us Imanal. Ever. It's a stupid unnecessary disclaimer that dates back to the 90s. My point was I can literally give terrible legal advice, claim to be a lawyer and their will be zero issues. The disclaimer isn't necessary
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        That's your opinion. What I am telling you is that it isn't consistent with cultural norms here. If you don't wish to use the disclaimer "IANAL" (I am not a lawyer) -- which I am spelling out because your comment says Imanal, which looks like gibberish to me -- then you are free to not use it. But most people here aren't likely to agree with you.
chrischen 8y ago
Isn't this done all the time by Google though? They offer so many services for free, such as the consumer version of Google Maps, or YouTube (in the early days before ads)? Not to mention Internet.org from Facebook, TOM's (free) shoes in Africa.
- ericd 8y ago
  It does sound a lot like it, but I don't know if there's some other element you have to do to make it engaging in predatory pricing, or if there's just been no will to prosecute them yet. The FTC seems like it's been relatively lax on antitrust recently, so I could believe it's just the latter. Or maybe it's just the remnants of the free pass that governments gave the early internet, and we'll start seeing more.
skybrian 8y ago
What do you think about startups that give away webviews for free?

by ericd 8y ago

paulie_a 8y ago

You never ever need to explain that you are not a lawyer on an internet post. you can outright claim you are a lawyer without any worries. Cooking meth if you have a valid driver's license is actually legal, I am a lawyer this is legal advice

ericd 8y ago
Not worried about liability, just letting people know that there's a very good chance that I've completely misinterpreted the law. Maybe you're right and it's not useful.
- anarazel 8y ago
  FWIW, I find it helpful. Stating the level of confidence, and that's what IANAL is to some degree, is helpful in judging a statement.
  - komali2 8y ago
    Warning: completely unrelated to thread topic. Poor grandparent got nuked in the votes, but I actually think this is an interesting discussion. It ties to my thoughts about politeness and behavior on the internet, which ties to my thoughts about the same IRL. Dale Carnegie, "How to Win Friends" type stuff. Is it effective to "hedge" your arguments/posts/words with a "now I might be wrong" / "you may know more about this than me" / "I'm not a lawyer" ? I spent 4 years hearing sales gurus tell me to not do it, exude confidence. Then I had Dale Carnegie and my favorite manager ever tell me the exact opposite. I've tried both, and the "Carnegie" method seems to work best for me both online and off. It's not just "IANAL" - the most positive responses I've seen on reddit, twitter, and here have some sort of "hedge." When I employ it, I get great responses (and lots of upvotes, which is other than response rate and quality of responses the only measure we can really use). When I don't, I get downvotes. Sometimes the "confident asshole" approach works here and on reddit, but it can backfire HORRIBLY - see the absolute nightmare situation happening over at ArenaNet - some guy didn't quite hedge in the right way and caused a total breakdown of community/developer trust. What a mess. I bet the developer wouldn't have felt quite so attacked if the commentor had hedged a bit better. See also, any email chain Linus Torvald gets involved in. Now this just starts a whole other discussion about whether someone should "have to" hedge, etc etc. I'm just voicing my thoughts here, curious what others think.
    - Retra 8y ago
      A lawyer wouldn't have to hedge and say "IANAL." Why would we expect Torvalds to hedge? He's the expert in change of his project. Etc..
      - komali2 8y ago
        A lawyer can be wrong, and so can Torvalds, but yea, they may be more likely to be wrong. Nobody has to, but in my experience, you do seem to get a much more positive reaction when you do. At least in Western culture, it seems a well played "humble" character is admirable, especially when it is known that the particular person has absolutely no reason to be humble. EDIT: I don't expect anybody to hedge "just because", but I expect that a person with extremely good interpersonal communication skills to hedge.
        auslander 8y ago
        In small talk, yes, be polite and humble everywhere. In science and engineering, I prefer it has some meaning. If you're sure in what you're saying, have data to back it up, dealt with it before - say straight. If it's a guess, say it is a guess. So I would not spend time guessing was it politeness of lack of facts behind that hedging. Btw, I upvoted GP :)
      - anarazel 8y ago
        Sure, but a lawyer / Torvalds / any SME might want to hedge that their opinion is strong or not. There's a pretty darn big difference between "my gut feeling is that this approach is too complicated, but I've not analyzed the problem sufficiently to know whether my gut is correct" and "there's no way this is the right architecture, it'll have harmful impact, and there's lots of better ways to do it". It's imo especially important to do so from positions of authority where others might be less critical in accepting ones statements as truth.
    - sillysaurus3 8y ago
      This ArenaNet situation sounds interesting. Could you post a link to it? I don't see much in search results.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  There is never a reason to make the disclaimer that you are not a lawyer on the internet ever, this concept needs to die.
hedora 8y ago
> Cooking meth if you have a valid driver's license is actually legal, I am a lawyer this is legal advice Saying things like that could get you disbarred.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  I am not actually a lawyer, I am random dude on the internet, that was the point, there is absolutely no need for the disclaimer. I can literally claim to be be a lawyer, recommend extremely terrible advise and not have to worry. "Iamnal" is something that needs to die.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Well, that's cool for you. But you are a relative newcomer here, at least your handle is (yes, pot, meet kettle -- but I've been here 9 years and quite a few people know that) and reputation, merit of the info, etc matters to quite a lot of the members here. It matters in part because truth matters to a lot of people here. Actual reality matters to a lot of people here. It's a bunch of pedants. And if you want to make it a habit of genuinely claiming to be a lawyer when you aren't and intentionally giving bad advice, you might eventually find that the mods will ban you for trolling.
    - paulie_a 8y ago
      There is literally no reason to ever us Imanal. Ever. It's a stupid unnecessary disclaimer that dates back to the 90s. My point was I can literally give terrible legal advice, claim to be a lawyer and their will be zero issues. The disclaimer isn't necessary
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        That's your opinion. What I am telling you is that it isn't consistent with cultural norms here. If you don't wish to use the disclaimer "IANAL" (I am not a lawyer) -- which I am spelling out because your comment says Imanal, which looks like gibberish to me -- then you are free to not use it. But most people here aren't likely to agree with you.

chrischen 8y ago

Isn't this done all the time by Google though? They offer so many services for free, such as the consumer version of Google Maps, or YouTube (in the early days before ads)? Not to mention Internet.org from Facebook, TOM's (free) shoes in Africa.

ericd 8y ago
It does sound a lot like it, but I don't know if there's some other element you have to do to make it engaging in predatory pricing, or if there's just been no will to prosecute them yet. The FTC seems like it's been relatively lax on antitrust recently, so I could believe it's just the latter. Or maybe it's just the remnants of the free pass that governments gave the early internet, and we'll start seeing more.

skybrian 8y ago

What do you think about startups that give away webviews for free?