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"Some were investigated, but only superficially, the government just really isn't enforcing our antitrust laws. And that's what's happened. None of these acquis

• izzydata 8y ago
  That seems to be implying it is inherently a bad thing. Is trying to stop innovative companies also a hindrance to technological progress?
  • sincerely 8y ago
    I mean, you're implying that "technological progress" is inherently a good thing.
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      Isn't it? Can you support your statement? Edit: am I really being downvoted for asking for evidence that technological progress (the driving force that made all people on Earth extraordinaly more rich) is bad? What is wrong with you, people?
      • frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
        Some technological progress is good and some of it bad.
        • TomMarius 8y ago
          No technological progress is bad. Sometimes this progress is used badly, but knowledge is definitely not bad.
          • frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
            You can't separate a technology from it's use. Technology is created to be used. Besides I could just as easily say some knowledge is good and some knowledge is bad. If you want to say that "knowledge is definitely not bad" then I'm going to ask you your own question - can you support that statement?
            • TomMarius 8y ago
              > You can't separate a technology from it's use. Technology is created to be used. False. Every day, dozens of thousands of people in academia engage in basic research (actual term), something that does not lead to "usable technology" most of the time. > some knowledge is good and some knowledge is bad Are you saying that guns kill people? I thought that people kill people, using guns.
              • frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
                >Are you saying that guns kill people? I thought that people kill people, using guns. I don't understand why you're resorting to metaphor, I think what I said was pretty clear. Can you support the statement that all knowledge is good?
                • TomMarius 8y ago
                  So our knowledge about guns is bad because guns kill? I can't explain it more, sorry. I think the explanation I've given is very obvious - technology can be used badly, but it's always the people who do it, not the technology itself. Technology is neutral, you can simply not use it - knowing it still might prove important for development of other technologies, e.g. for prevention, reparation, ... after the original technology is used, in case of nuclear weapons for example (how would we know how to prevent and treat radiation illness without knowing anything about nuclear physics), and at the very extreme, the technology itself will do nothing - until people start using it. People are bad, not technology.
    • genericone 8y ago
      Is preemptive regulation ever a good thing? How could any government have pre-regulated, say, the internet? If you are not for technological progress, is the corollary true, that you are for technological stagnation? Is not tech stagnation also tech attrition?
    • euyyn 8y ago
      Why wouldn't it be?
      • dredmorbius 8y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences http://newtechnologyandsociety.org http://newtechnologyandsociety.org
        • euyyn 8y ago
          That's kind of a poor reply. "Sometimes things have unintended consequences". And a link to a book that says that technology alone won't save the environment, more things will be needed.
          • dredmorbius 8y ago
            They may not be the answer you're looking for, but they're the answer. At least read the pagers linked. I strongly recommend the book in its entirety.
            • euyyn 8y ago
              They aren't answers to the question I asked. "Why wouldn't technological progress be a good thing?"
  • b_b 8y ago
    The point of antitrust regulations is to stop the anti-innovation practices in the first place, so while they may appear to be a 'benevolent dictator,' they will quickly turn for the worse.
    • fixermark 8y ago
      It seems to be an open question whether letting a corp play benevolent dictator for some timeframe, at least, is a useful thing.
      • brightball 8y ago
        Basically it works until they have a reason to defend themselves.
      • chargingmylaser 8y ago
        Bell Labs was a monopoly (at least for a time period) and yielded countless high-impact, transformative innovations that a company with fewer resources (probably) would not have been able to develop. I think (although I could be wrong) most would agree they were a net benefit to society.
        • abandonliberty 8y ago
          In our local post-monopoly phone provider, 30 years ago dispatchers would call the local strip club bartender to reach their technicians. They were all on a first name basis. It was much better to work for these companies back then. Now, everything is super efficient and all that extra value the technicians generate go straight to executives and shareholders.
        • nine_k 8y ago
          Bell Labs was not a monopoly: it did not prevent operation of other research labs. E.g. the highly successful Xeroc PARC co-existed with them for a decade or two. Bell the telecom company was a monopoly that financed Bell Labs. Bell Labs did not go down in flames when Bell was partitioned in 1982, and continued providing the world with great achievements.
  • eftychis 8y ago
    Innovative companies on their own are not really innovative really. A monopoly enforces their opinion and product in the world. If you don't like their price or approach too bad for you. You are kept out of the game (it is a monopoly right). As has been mentioned a bunch of times here, Google and Facebook have all too naturally embraced Microsoft's (and prior monopolies' ) approach of embrace, extend, and extinguish. There were at least 2-3 articles this week about the games Google plays (e.g. youtube loading faster on Chrome due to Google going ahead with their own suggested implementation without consensus). I don't think there is any economic model out there that even argues monopolies are a good idea in some fashion.
    • HillaryBriss 8y ago
      > If you don't like their price or approach too bad for you. You are kept out of the game yes, basically true, i think. the article says Google spent more money on lobbying last year than any other corporation... why does Google think that spending money in this way is useful? what does Google get in return? how does Google explain to shareholders that this is not a waste?
      • stuckinarut 8y ago
        Are those rhetorical questions cause it seems liek the answer is pretty obvious in this context.
        • HillaryBriss 8y ago
          i think it depends upon the reader. a skeptical journalist or consumer might immediately conclude that Google is unfairly influencing government to create an unlevel playing field. but i'm genuinely curious to hear how Google would spin it.
      • adventured 8y ago
        > why does Google think that spending money in this way is useful? It's not useful, it's required. You have two choices. You can do the equivalent of what Microsoft did for a long time, and hide in the Pacific Northwest and pray that the Monster in DC just leaves you alone, while all of your competitors lobby to have you destroyed. You will not be left alone no matter what, if you achieve that kind of success, no matter how you achieve it. The only rational choice, is to get in the game and try to influence the outcome, which is what all of your competitors are going to be doing. Microsoft learned that very painful lesson after waiving at the US Government for years and thinking they could ignore what was going on with their competitors lobbying. Google learned from Microsoft's mistake, and got in almost immediately once their position became dominant. With the politics in DC, you're either in it defending your position, or you're dinner being served up by your competitors who are very aggressively in it and trying to use the political machine against you as a weapon. The US has a $7 trillion government system top to bottom, one third the size of the economy. There's no avoiding that.
• talltimtom 8y ago
  Regulations do exist... Europe seems to be the only once even superficially enforcing them.
  • mlindner 8y ago
    Which shows in how they don't create companies that massively reinvent society. They get killed in the cradle before anything can occur. Above examples of massive world reinvention have all been in the US.
  • RestlessMind 8y ago
    Which successful companies came out of EU in the last 20 years? How well do they stack up against US (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber etc) or China (Tencent, Alibaba etc)? If not many, does that mean EU entrepreneurs are hindered by the regulations? One might also argue that European model is better because it might prevent one company from dominating the market. But if that is the case, why does EU face technology dominance from American companies (smartphones, search, e-commerce, operating systems etc), rather than having that marketshare captured by European companies?
    • philg_jr 8y ago
      How about...Nokia? Seimens? SAP?
      • kimdotcom 8y ago
        Who owns Nokia now?
        • detaro 8y ago
          Nokia is an independent Finnish company. Mobile phones under the label "Nokia" are made by HMD Global, also a Finnish company, which bought some of the remnants of Microsofts smartphone branch, which had previously bought Nokia's smartphone branch.
      • giobox 8y ago
• kimdotcom 8y ago
  Why did Google succeed and Yahoo fail?
  • utopcell 8y ago
    Google succeeded because Yahoo used it as its default search engine for years alongside their directory. Google got enormous exposure from that at a point when they needed it. Imagine if your little startup had a "How about you try us out ?" on google.com, permanently. Plus, eventually, Google got better at Search.
  • ebikelaw 8y ago
    At the same time google was stocking every level of their org chart with legendary engineers, Yahoo appointed a demented Scientologist from Hollywood as their CEO. Yahoo for some reason thought they were in the show business. They could not have succeeded on that premise and it’s a miracle the company even survive the reign of Terry Semel.
    • kimdotcom 8y ago
      Good insight. I wonder if Snap suffers from similair thinking.
• Pica_soO 8y ago
  Just have to organize a resistance movement against a opponent who knows nearly everything about everyone participating? Well, im off to search for someone with similar strong opinions...
• bps4484 8y ago
  I think it is also worth calling out that at least 2 of those acquisitions, android and google, were made before they became as dominant as they are today. Android was purchased by google 2 years before it even launched, and while youtube was explosively popular at the time of purchase, many at the time thought the 1B purchase price for a revenue-less company was a stupid decision, and nobody was concerned about a monopoly. In other words, the businesses, and their dominance in those business, were made well after the acquisition such that I don't think if they had been investigated rigorously by the FTC they would have been stopped. I'm not sure if the same was also true for doubleclick (I don't know enough about ad tech).
  • adventured 8y ago
    Google was solely responsible for YouTube's ultimate success and they deserve the credit accordingly. It was a dead company if they didn't buy it, they were rapidly bleeding to death financially and the legal picture was disastrous. It was viewed as a stupid mistake of a purchase in part because the argument was they would be a giant red ink pit forever. The sole reason YouTube survived the legal attack was due to Google's enormous resources and market position. Without that, the music cartel and Hollywood would have made sure to kill it or buy it (same difference). The mobile picture is a lot less clear. Perhaps a dominant open source solution would have emerged. Samsung has shown itself to be mediocre at producing competitive origination platforms, so I'm highly skeptical they'd have produced the big leading platform. Apple's iOS would have never held the dominate market share, because they're universally the high profit small share player. China only came on in the last few years in terms of their ability to originate such a platform, and the rest of the planet is simply not going to adopt a Chinese platform as the 85% global market solution. The Europeans have been entirely absent post Nokia's implosion. So who else was going to fund the expensive creation of and shepherding of something like Android? Nobody. Google deserves vast credit for that accordingly as well.
    • seabrookmx 8y ago
      > Universally the high profit, small share player I'm curious though, was this always supposed to be the case? I think Apple has adapted amazingly well to the market (look at their profits) but I don't think there's any evidence that this has been a holistic, from the start business strategy for them. I know my Elementary and High schools had Macs because of Apple's aggressive Educational discounts, and at the time it was generally accepted that Apple was trying to get a generation of kids used to Macs so that they would be the mainstream computer when they reached adulthood. Ultimately we were all forced to use Wintel boxes when we got jobs so this play didn't work. Apple didn't get in bed with businesses the same way they did with schools. Then when we swing over to iOS, the first iPhones were premium devices because they _had_ to be. The hardware required to realize their vision was bleeding edge and they knew it would take a few years to commoditize it. Ultimately Android popped up and stole the budget market (with crappy devices, some of them having keyboards and resistive touchscreens) before Apple felt comfortable putting out something budget like the 5c much too late.