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What a shit article. Yeah, if you go to the level of economists who work at elite universities and firms, and are the type to testify before government bodies,

What a shit article. Yeah, if you go to the level of economists who work at elite universities and firms, and are the type to testify before government bodies, most of them are one degree of separation from the world's biggest corporations. So what? Either what they're saying is evidence-based and defensible, or it isn't. The article seems to want to smear these people on the basis of their links, no matter how tenuous, to big tech corporations. It's amazing watching [a subset of] the American public clamor for the destruction of incredible things that could only be created in America, and should really be sources of pride, imho.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair The issue is that nearly every single one of these people are paid to believe big tech is not a problem. This isn't even a scenario where there were competing viewpoints: The deck was entirely stacked with paid supporters. And as far as the fact that these companies were created in the first place: Today's giants only exist because we properly employed antitrust regulations against the previous generation of giants. Google would not exist without the antitrust case against Microsoft. And an innovative future depends on us applying antitrust law again, to the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon. We should be proud of what our country has accomplished, but we must break them up on occasion to allow for new growth. Movement and innovation is what keeps us on that leading edge, and resistance to apply regulation against these companies will allow other countries to surpass us.
- kareemsabri 8y ago
  That's a much stronger claim than "they, or their firms/universities, have consulted for big tech".
- kareemsabri 8y ago
  You edited to include additional claims, and some counterfactuals. I see no reason to believe that the anti-trust rulings against Microsoft, which were actually rather weak when all was said and done, is what allowed Google to come into existence. I don't see how they had any effect on Google, or how Google was stymied by Microsoft's monopoly. Can you substantiate that claim? Likewise, you have to prove that these companies are destroying the ability for other folks to innovate through abuse of monopoly power (the point of the hearings), not just say that they're big so we need to "break them up".
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    "I see no reason to believe that the anti-trust rulings against Microsoft, which were actually rather weak when all was said and done, is what allowed Google to come into existence." Microsoft's behavior changed a lot once they got under pressure from the US and the EU. During the 90s they were much more heavy handed and aggressive than after.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    A number of Microsoft employees have confirmed that the main reason Microsoft never did anything to stop Google's growth when it was small was fear of further antitrust punishments: And most important, as Microsoft lived under government scrutiny, employees abandoned what had been nascent internal discussions about crushing a young, emerging competitor — Google. There had been informal conjectures about reprogramming Microsoft’s web browser, the popular Internet Explorer, so that anytime people typed in “Google,” they would be redirected to MSN Search, according to company insiders. Or, perhaps a warning message might pop up: “Did you know Google uses your data in ways you can’t control?” Microsoft was so powerful, and Google so new, that the young search engine could have been killed off, some insiders at both companies believe. “But there was a new culture of compliance, and we didn’t want to get in trouble again, so nothing happened,” Burrus said. The myth that Google humbled Microsoft on its own is wrong. The government’s antitrust lawsuit is one reason that Google was eventually able to break Microsoft’s monopoly. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-google.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against... As an HN user, I assume you are probably familiar with dozens of projects for products or services that were superior to Google's entrenched ones. Be they alternative mobile OSes, search engines, email or calendar products, etc. But thanks to monopoly power, all of them have failed to gain traction from the incumbents due to their vertical integration with the rest of their product portfolio. Gmail is not the best email client (it's not even a particularly good email client now that it takes two minutes to load), Android is far from the best mobile OS. But both are dominant because of the inescapable monopoly which owns them and every other product people use online. Google Search isn't winning because of the quality of the code or the results, but because Google has invested billions of dollars every year in ensuring the default search on nearly every electronic device is Google. No matter how superior someone's product is, if they don't have Google's scale or their billions, they can't compete.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair The issue is that nearly every single one of these people are paid to believe big tech is not a problem. This isn't even a scenario where there were competing viewpoints: The deck was entirely stacked with paid supporters. And as far as the fact that these companies were created in the first place: Today's giants only exist because we properly employed antitrust regulations against the previous generation of giants. Google would not exist without the antitrust case against Microsoft. And an innovative future depends on us applying antitrust law again, to the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon. We should be proud of what our country has accomplished, but we must break them up on occasion to allow for new growth. Movement and innovation is what keeps us on that leading edge, and resistance to apply regulation against these companies will allow other countries to surpass us.

kareemsabri 8y ago
That's a much stronger claim than "they, or their firms/universities, have consulted for big tech".
kareemsabri 8y ago
You edited to include additional claims, and some counterfactuals. I see no reason to believe that the anti-trust rulings against Microsoft, which were actually rather weak when all was said and done, is what allowed Google to come into existence. I don't see how they had any effect on Google, or how Google was stymied by Microsoft's monopoly. Can you substantiate that claim? Likewise, you have to prove that these companies are destroying the ability for other folks to innovate through abuse of monopoly power (the point of the hearings), not just say that they're big so we need to "break them up".
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "I see no reason to believe that the anti-trust rulings against Microsoft, which were actually rather weak when all was said and done, is what allowed Google to come into existence." Microsoft's behavior changed a lot once they got under pressure from the US and the EU. During the 90s they were much more heavy handed and aggressive than after.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  A number of Microsoft employees have confirmed that the main reason Microsoft never did anything to stop Google's growth when it was small was fear of further antitrust punishments: And most important, as Microsoft lived under government scrutiny, employees abandoned what had been nascent internal discussions about crushing a young, emerging competitor — Google. There had been informal conjectures about reprogramming Microsoft’s web browser, the popular Internet Explorer, so that anytime people typed in “Google,” they would be redirected to MSN Search, according to company insiders. Or, perhaps a warning message might pop up: “Did you know Google uses your data in ways you can’t control?” Microsoft was so powerful, and Google so new, that the young search engine could have been killed off, some insiders at both companies believe. “But there was a new culture of compliance, and we didn’t want to get in trouble again, so nothing happened,” Burrus said. The myth that Google humbled Microsoft on its own is wrong. The government’s antitrust lawsuit is one reason that Google was eventually able to break Microsoft’s monopoly. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-google.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against... As an HN user, I assume you are probably familiar with dozens of projects for products or services that were superior to Google's entrenched ones. Be they alternative mobile OSes, search engines, email or calendar products, etc. But thanks to monopoly power, all of them have failed to gain traction from the incumbents due to their vertical integration with the rest of their product portfolio. Gmail is not the best email client (it's not even a particularly good email client now that it takes two minutes to load), Android is far from the best mobile OS. But both are dominant because of the inescapable monopoly which owns them and every other product people use online. Google Search isn't winning because of the quality of the code or the results, but because Google has invested billions of dollars every year in ensuring the default search on nearly every electronic device is Google. No matter how superior someone's product is, if they don't have Google's scale or their billions, they can't compete.