6 ms·

Caprices of TOS details, reviews, algorithms, service quality, or whatever are not the real problem. The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to do

by SiVal 8y ago

Caprices of TOS details, reviews, algorithms, service quality, or whatever are not the real problem. The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to do business with someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you. Network effects are causing more and more important things to both expand into great significance and to be dominated by a single company (or pair of gatekeepers, both of whom must be appeased, as in the phone platform.) Your business can be utterly wiped out with no realistic recourse by any of a thousand actions that could be taken at any time by the giant, like an elephant stepping on an ant. I'm afraid that the only real recourse is to have certain anticompetitive regulations automatically kick in once a business rises above a certain percentage control of access to some market or medium that has become significant. They lose the ability to unilaterally ban, for example, except in narrow cases involving fraud or suspected criminal activity, which will eventually have to be proved to some official. If they fail to prove it, the official will order compensation without the banned party having to fight the giant's lawyers.

avip 8y ago
Sounds like you’d like to see Google classified as a class II common carrier...
- samat 8y ago
  Hell yes!
- monocasa 8y ago
  Would that be so wrong?
  - writepub 8y ago
    Yes - they're a private company, albeit unfair in this particular instance.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      Almost all title II common carriers are private companies.
    - writepub 8y ago
      I can't believe the down-voting for suggesting Google - clearly NOT a provider of essential infrastructure like phone lines or internet connectivity - NOT be classified a class II common carrier! In what universe are companies like Google, Apple, ... classifiable as class II common carriers? On what grounds?
- RonanTheGrey 8y ago
  I wonder - how big does a company have to become before a society steps in and says "you have enough power to control and affect the lives of X% of our citizens. Therefore, we must have a say in how you conduct your affairs." I mean, this is for all intents and purposes what regulation is - and the reason for it. Otherwise, set aside the very idea of government as a farce, and populate the world with a dystopian patchwork of private corporations that behave like nations. This of course can never be true for mom-and-pop. But hell yes it is true for Google.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    Exactly. It's always been the same bargain as with government. 'We the people / customers / market recognize that it's in our interests for your functions to be centralized (whether through functional necessity, efficiency, etc), however, in return for our granting you a monopoly we demand some say in how you run your affairs.' The alternative should be, if Google isn't willing to accept that, then they deserve a lot harsher anti-competitive regulation. The GDPR would be the tip of the iceberg, and would continue into preventing their leveraging their size and customer knowledge into new related industries.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    I think it isn't even a matter of bigness per say but of monopoly essentially. Your local water company can't decide to just jack up prices to $2500/gallon because they have an exploitable monopoly position. Meanwhile say GE could be very huge and produce 50% of lightbulbs but if they decided to be grossly unreasonable people could just stop buying lightbulbs from alternatives. Now if they had created their own bulb-socket standards and enforced them so that only they could produce bulbs that fit into the socket then there would definitely be an abuse of monopoly standard and ample grounds to argue "No you abused the patent and it will go into public domain now as part of the punishment.".
reaperducer 8y ago
The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to do business with someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you. Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Whether it's a supplier, or a publisher, or a telco, or whatever. They are all single points of failure, and unless you're a huge business, one failure can be all that's needed to take you down, too. Yes, Google Play is effectively the only way to publish an Android program. But it's also a single point of failure, which is why until there is no longer a mobile program duopoly, I don't invest in app companies.
- sbov 8y ago
  > Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Seems impossible. Assuming you're an internet business, how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar?
  - quickthrower2 8y ago
    Out of the myriad registrars, you can pick a good one, or at least one that lets you transfer out easily.
  - calabin 8y ago
    I can't remember the exact details of the story I read here on HN, but there was a case of some SaaS company that had this exact issue. Fortunately they were able to spread the word to temporarily use a backup domain on a different registrar via social media until the issue was resolved. If anyone reading this remembers that story, I would very much appreciate a link.
    - tomjohnneill 8y ago
      I don't have a link, but pretty sure it was Zoho
    - lenomad 8y ago
marcus_holmes 8y ago
or, of course, stop developing apps. If this is actually a common problem for app developers, then few people will go into this business, and the supply of apps will drop. That will then tell Google/Apple that this is actually a problem that they need to deal with. All businesses have risks. At least these risks you know about beforehand (a <1% chance that your app developer has been shady in past and will get your account banned). This is actually a pretty small risk compared to the >99% chance that the app will sink like a stone in the sea of apps available, never to be seen again, along with every penny invested in it. The app stores are swamped with apps. Every single one of those apps was some person's dream that they spent significant time/money/effort on - building an app and getting it on the store is not a trivial undertaking. The overwhelmingly vast majority of those apps will never make a cent for their creators. From Google's perspective, one less app on their app store at this point is probably a good thing. From the OP's perspective, unless they're seeing significant revenue from the iOS version, writing the whole thing off as a sunk cost and walking away is probably the best plan. Which is ridiculous, I know, but logically true.
TheBobinator 8y ago
The first real recourse is not to invest your money or time in such an institution in the first place. It is foolhearty to ignore researching your busniess partners and I don't, for a minute, think these people failed to do so; they're just trying to recoup their money at this point. Nobody is forcing you to use google products, and they are not a replacement for the real security in a business of loyal customers and employee's anyway. Why anyone ever consider investing in making apps for a phone given the way the market is today I will never understand. Your second real recourse, if you can't get away from them and at that point this becomes a responsability, is to resist or fight them. In this case, getting some capital together and filing a class-action lawsuit. Another way to resist; make an app that roots the phone and poisions the data-brokers well by feeding them garbage information in a way that is impossible to effectively filter. Charge $5 a year, update the phone like antivirus updates it, have teams that work on popular vs unpopular apps, and before launching a campaign against a large app or investment firms, short the companies stock for added revenue. Invest in breaking the model of a closed ecosystem, which is required for all this spyware and for abusive EULA's to actually work right in the first place. And when you do those sorts of things, you create a ruckus, and plenty of economic damage. That tends to draw the ire of law enforcement and government, and you will find that is the most effective way to demand new regulations. In politics, its only when you hit critical mass that change occurs. And the final recourse, which is also a responsability that nobody likes to talk about. Their business addresses of them and their executive management can be found, and there are 17 guns per man women and child in the USA for a very good reason. You really have to fail as a society for violence to be justified and to be the only effective measure; arguably right now we're failing pretty hard if the fertility rates and life expectancy statistics are any measure. Google might not be responsable for that, but they are part of the symptom of a disease. One could say the moment Google decided instant search was a requirement and began putting people in a bubble so effective that the only way to really survive was to decide free news is fake news. That at that moment violence became inevitable. I certainly hope it isn't. But it is going to require people begin acting like grown-ups and taking some risks to avoid that. You'd do well to remember that.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> I'm afraid that the only real recourse is to have certain anticompetitive regulations automatically kick in once a business rises above a certain percentage control of access to some market or medium that has become significant. Companies like to say they're providing a "platform"; maybe it's time for that to become a legally recognized concept.
- ohazi 8y ago
  There's a difference between "a platform" and "the platform."

by SiVal 8y ago

avip 8y ago

Sounds like you’d like to see Google classified as a class II common carrier...

samat 8y ago
Hell yes!
monocasa 8y ago
Would that be so wrong?
- writepub 8y ago
  Yes - they're a private company, albeit unfair in this particular instance.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Almost all title II common carriers are private companies.
  - writepub 8y ago
    I can't believe the down-voting for suggesting Google - clearly NOT a provider of essential infrastructure like phone lines or internet connectivity - NOT be classified a class II common carrier! In what universe are companies like Google, Apple, ... classifiable as class II common carriers? On what grounds?
RonanTheGrey 8y ago
I wonder - how big does a company have to become before a society steps in and says "you have enough power to control and affect the lives of X% of our citizens. Therefore, we must have a say in how you conduct your affairs." I mean, this is for all intents and purposes what regulation is - and the reason for it. Otherwise, set aside the very idea of government as a farce, and populate the world with a dystopian patchwork of private corporations that behave like nations. This of course can never be true for mom-and-pop. But hell yes it is true for Google.
- ethbro 8y ago
  Exactly. It's always been the same bargain as with government. 'We the people / customers / market recognize that it's in our interests for your functions to be centralized (whether through functional necessity, efficiency, etc), however, in return for our granting you a monopoly we demand some say in how you run your affairs.' The alternative should be, if Google isn't willing to accept that, then they deserve a lot harsher anti-competitive regulation. The GDPR would be the tip of the iceberg, and would continue into preventing their leveraging their size and customer knowledge into new related industries.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  I think it isn't even a matter of bigness per say but of monopoly essentially. Your local water company can't decide to just jack up prices to $2500/gallon because they have an exploitable monopoly position. Meanwhile say GE could be very huge and produce 50% of lightbulbs but if they decided to be grossly unreasonable people could just stop buying lightbulbs from alternatives. Now if they had created their own bulb-socket standards and enforced them so that only they could produce bulbs that fit into the socket then there would definitely be an abuse of monopoly standard and ample grounds to argue "No you abused the patent and it will go into public domain now as part of the punishment.".

reaperducer 8y ago

The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to do business with someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you. Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Whether it's a supplier, or a publisher, or a telco, or whatever. They are all single points of failure, and unless you're a huge business, one failure can be all that's needed to take you down, too. Yes, Google Play is effectively the only way to publish an Android program. But it's also a single point of failure, which is why until there is no longer a mobile program duopoly, I don't invest in app companies.

sbov 8y ago
> Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Seems impossible. Assuming you're an internet business, how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar?
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  Out of the myriad registrars, you can pick a good one, or at least one that lets you transfer out easily.
- calabin 8y ago
  I can't remember the exact details of the story I read here on HN, but there was a case of some SaaS company that had this exact issue. Fortunately they were able to spread the word to temporarily use a backup domain on a different registrar via social media until the issue was resolved. If anyone reading this remembers that story, I would very much appreciate a link.
  - tomjohnneill 8y ago
    I don't have a link, but pretty sure it was Zoho
  - lenomad 8y ago

marcus_holmes 8y ago

or, of course, stop developing apps. If this is actually a common problem for app developers, then few people will go into this business, and the supply of apps will drop. That will then tell Google/Apple that this is actually a problem that they need to deal with. All businesses have risks. At least these risks you know about beforehand (a <1% chance that your app developer has been shady in past and will get your account banned). This is actually a pretty small risk compared to the >99% chance that the app will sink like a stone in the sea of apps available, never to be seen again, along with every penny invested in it. The app stores are swamped with apps. Every single one of those apps was some person's dream that they spent significant time/money/effort on - building an app and getting it on the store is not a trivial undertaking. The overwhelmingly vast majority of those apps will never make a cent for their creators. From Google's perspective, one less app on their app store at this point is probably a good thing. From the OP's perspective, unless they're seeing significant revenue from the iOS version, writing the whole thing off as a sunk cost and walking away is probably the best plan. Which is ridiculous, I know, but logically true.

TheBobinator 8y ago

The first real recourse is not to invest your money or time in such an institution in the first place. It is foolhearty to ignore researching your busniess partners and I don't, for a minute, think these people failed to do so; they're just trying to recoup their money at this point. Nobody is forcing you to use google products, and they are not a replacement for the real security in a business of loyal customers and employee's anyway. Why anyone ever consider investing in making apps for a phone given the way the market is today I will never understand. Your second real recourse, if you can't get away from them and at that point this becomes a responsability, is to resist or fight them. In this case, getting some capital together and filing a class-action lawsuit. Another way to resist; make an app that roots the phone and poisions the data-brokers well by feeding them garbage information in a way that is impossible to effectively filter. Charge $5 a year, update the phone like antivirus updates it, have teams that work on popular vs unpopular apps, and before launching a campaign against a large app or investment firms, short the companies stock for added revenue. Invest in breaking the model of a closed ecosystem, which is required for all this spyware and for abusive EULA's to actually work right in the first place. And when you do those sorts of things, you create a ruckus, and plenty of economic damage. That tends to draw the ire of law enforcement and government, and you will find that is the most effective way to demand new regulations. In politics, its only when you hit critical mass that change occurs. And the final recourse, which is also a responsability that nobody likes to talk about. Their business addresses of them and their executive management can be found, and there are 17 guns per man women and child in the USA for a very good reason. You really have to fail as a society for violence to be justified and to be the only effective measure; arguably right now we're failing pretty hard if the fertility rates and life expectancy statistics are any measure. Google might not be responsable for that, but they are part of the symptom of a disease. One could say the moment Google decided instant search was a requirement and began putting people in a bubble so effective that the only way to really survive was to decide free news is fake news. That at that moment violence became inevitable. I certainly hope it isn't. But it is going to require people begin acting like grown-ups and taking some risks to avoid that. You'd do well to remember that.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> I'm afraid that the only real recourse is to have certain anticompetitive regulations automatically kick in once a business rises above a certain percentage control of access to some market or medium that has become significant. Companies like to say they're providing a "platform"; maybe it's time for that to become a legally recognized concept.

ohazi 8y ago
There's a difference between "a platform" and "the platform."