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There are just two phone makers in existence: Google and Apple. If you care about privacy and security, there is just a single phone maker: Apple. The only diff

• everdrive 8y ago
  >are on their way to abolishing book ownership outright. This is hyperbolic. There has been a resurgence in small bookstores, and Amazon sells quite a few physical books themselves.
  • patrec 8y ago
    It's not in the least hyperbolic. Physical books are going away. You can't buy ebooks on amazon. They have close to 90% of the us ebook market already.
• buzzerbetrayed 8y ago
  If apple is the only phone maker to offer privacy and security, why would we break them up? Amazon is abolishing book ownership because they invented a better way to read books (kindle and audible). How is breaking them up going to make people want to own books again? The only way that would happen is if you make kindle and audible worse. How would that help society?
  • briandear 8y ago
    People also seem to forget that the Apple Bookstore is still a thing. Certainly not as big as Amazon but certainly big enough to matter. Apple also has audiobooks as well. So there is competition.
    • patrec 8y ago
      I'm so glad to hear that should Amazon ever really go overboard with memory-holing ebooks, I can always rely on Apple to distribute the really edgy stuff no one else would dare to publish!
      • scarface74 8y ago
        An author can always distribute an ePub book directly from their site. When you click on it, it can be directly imported into the Books app.
• DeepThoughts 8y ago
  No one is currently preventing you from homerolling a mobile operating system and building your own smartphone (provided that you avoid or license existing patents). It would be difficult to break into that market, establish share and make money in the short term, but no one is actively being prevented from doing so (see Chinese knockoffs). I fail to see how you see the above scenario as some flavor of monopoly. The problem here is that Warren was arguing in either ignorance or bad faith by implying these orgs need to be broken up because they are too big or monopoly’s. They are neither. I could sit down today and create a new Facebook, Instagram, or Amazon and release it. There will be no consequences or jackbooted thugs coming to shut me down. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean you should be able to use scary words to shut it down. The reality is that people like Warren want to dictate winners and losers in the market. If you feel privacy or business practices aren’t to your liking, you don’t have to use Facebook or Amazon. Don’t like that Google is censoring (or not censoring) something? Use Duck Duck Go, or Ask. But don’t pretend to be Teddy Roosevelt when you’re really just trying to project your personal biases on the market.
  • treis 8y ago
    You're arguing against a strawman here. No one is using "jackbooted thugs will shut me down" as the definition of a monopoly.
  • chumali 8y ago
    You set up a false equivalence by equating monopolisation with outright coercion when in fact there are multiple types of soft and hard market power that define the degree to which a company has a monopoly in a given market (network effects for example). Even where market power is not being overtly used to stifle competition there are strong and well established economic arguments for why the breakup of large incumbents can be net beneficial. Regulation can also cut both ways - one of the main advantages enjoyed by large incumbents are barriers created by regulatory capture (e.g. regulations like GDPR) - small businesses simply do not have the resources to comply and remain competitive. In a sense all regulation has an element of picking winners - to dismiss it on this basis is foolish/disingenuous and completely mischaracterises the debate. The point is to realise that corporations are private/public institutions and there is a trade-off in interests between the parties involved. Regulation is the art of balancing these interests at the socially optimal level.