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Well if Czechia had their tech giants they would lobby (read buy influence) against this as if their life depended on it. It's good that bigcorps don't have the

by blub 8y ago

Well if Czechia had their tech giants they would lobby (read buy influence) against this as if their life depended on it. It's good that bigcorps don't have their claws in every country on the planet. Your "free market forces" argument comes straight from the 70s. How much more abuse are you willing to tolerate before it becomes blindingly obvious that market forces don't punish companies except if they don't make money. Microsoft was punished by the government, i.e. the law, not the market. And how did the market forces punish Facebook for the colossal fuck-ups? Because even after expecting a 5 Billion fine their stock was up. Saying that market forces punish predatory attitudes is beyond the pale. It's gaslighting and ignorance rolled into one. Skirting laws (Uber, Airbnb, Amazon), giving worker protections a runaround (any gig economy company) or destroying privacy (Google, Facebook, MS, many more) is not the kind of innovation this planet needs.

bartimus 8y ago
> Microsoft was punished by the government, i.e. the law, not the market. I wholeheartedly disagree. There has been a huge active community rigorously battling Microsoft's dominance offering alternative technologies and innovations. They deserve all the credit for maintaining the balance. Not government. > And how did the market forces punish Facebook for the colossal fuck-ups? Facebook has become less and less popular in recent years. Exactly because people got concerned with those colossal fuck-ups. So you see Facebook on the fence of those things and trying to improve their company ethics. > Saying that market forces punish predatory attitudes is beyond the pale. It's gaslighting and ignorance rolled into one. This is perhaps the popular opinion in Europe. Do you completely deny the existence of corrective forces? It seems to me a the US is doing a far better job at embracing them and has a lot of its innovative success to thank for it.
- omnimus 8y ago
  So not taxing companies would be the best solution? Let's not forget that tech giants often don't pay any taxes to eu countries. Like zero. This is real problem for system based around taxes. It also puts smaller players that have to pay at disadvantage. This is just way how to tax the giants. I thin soon this is going to be normal and probably even higher.
- blub 8y ago
  You must be using an unconventional definition of punish and corrective action. Microsoft was steamrolling over the huge community battling it, including Apple, Netscape, Sun and Linux. United States vs. Microsoft Corp forced them to behave, otherwise that huge community would have had to battle them from beyond the grave. Facebook is a very profitable behemoth. Where exactly is the punishment? Oh, they have to improve their company ethics.
  - bartimus 8y ago
    But that's just not how it happened. That settlement was pretty much insignificant. First Amazon launched their online book store. Then Microsoft made a $150 million investment into Apple. Then Google launched its search innovation. Linux and Apache were already hugely successful with dominating the web. Java and PHP were kicking ASP's ass. https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2019/04/22/april-2019-web-server-survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2019/04/22/april-2019-web... Microsoft got so much distracted by certain market dominance they totally missed the uprising of the web players. Then Valve released their app store, Apple released the iPhone including its app store, Google released Android and Microsoft saw its dominance fall apart. The settlement didn't contribute to any of these developments. So what happened is - because Microsoft was so dominant - the competition needed to seriously up their innovative game to conquer their positions. If government would have intervened more strongly there wouldn't have been the need for stronger competition which would have resulted in less innovation. The market corrected itself.
    - blub 8y ago
      That settlement tied their hands competitively, made them think thrice before playing dirty and took the wind out of their sails. The settlement is what permitted Apple and Google to exist in the first place, so that they could launch the iPhone and Android. Amazon was utterly irrelevant back then, they were a book store FFS. The investment into Apple was happening in the middle of the anti-trust fight, for crying out loud. And Google was invented also during that time and would have gone exactly nowhere with an IE monopoly. MS crushed Linux on the desktop and they use it just like anybody else on the server. They even included it in Windows, Linux for them is not a competitor, it's a tool.

by blub 8y ago

bartimus 8y ago

> Microsoft was punished by the government, i.e. the law, not the market. I wholeheartedly disagree. There has been a huge active community rigorously battling Microsoft's dominance offering alternative technologies and innovations. They deserve all the credit for maintaining the balance. Not government. > And how did the market forces punish Facebook for the colossal fuck-ups? Facebook has become less and less popular in recent years. Exactly because people got concerned with those colossal fuck-ups. So you see Facebook on the fence of those things and trying to improve their company ethics. > Saying that market forces punish predatory attitudes is beyond the pale. It's gaslighting and ignorance rolled into one. This is perhaps the popular opinion in Europe. Do you completely deny the existence of corrective forces? It seems to me a the US is doing a far better job at embracing them and has a lot of its innovative success to thank for it.

omnimus 8y ago
So not taxing companies would be the best solution? Let's not forget that tech giants often don't pay any taxes to eu countries. Like zero. This is real problem for system based around taxes. It also puts smaller players that have to pay at disadvantage. This is just way how to tax the giants. I thin soon this is going to be normal and probably even higher.
blub 8y ago
You must be using an unconventional definition of punish and corrective action. Microsoft was steamrolling over the huge community battling it, including Apple, Netscape, Sun and Linux. United States vs. Microsoft Corp forced them to behave, otherwise that huge community would have had to battle them from beyond the grave. Facebook is a very profitable behemoth. Where exactly is the punishment? Oh, they have to improve their company ethics.
- bartimus 8y ago
  But that's just not how it happened. That settlement was pretty much insignificant. First Amazon launched their online book store. Then Microsoft made a $150 million investment into Apple. Then Google launched its search innovation. Linux and Apache were already hugely successful with dominating the web. Java and PHP were kicking ASP's ass. https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2019/04/22/april-2019-web-server-survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2019/04/22/april-2019-web... Microsoft got so much distracted by certain market dominance they totally missed the uprising of the web players. Then Valve released their app store, Apple released the iPhone including its app store, Google released Android and Microsoft saw its dominance fall apart. The settlement didn't contribute to any of these developments. So what happened is - because Microsoft was so dominant - the competition needed to seriously up their innovative game to conquer their positions. If government would have intervened more strongly there wouldn't have been the need for stronger competition which would have resulted in less innovation. The market corrected itself.
  - blub 8y ago
    That settlement tied their hands competitively, made them think thrice before playing dirty and took the wind out of their sails. The settlement is what permitted Apple and Google to exist in the first place, so that they could launch the iPhone and Android. Amazon was utterly irrelevant back then, they were a book store FFS. The investment into Apple was happening in the middle of the anti-trust fight, for crying out loud. And Google was invented also during that time and would have gone exactly nowhere with an IE monopoly. MS crushed Linux on the desktop and they use it just like anybody else on the server. They even included it in Windows, Linux for them is not a competitor, it's a tool.