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Elizabeth Warren Came Up with a Plan to Break Up Big Tech

193 points by Elof 7y ago

whatshisface 7y ago
>The companies make money by monitoring their customers’ online activity and selling the data, largely to advertisers. I can't buy reams of data from Google. There are data brokers out there, but big adtech companies won't sell me the source of their ad success. Most of the data market is composed of smaller companies which don't run ad networks and wouldn't even come close to the eye of an antitrust program.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  It's also not like physical stores don't do it either. They all have membership cards that track your purchases and visit data.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    Reciprocity with credit cards is a thing too. It's how Amazon was able to re-target me with a product carousel for something I impulse bought at a Macy's. I'm not really complaining but even tech savvy people can underestimate just how much of their information is out there.
- lithos 7y ago
  You don't buy the data directly. You buy access to who you want data and tracking info on. The only difference is that Google/Facebook/Similar get to pretend to be clean, even though they are the enablers.
  - makomk 7y ago
    The only difference is that one of these two things involves giving a whole bunch of private, sensitive data about everyone to anyone who'll pay and the other does not. If that distinction doesn't matter to you then I'd say that this isn't actually about privacy at all.
    - lithos 7y ago
      Considering quite a few people here browse with Javascript disabled, and how angry they get when an adblocker becomes worse. It's pretty obvious that the people who are likely to be most knowledgeable on the topic (as tech people on a SV news aggregator website), that Google/Facebook/whatever aren't enabling "friendly neighbors". Running enough ads with your own tracking on SV platforms, will get you the data you want about your targets.
oneepic 7y ago
Ok... but what about big _____ (anything else)?
- thwythwy 7y ago
  There's no way you're paying attn to the news and believe she doesn't have plans specific to other industries.
  - TuringNYC 7y ago
    Yes, but it seems intellectually dishonest to go after big tech (where, often, the "product" is free) yet avoid going after -- say -- big telco or big cable or big pharma -- where you come out of a retail store feeling disgusting because you got ripped off so badly. By ripped off, I dont mean, I over-spent, but rather I was forced into buying something due to having only a single choice, while not even knowing the ultimate price I will pay. Where I live in the US -- there is ONE and only ONE broadband provider. If you ask for the price, they give you the three month promotion price. If you press them really hard, you get the ultimate non-promotional price. Then you get the bill and there is a "wire fee", "regulatory recovery fee", "line charge" and all manner of all surprise charges that you didn't agree to except in some blank-check-fine-print fashion. Say what you might about privacy etc, but my immediate, acute pains are with real monopolies like my broadband provider -- not with which free photo sharing app I need to use
    - ionforce 7y ago
      Does anyone care about intellectual dishonesty? I mean look what has happened to this country.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      It's intellectually dishonest to pretend Warren isn't going after the telcos and pharma too. Telecom: https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-warren-unveils-plan-expand-broadband-access/ https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-warren-unveils-plan-ex... Pharma: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzvy4w/elizabeth-warren-is-trying-to-break-up-big-pharma-cartels-by-letting-the-government-make-generic-drugs https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzvy4w/elizabeth-warren-i... Warren's entire shtick is having a plan for pretty much everything.
buboard 7y ago
by the time she would be elected some of the big tech will have bigger problems.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
> The plan she released consists of several parts. Companies with revenue of twenty-five billion dollars or more that provide an online marketplace would be designated as “platform utilities” and would not be allowed to both own the marketplace and participate on it. Right from the start, Warren says, Amazon would have to separate its “Basics” business, which sells products under a house brand, from the rest of Amazon, and Google’s advertising business and its search business would have to be split apart. Secondly, she pledged to “empower” federal regulators to undo many of the tech-industry mergers that have already happened, such as Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and Zappos; Facebook’s takeover of Whatsapp and Instagram; and Google’s purchase of Waze, Nest, and DoubleClick. This would really change the landscape if implemented. On thing that it would do is force the companies to innovate themselves, knowing that they can't just acquire every innovative company that challenges their dominance.
- fkdo 7y ago
  I think it would change the VC market too. A lot of companies are funded because they potentially make good acquisitions for larger companies.
  - rauchp 7y ago
    I can definitely see that happening. I wonder if that would reduce the amount of unprofitable/unsustainable but heavily VC-invested companies. The big players we all think of (Uber, WeWork, etc) aren't looking to get acquired anymore, but would investors have been more cautious to invest in these companies if they knew the only exit plan was IPO'ing?
- threeseed 7y ago
  So it's okay for supermarkets and brick/mortar retailers to offer house brands but not online retailers. Pretty arbitrary line. And this would equally apply to Apple and Google who have a number of apps on their app stores. This would then lead to even more bundled apps on the phone e.g. Garageband which would decrease competition. Most of these policies are really not well thought out.
thwythwy 7y ago
Most people here will seize on Better Markets' phrasing rather than addressing the merits of this part of what Warren proposes: (1) "Right from the start . . . Amazon would have to separate its 'Basics' business, which sells products under a house brand, from the rest of Amazon," (2) Google’s advertising business and its search business would have to be split apart. (3) regulators can "undo many of the tech-industry mergers that have already happened, such as Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and Zappos; Facebook’s takeover of Whatsapp and Instagram; and Google’s purchase of Waze, Nest, and DoubleClick." Friendly reminder that (1) through (3) are the actual stakes of the policy, not what Vaheesan says to the reporter about forcing companies to "behave in more socially responsible ways." That editorializing will never, ever become law, and it is entirely secondary to the actual debate here.
threeseed 7y ago
I actually think this would just make things worse. If you were strip Google to just search and Facebook to just Facebook then they would have to more aggressively go after advertising dollars to ensure they are growing revenue. And since they would've already been broken up they would surely do this by invading privacy even more. Surely the smarter move is to focus on heavily regulating their ability to track users. And make approaches like Apple did with WebKit mandatory.
- hnhg 7y ago
  What about privacy regulation? Why is that not also feasible?
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    There are a lot of things that make that hard. The first is how many industries are against it -- Google's not the half of it. Google would still make a mint if all they could do was show ads for car insurance when people search for car insurance and so on. But meaningful privacy regulation would effectively prohibit the likes of Equifax, and then you would get huge pushback from the finance industry and realtors. Then there's the fact that a lot of politically powerful government surveillance agencies want all your stuff to be in The Cloud instead of on your own device where they can't read it, so they'd fight it too. And the biggest problem is that you need the rules to be good rules that are at the same time effective without destroying small entities and entrenching the incumbents, which is really hard and there is a high probability they'll screw it up (especially with the aforementioned constraints), but doing it wrong can easily be worse than doing nothing. Then you don't get privacy but you destroy the upstart alternatives that might have made it possible for the people who most need it, or could have presented a challenge to the incumbents given more time.
    - debatem1 7y ago
      Equifax may not be a great example here, since Congress already stomped on it explicitly because it was concerned about the privacy implications of digitizing the information they held. That fear led to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which substantially curtailed many of Equifax's most egregious business practices.
umanwizard 7y ago
> The companies make money by monitoring their customers’ online activity and selling the data, largely to advertisers. Not true. They make money by monitoring their customers' online activity and using the data to target ads, which they sell to advertisers. I can't take anyone's reporting or opinion on FB and Google seriously if they don't understand this extremely important distinction.
- ashtonian 7y ago
  Unfortunately you are not the target audience
- danpalmer 7y ago
  While this distinction is accurate, I'm not sure it's useful? If you can target with enough granularity, which is fairly typical of these modern ad networks like Facebook/Google, then you have the data about those users who click through by the fact that they saw that targeting. It may not be perfect data, but it's close enough to be incredibly valuable to companies. I can't buy an email list from Facebook with salaries attached, but I can target those who have a salary in the range I'm interested in and see who I get through. You're right that this is a distinction, but I think it has very similar outcomes.
  - nerfhammer 7y ago
    It's completely different and meant to be inflammatory rather than accurate
  - bduerst 7y ago
    It's an important distinction because without it, it implies some human being is reviewing information linked to your name somewhere, when in reality the information is being anonymously evaluated by algorithms to target ads.
    - mostlysimilar 7y ago
      Disagree. The important point isn't whether or not an actual human is "spying" on my activity, it's that the platforms providing the targeted ads are not behaving responsibly with regards to the content being shown. I don't care about being shown ads for products I might buy. I care about targeted disinformation being fed to "persuadables" in order to affect massive political upheaval (current political breakdown in the United States, Brexit in the UK, other instances all across the globe in smaller nations.) The only important thing here is that e.g. Facebook has the data and sells access to nefarious actors. Selling the data "directly" or not isn't the point.
every1isbias 7y ago
I'm just here waiting for a plan to break up Big Government.
- awakeasleep 7y ago
  You're missing it happen right before your eyes! Every time a lobbyist writes the bills our congress passes, every time the state is defeated by the courts, every rollback of an EPA rule or opening of federal lands to drilling, every time a platform controls the speech of its users- those are all examples of our government's power shrinking!
  - malandrew 7y ago
    > those are all examples of our government's power shrinking! No they aren't. They are examples of the government's power growing and being manipulated. There's no power to manipulate if the government stays small. So many of our problems today are the result of a government that is so large and powerful that it is more profitable to direct resources to lobbying instead of directing resources to providing better goods and services. When government is small, there is less incentive to corrupt it.
- metamet 7y ago
  On that note, one of Elizabeth Warren's primary focuses seems to be the concept of who the government works for. To that end, the boogieman of "big government" can either be positioned as something that fights for its citizens or fights for special interests and corporations. I think the idea of "Big Government" is amorphous, in that is calls into question the purpose of a governing body. Who, or what, should be the governments number one priority? It seems universal that keeping its citizens safe (military, police) and supplying fundamental services (roads, fire departments) are accepted by all but the most jetpacky libertarians. Do we believe that we have the capacity to extend other foundations of wellbeing to be rights as well? This is the crossroads we're at with healthcare, protecting the environment (by investing in clean technologies and slowing down the harm we're inflicting through other practices), and living wages? That's what I see as the crux of this conversation. Who does the government work for? And who SHOULD it be working for?
jjtheblunt 7y ago
As an engineer with a math degree, this all seems like unnecessary complexity, imposed by a pro-complexity politician in the interest of preventing feigned-natural-selection of markets from evolving a proper fit solution. What am i missing?
- flyingfences 7y ago
  You're missing the fact that it's actually in the interest of pandering to voters with no understanding of technology or economics.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  The part where 20 years of natural selection by markets has resulted in a few ginormous companies owning the Net?
  - fbonetti 7y ago
    Yahoo "owned" the net not that long ago, now they're completely irrelevant. Microsoft "owned" the browser market with Internet Explorer not that long ago, now people cringe when they have to use IE. MySpace was at one time the most visited social media site in the world, now it's merely a quirky bit of internet history. Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. do not "own" anything. They are businesses that exist in a fiercely competitive environment in which consumers have zero loyalty and will gladly switch to the next hot thing at the drop of a hat. These businesses are successful because they continually innovate and deliver products that people want. There's no guarantee that any of these companies will still be around in a decade, much less "own" the market they operate in.
    - cguess 7y ago
      > Microsoft "owned" the browser market with Internet Explorer not that long ago And monopoly regulation put an end to that and allowed Netscape to come in and make it a competition.
      - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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DuskStar 7y ago
How about splitting the cable companies between content production and connectivity?
- CNJ7654 7y ago
  This, but with the additional stipulation that content production companies are forbidden from partnering with connectivity companies for promotional purposes (Think T-Mobile's binge on plan, where certain streaming platforms don't count against your data plan)
- ng12 7y ago
  What, and give up all that lobbyist money?
- pb7 7y ago
  Or how about even the portions of the companies working on infrastructure and the portion that interface/provide service to customers? Why can’t we have Comcast Infrastructure build out using those billions of tax payer dollars donated to them and then have an array of smaller players providing competitive service leasing out that infrastructure?
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    It has worked in other countries. Essentially you take the "last mile" (from home/business to exchange) and either turn it into a full public utility or turn it into a private utility that needs to treat all service providers equally. You ban the private utility from also running an ISP on their own network. You'd still get service from an ISP (inc. Comcast), they would run the exchange side of things, rent space on the last mile utility (fee used for maintaining/upgrading it), and their competition would do the same. Competition would substantially increase, prices would fall, and we'd stop laying redundant cabling just due to "ownership."
  - asr 7y ago
    This is basically how Texas sells electricity.[1] I'm not an expert on it but it makes a ton of sense. Of course, it may be easier to do this for electricity, where the fundamental technology doesn't change quickly anymore (as far as I know), than for internet connectivity, where we are still undergoing fairly rapid technological change, relatively speaking. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_electricity_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_elec...
encoderer 7y ago
The Democrats are going to explore how many "liberals" in their party are really "libertarians" -- myself included. Way to keep your eye on the ball, Elizabeth.
kart23 7y ago
Warren and Sanders have made it clear that they dont understand economics or the constitution. They have just resorted to making promises and elaborate plans to capture media attention, and gain voters.
- mattnewton 7y ago
  What part of this is unconstitutional? Progressives breaking up big companies has a long and (mostly) celebrated history in the US.
  - kart23 7y ago
    Sorry, I was referring to Warren's planned wealth tax, which is unconstitutional under the 16th Amendment. I support antitrust laws, and they have done a lot of good for America. https://taxfoundation.org/warren-wealth-tax-constitutionality/ https://taxfoundation.org/warren-wealth-tax-constitutionalit...
    - mattnewton 7y ago
      > “But it’s not a slam-dunk case, as the precedents go both ways, and it’s not an area the Court has opined on for a long time.” Sounds like she might have a case, rather than just naked pandering. I think it’s good to have a variety of intellectual positions and to work the best possible policies, and to ask if we would be better off without some some sacred cows
      - kart23 7y ago
        It is a slam dunk case. If you read all the articles for the wealth tax, they argue it isn't a direct tax simply because nobody knows what a direct tax is. Or that the tax actually taxes income. Both of those are wrong. Wealth tax is a direct tax, since it is paid by an individual on their possessions, rather than any transaction. The constitution only allows a direct tax on INCOME, not possessions. If I have 100 million dollars in cash, do not make any money, I would still owe 1 million dollars under the wealth tax. Is that an income tax? No. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi https://jonathanturley.org/2019/02/20/reductio-ad-absurdum-a-response-to-professor-bruce-ackerman/ https://jonathanturley.org/2019/02/20/reductio-ad-absurdum-a... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/elizabeth-warren-2020-wealth-tax-constitutional.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/elizabeth-warren... This article, for the wealth tax, basically makes the argument that the justices should stay true to their 'originalist' principles and uphold it, rather than actually examining the law. I think this is the best precedent for something like this: When the court ruled that a federal tax on property was unconstitutional, which is similar to what Warren is trying to do. The court has ruled on this in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#The_Pollock_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni... > ...Congress cannot impose a duty or tax upon personal property...
cftorres 7y ago
We need to stop how big companies are growing. It's not sustainable. If we don't implement new strategies we are going to live in a well known distopic future. You all have seen the results of a company that dominates an specific market without limits.
- blisterpeanuts 7y ago
  Like IBM with mainframes?
- simplecomplex 7y ago
  Yeah, its so terrible being able to search the whole Internet for free, carry a computer in your pocket, and order anything delivered to your door.
gist 7y ago
> Bork’s consumer-based theory had many flaws. One of the most obvious was that it did not anticipate the rise of online companies such as Facebook and Google, which offer their products to consumers for free. Not entirely true [1]. For one thing there were close and similar models at that time. For example yellow pages were given out for free and advertising was sold. Second there were (and still are) many local newspapers that make money solely off of advertising. And along those lines I would argue that even paid newspapers are close. Why? They give a great deal of value for the small amount that is paid in exchange for viewing advertising. Ditto for tv broadcasts the content is free (as long as you have a tv set) and they make money off advertising. [1] And I wouldn't call something that in no way could have anticipated the future in the way it rolled out 'a flaw' anyway.
- asr 7y ago
  Not only is this not "entirely" true--it's not at all true. The author is disguising a (hotly contested) opinion/minority position as a well-accepted fact. The mainstream position in the antitrust world, even among liberals (at least until recently), is that Bork's theory is generally right. (For example, Barack Obama's antitrust appointees would generally have agreed with it.) What Bork did was bring economic models (i.e. math) to bear in antitrust analysis. Before Bork, antitrust law was basically run on judges' intuition about whether business practices were good or bad. After Bork, there is more structure to the analysis--if we are trying to figure out whether things are good or bad for consumer prices, there's an economic framework we can use so that we're not just making random guesses. You can quibble with the math, but it seems crazy to go back to a world where we just say "big mergers are bad." Some mergers are bad, sure. But some are not. For example, I have yet to hear anyone explain why Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods is bad for anyone other than other grocery stores (who have to try to compete as Amazon figures out grocery delivery).
mrnobody_67 7y ago
So Costco doesn't have to spin off the Kirkland brand even though they operate an online marketplace (Costco.com), but Amazon does with AmazonBasics? So many things wrong with that.
- bratbag 7y ago
  Does costco have a web platform for selling goods? Does it exceed the revenue limit? Does it sell own brand goods through its web platform? Yes to all three, so it would be caught by this law as it is stated here.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    I think Costco might actually not have a web platform as described, if there are no third-party merchants there. Presumably all the products on their site go through them, just like the products in their physical stores.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Who said that Costco doesn't?
jsnider3 7y ago
Does she have a plan to win the Senate?
xwdv 7y ago
No one who works in tech should be supporting these kind of initiatives or the people that come up with them. Yet looking around, it seems many people in tech don’t really understand what’s at stake.
- aaronbrethorst 7y ago
  Or they understand exactly what’s at stake, and that’s why they support plans like these.
  - xwdv 7y ago
    If they just want to watch the world burn and slow our tech progress for decades, sure.
    - fspear 7y ago
      I guess for you the end justifies the means?
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  What if we believe that such a breakup will be hugely beneficial to stockholders and employees in the big tech companies, just like the breakup of Standard Oil and Bell was to theirs?
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Far more people work in "small tech" than work in "big tech" and would either be unaffected or benefit from these initiatives.
  - xwdv 7y ago
    Small size doesn’t make you safe, the negative will trickle down.
dmoy 7y ago
Only online marketplace? Why not physical too? Walmart? Then why not telecom? By the same logic shouldn't Comcast no longer be allowed to own NBCUniversal? Or for media - would Disney not be allowed to launch their new video platform thing? Does Newscorp also have to be broken up? Certainly they have platforms for distributing media, but also a staggeringly large amount of content being generated.
- davinic 7y ago
  Walmart doesn't have a physical marketplace. A marketplace implies multiple sellers, and Walmart is the only seller at their B&M locations.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dmoy 7y ago
    Ah sorry for walmart I meant their online marketplace. I guess my first reply was sort of incoherent, I was thinking along three separate lines: 1. why only online, and not also physical? (Are there just not large enough physical marketplaces?) 2. What about walmart (in the context of online) - would they need to divest their online marketplace too? 3. What about telecom/media industries? Would they need to be broken up as well?
- chris11 7y ago
  Elizabeth Warren is also targeting telecom. She wants net neutrality, to overturn state laws targeting local governmental plans to build broadband networks, and a public option for broadband. Her stated policy proposal technically doesn't mention breaking up telecom, but it would drastically change the industry. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758388/elizabeth-warren-rural-internet-access-broadband-digital-divide-grant-plan https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758388/elizabeth-warren-...
- unethical_ban 7y ago
  For telecom, Comcast probably shouldn't own NBC. Or at least, the FTC should do their job as a competition monitor and use teeth to make sure NBC content doesn't get preferential treatment on Comcast cable/Internet properties.
mattferderer 7y ago
Could one get around this by owning large percentages of multiple companies & just directing that they work together & buy services from each other? In essence something companies already do since they're split up into separate sections/departments/groups. Maybe they even split services such as HR into a consulting services organization that they all rely on.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  That actually is why anti-monopoly laws are called "anti-trust". "Trust" in this case was an entity that controlled a number of companies.
tayo42 7y ago
There seems to be a blame everything on tech thing recently in the news (what is "tech" for even?) Why not break up other industries, like some of the giant food and household companies and the shit they're practically poisoning us with. It feels like pandering to go after "big tech" constantly. These industries are just hard to break into. Who is going to compete with Google at search at this point? We watched Microsoft throw money at and fail miserably. Social media comes and goes, Facebook the website is dieing, Facebook the company is will be around by running other social media, opinions of Facebook specifically aside why is that a bad thing? We need politicians that are younger and in touch with the world. But still, anything but Trump at this point unfortunately.
- blisterpeanuts 7y ago
  Trump seems rather tech-savvy, and he's apparently not interested in breaking up the tech companies, though he does bash them for perceived bias. What would a "younger and in touch with the world" politician do differently?
  - tayo42 7y ago
    I would hope have a better understanding of tech. To call for these companies to be broken up seems out of touch. Though this article wasn't clear abuut the problems company size is causing.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  > Why not break up other industries Are you actually asking this question, or is it like when Trump says that he won't pass gun restrictions because the real problem is mental health, but also won't raise the budget for mental health? I think it's easier to make the (internet) tech case because they tend towards pure rent-seeking models rather than production or innovation. Warren isn't proposing breaking up hardware companies, car companies, or companies that make consumer appliances; "tech" is a shorthand for internet rent-seekers.
  - malandrew 7y ago
cletus 7y ago
The USA has such a terrible track record when it comes to breaking up companies. Not what companies but break up but how to do it. Look at AT&T. The solution for one national monopoly? Why a collection of regional monopolies of course! I mean that's what the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) were. So whenever I hear about some kneejerk proposal to break up tech I expect to hear someone propose that Facebook should be broken up into two companies: one for surnames A-M and another for N-Z. I think the only tech company where you could make any case for being anticompetitive right now is Amazon. Fedex and UPS exist largely at the whim of Amazon. Any online retailer is now at a severe disadvantage to Amazon itself as well as Amazon marketplace sellers. Second place are the two app stores. We're living in an era where China's tech giants are tools of statecraft and not subject to the same level of scrutiny as US companies. The Chinese market is artificially restricted from competition. By any measure of government intervention China cheats here. It doesn't really seem like the right time for the US to kill the golden geese.
- milquetoastaf 7y ago
  Fedex literally just ended their contract with Amazon lol
- malandrew 7y ago
  > The solution for one national monopoly? Why a collection of regional monopolies of course! Regional monopolies are far less of a threat to politicians operating at the national scale. So much of what we are observing comes down to people and institutions vying for power and trying to neuter those people and institutions in competition for that power. This is Silicon Valley (big tech) versus Washington D.C. (big government) versus NYC (big finance).
gregjotau 7y ago
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- icebraining 7y ago
  And the road to mediocrity is paved with thought-terminating clichés.
WalterBright 7y ago
Amazon, Google, etc. are global companies. Every other country wishes that those companies were theirs. They're major drivers of prosperity in the US - armies of well-paid engineers and lower prices for consumers. Planning to wreck them seems terribly shortsighted.
lettergram 7y ago
Shouldn’t this be senators job, not really the presidents? Also, it’s policy proposals like these that are going to push Trump to win in 2020. All the Democrats are suggesting more and more socialist policies, while popular with their base.. is pretty detached from the middle and right side ideologically. People want cheaper products, more money and stability. Focus on that.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  You overestimate the public's opinion of large tech companies, and forget that Trump ran to the left of the rest of the Republican primary candidates, not to the right of them. The only voters that are going to move from voting Democrat to voting Trump over the breakup of big tech are people who work in big tech.
daenz 7y ago
I'm typically a smaller government type of person, but I'm actually ok with the specifics of her plan. One power that I think should never be stripped from the government is the ability to regulate parts where the free market becomes dysfunctional. I think her plan encourages competition and makes the markets healthier, so thumbs up from me.
olivermarks 7y ago
There are dozens of politician plans and manifestos to reorganize 'big tech'. Interesting that the New Yorker chose to feature the Warren team plan so prominently. A more rounded comparison of plans would be useful at this point in the candidate beauty contest.
dawhizkid 7y ago
Really curious what happens to the stock price of these companies if a progressive dem like Warren or Sanders wins. I mean, on election day will the price of these stocks drop double digits? Doesn't seem like these risks have been priced in at all.
- jakebol 7y ago
  usually original investors get stock in the split-up companies correct? In the long run the aggregate value of the split up / smaller basket of independent companies could be larger than the original quasi monopoly.
blisterpeanuts 7y ago
It reminds me of the late 1980s-early 1990s era calls to split Microsoft off into separate companies: OS and Office. A credulous judge was quoted saying "Microsoft can just take other people's products and incorporate them into Windows!" Today, the notion of Microsoft as a threat to the world seems quaint and laughable, though at the time it was deadly serious business. In my opinion, the FAANG monopolies will pass, just as the MS-IBM hegemony passed. Something new will emerge - a 5G-based tech, maybe, or a Chinese AI or quantum machine - that will render the current tech giants irrelevant. Warren's plan is pointless and probably would be counter-productive.
- smileysteve 7y ago
  > Today, the notion of Microsoft as a threat to the world seems quaint and laughable, Interesting considering they are the most valuable company in the world by market cap. Addendum: Currently, MSFT's market cap is higher than Facebook, Google, Apple, and AMZN.
  - blisterpeanuts 7y ago
    It fluctuates; recently, Apple was the highest, then Amazon. The point is that few are talking about Microsoft as a monopolistic threat anymore; alternative technologies (Linux, MacOS, iOS, Android) have come along and knocked them off their once-dominant position.
AlexDragusin 7y ago
Welcome to Costco, I love you! [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zNsUTWsOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zNsUTWsOc
caymanjim 7y ago
How exactly is Big Tech depressing wages? Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft all pay more than almost any other companies, regardless of role. Amazon pays all its employees at least $15 and offers far better benefits than any other large employer to those lowest on the totem pole. Compare Amazon to Walmart and then tell me who the bad guy is. Google and others have raised the median wages for tech workers through the roof, to the point that a career that barely existed 20 years ago is now one of the best-paying jobs you can get. Tech employs millions of people making six figure starting salaries, many of them self-taught or with very affordable educations. Tech has created the largest crop of millionaires in generations. I'm not saying there aren't problems with large companies, tech or otherwise, but how exactly are they depressing wages? Who's getting screwed?
- turtlecloud 7y ago
  you are. you should actually be getting paid much more. Just because you are getting paid more than everyone else doesn't mean that you still aren't getting underpaid. That is the scarcity mindset. Instead, engineers should be getting million+ salaries instead of the measly 150k+.
  - caymanjim 7y ago
    Well, none of this applies to me personally, since I'm not working at all, and would never work for one of the big tech companies. Most people I see making six figures aren't actually all that productive. I don't believe in the 10X engineer, but I may believe in the -10X engineer.
    - taffer 7y ago
      > I don't believe in the 10X engineer, but I may believe in the -10X engineer. I think you mean a X/10 Engineer. A -10X engineer would have to work backwards.
      - thatswrong0 7y ago
        I think it’s possible to have a -X engineer.. someone who might accomplish some amount of work but then also create a lot more work for everyone else, enough that they’re actually a net drain in productivity. I’m sure there are quite a few -NX managers as well
partiallypro 7y ago
My main problem with the idea of breaking up big tech, is that foreign companies are just going to pick up the pieces. China for instance will use the weakness to use their mega partially-state owned companies to crush everyone. I just don't see how that's a positive. We live in a global economy now, we have to think of the consequences of our corporate laws globally as well.
apo 7y ago
Warren's blog uses the Microsoft antitrust case as a precedent: > In the 1990s, Microsoft — the tech giant of its time — was trying to parlay its dominance in computer operating systems into dominance in the new area of web browsing. The federal government sued Microsoft for violating anti-monopoly laws and eventually reached a settlement. The government’s antitrust case against Microsoft helped clear a path for Internet companies like Google and Facebook to emerge. https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-tech-9ad9e0da324c https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big... And then goes on to confuse the Web browser with search: > .. Aren’t we all glad that now we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with Bing? There are three reasons I'd avoid this comparison as a selling point: 1. Little of substance came from the Microsoft case: > On November 2, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case. The proposed settlement required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who would have full access to Microsoft's systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance.[30] However, the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... 2. The market handed Microsoft its richly-deserved smack upside the head with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. There's no reason to believe that Google, Amazon, or Facebook will be immune to this process of marketplace disruption. 3. The AT&T Anititrust case seems more applicable in that it deals with a network. After the successful breakup, long distance rate fell. > The breakup led to a surge of competition in the long distance telecommunications market by companies such as Sprint and MCI.[5] ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System From Warren's blog again: > First, by passing legislation that requires large tech platforms to be designated as “Platform Utilities” and broken apart from any participant on that platform. This raises the question: what's actually new here? What about the named companies is so different from previous monopolies that new laws are required? The discussion in the New Yorker doesn't seem to address this issue. There are antitrust laws on the books. They have been used in the past. What specifically prevents them from being applied today, other than political will?
turtlecloud 7y ago
will this hurt or help her chances at winning the California democratic primaries? if the tech industry does not want her then what are the other options out there?
spaethnl 7y ago
I've been thinking that a natural way to split up many large corporations that are anti-consumer would be to require: 1. Hardware manufacturers be separated from software manufactures 2. All hardware sold must have available appropriate documentation to write software for it. 3. Hardware and software be purchasable piecemeal, even when also available as a pre-configured bundle. For example, for Google to sell a Google Home device they would: 1. Have to have a company, Google Home:Hardware, that produces the physical device and it's documentation 2. Have a company, Google Home:Software, that implements the software for that device, and perhaps bundles it. 3. These companies can collaborate, e.g., through support contracts, but any documentation made available to Google Home:Software must also be made available to purchasers of the physical device, separate from Google Home:Software. Advantages of this approach: 1. This supports the "Right To Repair" movement. 2. Production of hardware has a very high cost-of-entry relative to software, making it prohibitively expensive for new entrants to compete. This allows smaller entrepreneurs to build software on existing hardware designs, bringing new features to consumers. 3. New competition will help to naturally break the anti-consumer monopolies and oligopolies currently existing, because they will have to compete with features that they currently refuse to implement, fix issues they currently refuse to acknowledge. 4. As a re-iteration of 3, would provide more consumer choice. Where as right now an individual may like the hardware features of one television set, they may dislike the software features if it (privacy invasion and phoning home?). Consumers could mix and match. Although I've focused on tech with Google, this is applicable to many industries: smart phones, TVs, smart home devices, farming equipment, vehicles, robotic vacuums...
- chillacy 7y ago
  That's sort of how it works in the automotive industry: one company makes the parts, one company assembles the car, one company sells the car and anyone can provide service. The only downside is that there's a lot of overhead (imagine if a software project you worked on needed this amount of formality every time you talked to a UI designer or database engineer).
shmerl 7y ago
MS is not included? How about breaking up many other monopolies as well?
pastor_elm 7y ago
My problem with Warren is she thinks that a plan or law can solve everything. If there were only a law that said, 'It's illegal to be evil,' then there wouldn't be any evil left in the world.
uniformlyrandom 7y ago
I am horrified by an idea that eventually, I will have to vote for Donald Trump.
ycombonator 7y ago
What about breaking free from “Native American Heritage” ?
bitxbit 7y ago
The prospect of Warren alone could crash the market as we draw closer to 2020. The first leg will be health care then the rest. I am actually not against her ideas but deeply concerned about implementation.
- dlp211 7y ago
  Just like the market crashed in 2012 with the re-election of President Obama and the market crashed in 2016 with the election of President Trump?
jdavis703 7y ago
Something interesting is when Warren came to Silicon Valley (well technically the East Bay), people cheered when she talked about breaking up big tech. I can't imagine what would have happened if a candidate went to West Virginia and talked about regulating coal, went to Iowa and talked about removig corn subsidies or went to Detroit and talked about phasing out ICE vehicles. I think a lot of people here see the problems that the FAANGs are creating and want to fix it.
ianamartin 7y ago
Warren is a really frustrating candidate. She's the kind of candidate I want to like. At least by the way she brands herself as a thinking person--a serious wonk. A nerd. All in ways that are good to me. She wants to say, "Look, I'm doing the hard work of figuring out good solutions to all these complex and difficult problems so that you don't have to. You can trust me and read all about it here." But when you do read her policies, you can see she hasn't thought about these problems at all. She's basically just doing what the loudest, most ignorant complainers and pundits are saying to do. She doesn't seem to understand that Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon present incredibly different problems. Beating them all up with the same stick is pointless and won't fix any of the problems. The fact that they are big isn't really the worst of the problems they cause. In incredibly simplistic terms, Facebook is bad because of what they do with your data. Google is bad because of what it does with all the rest of the data on the internet. Apple is bad because of what they won't let people do. And Amazon is bad because of what they will let anyone do. Chopping them up into smaller entities won't solve any of those problems. None of it addresses any of the problems at all. But in a time where doing anything is far more important to people than doing something useful, it gets traction. She also clearly does not understand section 230 of the CDA, and would like to get rid of that, which will do nothing but ensure that only the big companies--even broken up--will ever be able to compete. The same kind of thing applies to the wealth tax idea. It's just a base appeal to class animosity. There's no nuance, and even if it did happen, it wouldn't make that much difference in our overall tax revenues. Certainly not enough to fund the kinds of programs she wants to fund. If you want to fix taxes, you have to shut down loopholes for wealthy people and corporations. The latter will make much more of an impact than the former. I'm certainly on board with higher taxes to a certain extent. But this is just pandering to angry people who don't think the world is fair, and that's not healthy for society. All of this really makes me question her bona fides on topics I really don't know anything about. Is it more of the same shallow pandering? I haven't really heard any good policy ideas from her so far, and as much as I want to like her as my kind of candidate, I just don't have any reason to believe she'll do anything worthwhile if she does get elected aside from not being Trump. Which is valuable to me, I admit. But . . . is a huge swath of awful social, tax, economic, and tech policy actually better than having to deal with the buffoonery we have right now? I hope we don't have to find out. I suspect that many people will not like that choice and keep things as they are.
simplecomplex 7y ago
Elizabeth Warren is an idiot, and her ignorance is destructive and a threat to a productive and free society. Arbitrarily destroying businesses doesn't make anyone richer.
rvn1045 7y ago
The anti tech sentiment amongst candidates like warren and sanders is a bit annoying. if you rank order the problems we need to solve as a nation this issue wouldnt even make it in the top 10. its getting more attention than it should. i think a part of the reason is just this deep seated feeling within people that if some group of people became really really successful (and especially really really fast) there must be something unfair or fishy about it. that they don't really deserve it or somehow cheated. atleast this is the feeling i get when i hear warren or sanders.
- chillacy 7y ago
  I think that's the psychology of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo (video of monkey getting a grape and the other monkey getting a cucumber)
zepto 7y ago
If this means that google would have to stop operating the play store and Apple would have to stop operating the App store, it would simply fragment the marketplace, and consumer risk and make it even more expensive to be an independent developer or producer. This is not the way to foster innovation. It’s a way to produce a bunch of meaningless middlemen.
WalterBright 7y ago
Breaking apart large US tech companies will open the door for foreign large companies to fill that niche. This doesn't sound like a smart move for the US government.
RickJWagner 7y ago
Interesting the article mentions Robert Bork. Bork was the first Supreme Court nominee to earn his own eponymous verb. Bork was put through a ringer similar to the one Judge Kavanaugh went through recently. Per Google, the verb 'bork' means "obstruct (someone, especially a candidate for public office) through systematic defamation or vilification."

193 points by Elof 7y ago

>The companies make money by monitoring their customers’ online activity and selling the data, largely to advertisers. I can't buy reams of data from Google. There are data brokers out there, but big adtech companies won't sell me the source of their ad success. Most of the data market is composed of smaller companies which don't run ad networks and wouldn't even come close to the eye of an antitrust program.

ehsankia 7y ago
It's also not like physical stores don't do it either. They all have membership cards that track your purchases and visit data.
- bduerst 7y ago
  Reciprocity with credit cards is a thing too. It's how Amazon was able to re-target me with a product carousel for something I impulse bought at a Macy's. I'm not really complaining but even tech savvy people can underestimate just how much of their information is out there.
lithos 7y ago
You don't buy the data directly. You buy access to who you want data and tracking info on. The only difference is that Google/Facebook/Similar get to pretend to be clean, even though they are the enablers.
- makomk 7y ago
  The only difference is that one of these two things involves giving a whole bunch of private, sensitive data about everyone to anyone who'll pay and the other does not. If that distinction doesn't matter to you then I'd say that this isn't actually about privacy at all.
  - lithos 7y ago
    Considering quite a few people here browse with Javascript disabled, and how angry they get when an adblocker becomes worse. It's pretty obvious that the people who are likely to be most knowledgeable on the topic (as tech people on a SV news aggregator website), that Google/Facebook/whatever aren't enabling "friendly neighbors". Running enough ads with your own tracking on SV platforms, will get you the data you want about your targets.

oneepic 7y ago

Ok... but what about big _____ (anything else)?

thwythwy 7y ago
There's no way you're paying attn to the news and believe she doesn't have plans specific to other industries.
- TuringNYC 7y ago
  Yes, but it seems intellectually dishonest to go after big tech (where, often, the "product" is free) yet avoid going after -- say -- big telco or big cable or big pharma -- where you come out of a retail store feeling disgusting because you got ripped off so badly. By ripped off, I dont mean, I over-spent, but rather I was forced into buying something due to having only a single choice, while not even knowing the ultimate price I will pay. Where I live in the US -- there is ONE and only ONE broadband provider. If you ask for the price, they give you the three month promotion price. If you press them really hard, you get the ultimate non-promotional price. Then you get the bill and there is a "wire fee", "regulatory recovery fee", "line charge" and all manner of all surprise charges that you didn't agree to except in some blank-check-fine-print fashion. Say what you might about privacy etc, but my immediate, acute pains are with real monopolies like my broadband provider -- not with which free photo sharing app I need to use
  - ionforce 7y ago
    Does anyone care about intellectual dishonesty? I mean look what has happened to this country.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    It's intellectually dishonest to pretend Warren isn't going after the telcos and pharma too. Telecom: https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-warren-unveils-plan-expand-broadband-access/ https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-warren-unveils-plan-ex... Pharma: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzvy4w/elizabeth-warren-is-trying-to-break-up-big-pharma-cartels-by-letting-the-government-make-generic-drugs https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzvy4w/elizabeth-warren-i... Warren's entire shtick is having a plan for pretty much everything.

buboard 7y ago

by the time she would be elected some of the big tech will have bigger problems.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

> The plan she released consists of several parts. Companies with revenue of twenty-five billion dollars or more that provide an online marketplace would be designated as “platform utilities” and would not be allowed to both own the marketplace and participate on it. Right from the start, Warren says, Amazon would have to separate its “Basics” business, which sells products under a house brand, from the rest of Amazon, and Google’s advertising business and its search business would have to be split apart. Secondly, she pledged to “empower” federal regulators to undo many of the tech-industry mergers that have already happened, such as Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and Zappos; Facebook’s takeover of Whatsapp and Instagram; and Google’s purchase of Waze, Nest, and DoubleClick. This would really change the landscape if implemented. On thing that it would do is force the companies to innovate themselves, knowing that they can't just acquire every innovative company that challenges their dominance.

fkdo 7y ago
I think it would change the VC market too. A lot of companies are funded because they potentially make good acquisitions for larger companies.
- rauchp 7y ago
  I can definitely see that happening. I wonder if that would reduce the amount of unprofitable/unsustainable but heavily VC-invested companies. The big players we all think of (Uber, WeWork, etc) aren't looking to get acquired anymore, but would investors have been more cautious to invest in these companies if they knew the only exit plan was IPO'ing?
threeseed 7y ago
So it's okay for supermarkets and brick/mortar retailers to offer house brands but not online retailers. Pretty arbitrary line. And this would equally apply to Apple and Google who have a number of apps on their app stores. This would then lead to even more bundled apps on the phone e.g. Garageband which would decrease competition. Most of these policies are really not well thought out.

thwythwy 7y ago

Most people here will seize on Better Markets' phrasing rather than addressing the merits of this part of what Warren proposes: (1) "Right from the start . . . Amazon would have to separate its 'Basics' business, which sells products under a house brand, from the rest of Amazon," (2) Google’s advertising business and its search business would have to be split apart. (3) regulators can "undo many of the tech-industry mergers that have already happened, such as Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and Zappos; Facebook’s takeover of Whatsapp and Instagram; and Google’s purchase of Waze, Nest, and DoubleClick." Friendly reminder that (1) through (3) are the actual stakes of the policy, not what Vaheesan says to the reporter about forcing companies to "behave in more socially responsible ways." That editorializing will never, ever become law, and it is entirely secondary to the actual debate here.

threeseed 7y ago

I actually think this would just make things worse. If you were strip Google to just search and Facebook to just Facebook then they would have to more aggressively go after advertising dollars to ensure they are growing revenue. And since they would've already been broken up they would surely do this by invading privacy even more. Surely the smarter move is to focus on heavily regulating their ability to track users. And make approaches like Apple did with WebKit mandatory.

hnhg 7y ago
What about privacy regulation? Why is that not also feasible?
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  There are a lot of things that make that hard. The first is how many industries are against it -- Google's not the half of it. Google would still make a mint if all they could do was show ads for car insurance when people search for car insurance and so on. But meaningful privacy regulation would effectively prohibit the likes of Equifax, and then you would get huge pushback from the finance industry and realtors. Then there's the fact that a lot of politically powerful government surveillance agencies want all your stuff to be in The Cloud instead of on your own device where they can't read it, so they'd fight it too. And the biggest problem is that you need the rules to be good rules that are at the same time effective without destroying small entities and entrenching the incumbents, which is really hard and there is a high probability they'll screw it up (especially with the aforementioned constraints), but doing it wrong can easily be worse than doing nothing. Then you don't get privacy but you destroy the upstart alternatives that might have made it possible for the people who most need it, or could have presented a challenge to the incumbents given more time.
  - debatem1 7y ago
    Equifax may not be a great example here, since Congress already stomped on it explicitly because it was concerned about the privacy implications of digitizing the information they held. That fear led to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which substantially curtailed many of Equifax's most egregious business practices.

umanwizard 7y ago

> The companies make money by monitoring their customers’ online activity and selling the data, largely to advertisers. Not true. They make money by monitoring their customers' online activity and using the data to target ads, which they sell to advertisers. I can't take anyone's reporting or opinion on FB and Google seriously if they don't understand this extremely important distinction.

ashtonian 7y ago
Unfortunately you are not the target audience
danpalmer 7y ago
While this distinction is accurate, I'm not sure it's useful? If you can target with enough granularity, which is fairly typical of these modern ad networks like Facebook/Google, then you have the data about those users who click through by the fact that they saw that targeting. It may not be perfect data, but it's close enough to be incredibly valuable to companies. I can't buy an email list from Facebook with salaries attached, but I can target those who have a salary in the range I'm interested in and see who I get through. You're right that this is a distinction, but I think it has very similar outcomes.
- nerfhammer 7y ago
  It's completely different and meant to be inflammatory rather than accurate
- bduerst 7y ago
  It's an important distinction because without it, it implies some human being is reviewing information linked to your name somewhere, when in reality the information is being anonymously evaluated by algorithms to target ads.
  - mostlysimilar 7y ago
    Disagree. The important point isn't whether or not an actual human is "spying" on my activity, it's that the platforms providing the targeted ads are not behaving responsibly with regards to the content being shown. I don't care about being shown ads for products I might buy. I care about targeted disinformation being fed to "persuadables" in order to affect massive political upheaval (current political breakdown in the United States, Brexit in the UK, other instances all across the globe in smaller nations.) The only important thing here is that e.g. Facebook has the data and sells access to nefarious actors. Selling the data "directly" or not isn't the point.

every1isbias 7y ago

I'm just here waiting for a plan to break up Big Government.

awakeasleep 7y ago
You're missing it happen right before your eyes! Every time a lobbyist writes the bills our congress passes, every time the state is defeated by the courts, every rollback of an EPA rule or opening of federal lands to drilling, every time a platform controls the speech of its users- those are all examples of our government's power shrinking!
- malandrew 7y ago
  > those are all examples of our government's power shrinking! No they aren't. They are examples of the government's power growing and being manipulated. There's no power to manipulate if the government stays small. So many of our problems today are the result of a government that is so large and powerful that it is more profitable to direct resources to lobbying instead of directing resources to providing better goods and services. When government is small, there is less incentive to corrupt it.
metamet 7y ago
On that note, one of Elizabeth Warren's primary focuses seems to be the concept of who the government works for. To that end, the boogieman of "big government" can either be positioned as something that fights for its citizens or fights for special interests and corporations. I think the idea of "Big Government" is amorphous, in that is calls into question the purpose of a governing body. Who, or what, should be the governments number one priority? It seems universal that keeping its citizens safe (military, police) and supplying fundamental services (roads, fire departments) are accepted by all but the most jetpacky libertarians. Do we believe that we have the capacity to extend other foundations of wellbeing to be rights as well? This is the crossroads we're at with healthcare, protecting the environment (by investing in clean technologies and slowing down the harm we're inflicting through other practices), and living wages? That's what I see as the crux of this conversation. Who does the government work for? And who SHOULD it be working for?

jjtheblunt 7y ago

As an engineer with a math degree, this all seems like unnecessary complexity, imposed by a pro-complexity politician in the interest of preventing feigned-natural-selection of markets from evolving a proper fit solution. What am i missing?

flyingfences 7y ago
You're missing the fact that it's actually in the interest of pandering to voters with no understanding of technology or economics.
smacktoward 7y ago
The part where 20 years of natural selection by markets has resulted in a few ginormous companies owning the Net?
- fbonetti 7y ago
  Yahoo "owned" the net not that long ago, now they're completely irrelevant. Microsoft "owned" the browser market with Internet Explorer not that long ago, now people cringe when they have to use IE. MySpace was at one time the most visited social media site in the world, now it's merely a quirky bit of internet history. Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. do not "own" anything. They are businesses that exist in a fiercely competitive environment in which consumers have zero loyalty and will gladly switch to the next hot thing at the drop of a hat. These businesses are successful because they continually innovate and deliver products that people want. There's no guarantee that any of these companies will still be around in a decade, much less "own" the market they operate in.
  - cguess 7y ago
    > Microsoft "owned" the browser market with Internet Explorer not that long ago And monopoly regulation put an end to that and allowed Netscape to come in and make it a competition.
    - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DuskStar 7y ago

How about splitting the cable companies between content production and connectivity?

CNJ7654 7y ago
This, but with the additional stipulation that content production companies are forbidden from partnering with connectivity companies for promotional purposes (Think T-Mobile's binge on plan, where certain streaming platforms don't count against your data plan)
ng12 7y ago
What, and give up all that lobbyist money?
pb7 7y ago
Or how about even the portions of the companies working on infrastructure and the portion that interface/provide service to customers? Why can’t we have Comcast Infrastructure build out using those billions of tax payer dollars donated to them and then have an array of smaller players providing competitive service leasing out that infrastructure?
- Someone1234 7y ago
  It has worked in other countries. Essentially you take the "last mile" (from home/business to exchange) and either turn it into a full public utility or turn it into a private utility that needs to treat all service providers equally. You ban the private utility from also running an ISP on their own network. You'd still get service from an ISP (inc. Comcast), they would run the exchange side of things, rent space on the last mile utility (fee used for maintaining/upgrading it), and their competition would do the same. Competition would substantially increase, prices would fall, and we'd stop laying redundant cabling just due to "ownership."
- asr 7y ago
  This is basically how Texas sells electricity.[1] I'm not an expert on it but it makes a ton of sense. Of course, it may be easier to do this for electricity, where the fundamental technology doesn't change quickly anymore (as far as I know), than for internet connectivity, where we are still undergoing fairly rapid technological change, relatively speaking. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_electricity_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_elec...

encoderer 7y ago

The Democrats are going to explore how many "liberals" in their party are really "libertarians" -- myself included. Way to keep your eye on the ball, Elizabeth.

kart23 7y ago

Warren and Sanders have made it clear that they dont understand economics or the constitution. They have just resorted to making promises and elaborate plans to capture media attention, and gain voters.

mattnewton 7y ago
What part of this is unconstitutional? Progressives breaking up big companies has a long and (mostly) celebrated history in the US.
- kart23 7y ago
  Sorry, I was referring to Warren's planned wealth tax, which is unconstitutional under the 16th Amendment. I support antitrust laws, and they have done a lot of good for America. https://taxfoundation.org/warren-wealth-tax-constitutionality/ https://taxfoundation.org/warren-wealth-tax-constitutionalit...
  - mattnewton 7y ago
    > “But it’s not a slam-dunk case, as the precedents go both ways, and it’s not an area the Court has opined on for a long time.” Sounds like she might have a case, rather than just naked pandering. I think it’s good to have a variety of intellectual positions and to work the best possible policies, and to ask if we would be better off without some some sacred cows
    - kart23 7y ago
      It is a slam dunk case. If you read all the articles for the wealth tax, they argue it isn't a direct tax simply because nobody knows what a direct tax is. Or that the tax actually taxes income. Both of those are wrong. Wealth tax is a direct tax, since it is paid by an individual on their possessions, rather than any transaction. The constitution only allows a direct tax on INCOME, not possessions. If I have 100 million dollars in cash, do not make any money, I would still owe 1 million dollars under the wealth tax. Is that an income tax? No. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi https://jonathanturley.org/2019/02/20/reductio-ad-absurdum-a-response-to-professor-bruce-ackerman/ https://jonathanturley.org/2019/02/20/reductio-ad-absurdum-a... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/elizabeth-warren-2020-wealth-tax-constitutional.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/elizabeth-warren... This article, for the wealth tax, basically makes the argument that the justices should stay true to their 'originalist' principles and uphold it, rather than actually examining the law. I think this is the best precedent for something like this: When the court ruled that a federal tax on property was unconstitutional, which is similar to what Warren is trying to do. The court has ruled on this in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#The_Pollock_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni... > ...Congress cannot impose a duty or tax upon personal property...

cftorres 7y ago

We need to stop how big companies are growing. It's not sustainable. If we don't implement new strategies we are going to live in a well known distopic future. You all have seen the results of a company that dominates an specific market without limits.

blisterpeanuts 7y ago
Like IBM with mainframes?
simplecomplex 7y ago
Yeah, its so terrible being able to search the whole Internet for free, carry a computer in your pocket, and order anything delivered to your door.

gist 7y ago

> Bork’s consumer-based theory had many flaws. One of the most obvious was that it did not anticipate the rise of online companies such as Facebook and Google, which offer their products to consumers for free. Not entirely true [1]. For one thing there were close and similar models at that time. For example yellow pages were given out for free and advertising was sold. Second there were (and still are) many local newspapers that make money solely off of advertising. And along those lines I would argue that even paid newspapers are close. Why? They give a great deal of value for the small amount that is paid in exchange for viewing advertising. Ditto for tv broadcasts the content is free (as long as you have a tv set) and they make money off advertising. [1] And I wouldn't call something that in no way could have anticipated the future in the way it rolled out 'a flaw' anyway.

asr 7y ago
Not only is this not "entirely" true--it's not at all true. The author is disguising a (hotly contested) opinion/minority position as a well-accepted fact. The mainstream position in the antitrust world, even among liberals (at least until recently), is that Bork's theory is generally right. (For example, Barack Obama's antitrust appointees would generally have agreed with it.) What Bork did was bring economic models (i.e. math) to bear in antitrust analysis. Before Bork, antitrust law was basically run on judges' intuition about whether business practices were good or bad. After Bork, there is more structure to the analysis--if we are trying to figure out whether things are good or bad for consumer prices, there's an economic framework we can use so that we're not just making random guesses. You can quibble with the math, but it seems crazy to go back to a world where we just say "big mergers are bad." Some mergers are bad, sure. But some are not. For example, I have yet to hear anyone explain why Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods is bad for anyone other than other grocery stores (who have to try to compete as Amazon figures out grocery delivery).

mrnobody_67 7y ago

So Costco doesn't have to spin off the Kirkland brand even though they operate an online marketplace (Costco.com), but Amazon does with AmazonBasics? So many things wrong with that.

bratbag 7y ago
Does costco have a web platform for selling goods? Does it exceed the revenue limit? Does it sell own brand goods through its web platform? Yes to all three, so it would be caught by this law as it is stated here.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  I think Costco might actually not have a web platform as described, if there are no third-party merchants there. Presumably all the products on their site go through them, just like the products in their physical stores.
icebraining 7y ago
Who said that Costco doesn't?

jsnider3 7y ago

Does she have a plan to win the Senate?

xwdv 7y ago

No one who works in tech should be supporting these kind of initiatives or the people that come up with them. Yet looking around, it seems many people in tech don’t really understand what’s at stake.

aaronbrethorst 7y ago
Or they understand exactly what’s at stake, and that’s why they support plans like these.
- xwdv 7y ago
  If they just want to watch the world burn and slow our tech progress for decades, sure.
  - fspear 7y ago
    I guess for you the end justifies the means?
bryanlarsen 7y ago
What if we believe that such a breakup will be hugely beneficial to stockholders and employees in the big tech companies, just like the breakup of Standard Oil and Bell was to theirs?
bryanlarsen 7y ago
Far more people work in "small tech" than work in "big tech" and would either be unaffected or benefit from these initiatives.
- xwdv 7y ago
  Small size doesn’t make you safe, the negative will trickle down.

dmoy 7y ago

Only online marketplace? Why not physical too? Walmart? Then why not telecom? By the same logic shouldn't Comcast no longer be allowed to own NBCUniversal? Or for media - would Disney not be allowed to launch their new video platform thing? Does Newscorp also have to be broken up? Certainly they have platforms for distributing media, but also a staggeringly large amount of content being generated.

davinic 7y ago
Walmart doesn't have a physical marketplace. A marketplace implies multiple sellers, and Walmart is the only seller at their B&M locations.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dmoy 7y ago
  Ah sorry for walmart I meant their online marketplace. I guess my first reply was sort of incoherent, I was thinking along three separate lines: 1. why only online, and not also physical? (Are there just not large enough physical marketplaces?) 2. What about walmart (in the context of online) - would they need to divest their online marketplace too? 3. What about telecom/media industries? Would they need to be broken up as well?
chris11 7y ago
Elizabeth Warren is also targeting telecom. She wants net neutrality, to overturn state laws targeting local governmental plans to build broadband networks, and a public option for broadband. Her stated policy proposal technically doesn't mention breaking up telecom, but it would drastically change the industry. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758388/elizabeth-warren-rural-internet-access-broadband-digital-divide-grant-plan https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758388/elizabeth-warren-...
unethical_ban 7y ago
For telecom, Comcast probably shouldn't own NBC. Or at least, the FTC should do their job as a competition monitor and use teeth to make sure NBC content doesn't get preferential treatment on Comcast cable/Internet properties.

mattferderer 7y ago

Could one get around this by owning large percentages of multiple companies & just directing that they work together & buy services from each other? In essence something companies already do since they're split up into separate sections/departments/groups. Maybe they even split services such as HR into a consulting services organization that they all rely on.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
That actually is why anti-monopoly laws are called "anti-trust". "Trust" in this case was an entity that controlled a number of companies.

tayo42 7y ago

There seems to be a blame everything on tech thing recently in the news (what is "tech" for even?) Why not break up other industries, like some of the giant food and household companies and the shit they're practically poisoning us with. It feels like pandering to go after "big tech" constantly. These industries are just hard to break into. Who is going to compete with Google at search at this point? We watched Microsoft throw money at and fail miserably. Social media comes and goes, Facebook the website is dieing, Facebook the company is will be around by running other social media, opinions of Facebook specifically aside why is that a bad thing? We need politicians that are younger and in touch with the world. But still, anything but Trump at this point unfortunately.

blisterpeanuts 7y ago
Trump seems rather tech-savvy, and he's apparently not interested in breaking up the tech companies, though he does bash them for perceived bias. What would a "younger and in touch with the world" politician do differently?
- tayo42 7y ago
  I would hope have a better understanding of tech. To call for these companies to be broken up seems out of touch. Though this article wasn't clear abuut the problems company size is causing.
pessimizer 7y ago
> Why not break up other industries Are you actually asking this question, or is it like when Trump says that he won't pass gun restrictions because the real problem is mental health, but also won't raise the budget for mental health? I think it's easier to make the (internet) tech case because they tend towards pure rent-seeking models rather than production or innovation. Warren isn't proposing breaking up hardware companies, car companies, or companies that make consumer appliances; "tech" is a shorthand for internet rent-seekers.
- malandrew 7y ago

cletus 7y ago

The USA has such a terrible track record when it comes to breaking up companies. Not what companies but break up but how to do it. Look at AT&T. The solution for one national monopoly? Why a collection of regional monopolies of course! I mean that's what the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) were. So whenever I hear about some kneejerk proposal to break up tech I expect to hear someone propose that Facebook should be broken up into two companies: one for surnames A-M and another for N-Z. I think the only tech company where you could make any case for being anticompetitive right now is Amazon. Fedex and UPS exist largely at the whim of Amazon. Any online retailer is now at a severe disadvantage to Amazon itself as well as Amazon marketplace sellers. Second place are the two app stores. We're living in an era where China's tech giants are tools of statecraft and not subject to the same level of scrutiny as US companies. The Chinese market is artificially restricted from competition. By any measure of government intervention China cheats here. It doesn't really seem like the right time for the US to kill the golden geese.

milquetoastaf 7y ago
Fedex literally just ended their contract with Amazon lol
malandrew 7y ago
> The solution for one national monopoly? Why a collection of regional monopolies of course! Regional monopolies are far less of a threat to politicians operating at the national scale. So much of what we are observing comes down to people and institutions vying for power and trying to neuter those people and institutions in competition for that power. This is Silicon Valley (big tech) versus Washington D.C. (big government) versus NYC (big finance).

gregjotau 7y ago

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

icebraining 7y ago
And the road to mediocrity is paved with thought-terminating clichés.

WalterBright 7y ago

Amazon, Google, etc. are global companies. Every other country wishes that those companies were theirs. They're major drivers of prosperity in the US - armies of well-paid engineers and lower prices for consumers. Planning to wreck them seems terribly shortsighted.

lettergram 7y ago

Shouldn’t this be senators job, not really the presidents? Also, it’s policy proposals like these that are going to push Trump to win in 2020. All the Democrats are suggesting more and more socialist policies, while popular with their base.. is pretty detached from the middle and right side ideologically. People want cheaper products, more money and stability. Focus on that.

pessimizer 7y ago
You overestimate the public's opinion of large tech companies, and forget that Trump ran to the left of the rest of the Republican primary candidates, not to the right of them. The only voters that are going to move from voting Democrat to voting Trump over the breakup of big tech are people who work in big tech.

daenz 7y ago

I'm typically a smaller government type of person, but I'm actually ok with the specifics of her plan. One power that I think should never be stripped from the government is the ability to regulate parts where the free market becomes dysfunctional. I think her plan encourages competition and makes the markets healthier, so thumbs up from me.

olivermarks 7y ago

There are dozens of politician plans and manifestos to reorganize 'big tech'. Interesting that the New Yorker chose to feature the Warren team plan so prominently. A more rounded comparison of plans would be useful at this point in the candidate beauty contest.

dawhizkid 7y ago

Really curious what happens to the stock price of these companies if a progressive dem like Warren or Sanders wins. I mean, on election day will the price of these stocks drop double digits? Doesn't seem like these risks have been priced in at all.

jakebol 7y ago
usually original investors get stock in the split-up companies correct? In the long run the aggregate value of the split up / smaller basket of independent companies could be larger than the original quasi monopoly.

blisterpeanuts 7y ago

It reminds me of the late 1980s-early 1990s era calls to split Microsoft off into separate companies: OS and Office. A credulous judge was quoted saying "Microsoft can just take other people's products and incorporate them into Windows!" Today, the notion of Microsoft as a threat to the world seems quaint and laughable, though at the time it was deadly serious business. In my opinion, the FAANG monopolies will pass, just as the MS-IBM hegemony passed. Something new will emerge - a 5G-based tech, maybe, or a Chinese AI or quantum machine - that will render the current tech giants irrelevant. Warren's plan is pointless and probably would be counter-productive.

smileysteve 7y ago
> Today, the notion of Microsoft as a threat to the world seems quaint and laughable, Interesting considering they are the most valuable company in the world by market cap. Addendum: Currently, MSFT's market cap is higher than Facebook, Google, Apple, and AMZN.
- blisterpeanuts 7y ago
  It fluctuates; recently, Apple was the highest, then Amazon. The point is that few are talking about Microsoft as a monopolistic threat anymore; alternative technologies (Linux, MacOS, iOS, Android) have come along and knocked them off their once-dominant position.

AlexDragusin 7y ago

Welcome to Costco, I love you! [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zNsUTWsOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zNsUTWsOc

caymanjim 7y ago

How exactly is Big Tech depressing wages? Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft all pay more than almost any other companies, regardless of role. Amazon pays all its employees at least $15 and offers far better benefits than any other large employer to those lowest on the totem pole. Compare Amazon to Walmart and then tell me who the bad guy is. Google and others have raised the median wages for tech workers through the roof, to the point that a career that barely existed 20 years ago is now one of the best-paying jobs you can get. Tech employs millions of people making six figure starting salaries, many of them self-taught or with very affordable educations. Tech has created the largest crop of millionaires in generations. I'm not saying there aren't problems with large companies, tech or otherwise, but how exactly are they depressing wages? Who's getting screwed?

turtlecloud 7y ago
you are. you should actually be getting paid much more. Just because you are getting paid more than everyone else doesn't mean that you still aren't getting underpaid. That is the scarcity mindset. Instead, engineers should be getting million+ salaries instead of the measly 150k+.
- caymanjim 7y ago
  Well, none of this applies to me personally, since I'm not working at all, and would never work for one of the big tech companies. Most people I see making six figures aren't actually all that productive. I don't believe in the 10X engineer, but I may believe in the -10X engineer.
  - taffer 7y ago
    > I don't believe in the 10X engineer, but I may believe in the -10X engineer. I think you mean a X/10 Engineer. A -10X engineer would have to work backwards.
    - thatswrong0 7y ago
      I think it’s possible to have a -X engineer.. someone who might accomplish some amount of work but then also create a lot more work for everyone else, enough that they’re actually a net drain in productivity. I’m sure there are quite a few -NX managers as well

partiallypro 7y ago

My main problem with the idea of breaking up big tech, is that foreign companies are just going to pick up the pieces. China for instance will use the weakness to use their mega partially-state owned companies to crush everyone. I just don't see how that's a positive. We live in a global economy now, we have to think of the consequences of our corporate laws globally as well.

apo 7y ago

Warren's blog uses the Microsoft antitrust case as a precedent: > In the 1990s, Microsoft — the tech giant of its time — was trying to parlay its dominance in computer operating systems into dominance in the new area of web browsing. The federal government sued Microsoft for violating anti-monopoly laws and eventually reached a settlement. The government’s antitrust case against Microsoft helped clear a path for Internet companies like Google and Facebook to emerge. https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-tech-9ad9e0da324c https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big... And then goes on to confuse the Web browser with search: > .. Aren’t we all glad that now we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with Bing? There are three reasons I'd avoid this comparison as a selling point: 1. Little of substance came from the Microsoft case: > On November 2, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case. The proposed settlement required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who would have full access to Microsoft's systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance.[30] However, the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... 2. The market handed Microsoft its richly-deserved smack upside the head with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. There's no reason to believe that Google, Amazon, or Facebook will be immune to this process of marketplace disruption. 3. The AT&T Anititrust case seems more applicable in that it deals with a network. After the successful breakup, long distance rate fell. > The breakup led to a surge of competition in the long distance telecommunications market by companies such as Sprint and MCI.[5] ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System From Warren's blog again: > First, by passing legislation that requires large tech platforms to be designated as “Platform Utilities” and broken apart from any participant on that platform. This raises the question: what's actually new here? What about the named companies is so different from previous monopolies that new laws are required? The discussion in the New Yorker doesn't seem to address this issue. There are antitrust laws on the books. They have been used in the past. What specifically prevents them from being applied today, other than political will?

turtlecloud 7y ago

will this hurt or help her chances at winning the California democratic primaries? if the tech industry does not want her then what are the other options out there?

spaethnl 7y ago

I've been thinking that a natural way to split up many large corporations that are anti-consumer would be to require: 1. Hardware manufacturers be separated from software manufactures 2. All hardware sold must have available appropriate documentation to write software for it. 3. Hardware and software be purchasable piecemeal, even when also available as a pre-configured bundle. For example, for Google to sell a Google Home device they would: 1. Have to have a company, Google Home:Hardware, that produces the physical device and it's documentation 2. Have a company, Google Home:Software, that implements the software for that device, and perhaps bundles it. 3. These companies can collaborate, e.g., through support contracts, but any documentation made available to Google Home:Software must also be made available to purchasers of the physical device, separate from Google Home:Software. Advantages of this approach: 1. This supports the "Right To Repair" movement. 2. Production of hardware has a very high cost-of-entry relative to software, making it prohibitively expensive for new entrants to compete. This allows smaller entrepreneurs to build software on existing hardware designs, bringing new features to consumers. 3. New competition will help to naturally break the anti-consumer monopolies and oligopolies currently existing, because they will have to compete with features that they currently refuse to implement, fix issues they currently refuse to acknowledge. 4. As a re-iteration of 3, would provide more consumer choice. Where as right now an individual may like the hardware features of one television set, they may dislike the software features if it (privacy invasion and phoning home?). Consumers could mix and match. Although I've focused on tech with Google, this is applicable to many industries: smart phones, TVs, smart home devices, farming equipment, vehicles, robotic vacuums...

chillacy 7y ago
That's sort of how it works in the automotive industry: one company makes the parts, one company assembles the car, one company sells the car and anyone can provide service. The only downside is that there's a lot of overhead (imagine if a software project you worked on needed this amount of formality every time you talked to a UI designer or database engineer).

shmerl 7y ago

MS is not included? How about breaking up many other monopolies as well?

pastor_elm 7y ago

My problem with Warren is she thinks that a plan or law can solve everything. If there were only a law that said, 'It's illegal to be evil,' then there wouldn't be any evil left in the world.

uniformlyrandom 7y ago

I am horrified by an idea that eventually, I will have to vote for Donald Trump.

ycombonator 7y ago

What about breaking free from “Native American Heritage” ?

bitxbit 7y ago

The prospect of Warren alone could crash the market as we draw closer to 2020. The first leg will be health care then the rest. I am actually not against her ideas but deeply concerned about implementation.

dlp211 7y ago
Just like the market crashed in 2012 with the re-election of President Obama and the market crashed in 2016 with the election of President Trump?

jdavis703 7y ago

Something interesting is when Warren came to Silicon Valley (well technically the East Bay), people cheered when she talked about breaking up big tech. I can't imagine what would have happened if a candidate went to West Virginia and talked about regulating coal, went to Iowa and talked about removig corn subsidies or went to Detroit and talked about phasing out ICE vehicles. I think a lot of people here see the problems that the FAANGs are creating and want to fix it.

ianamartin 7y ago

Warren is a really frustrating candidate. She's the kind of candidate I want to like. At least by the way she brands herself as a thinking person--a serious wonk. A nerd. All in ways that are good to me. She wants to say, "Look, I'm doing the hard work of figuring out good solutions to all these complex and difficult problems so that you don't have to. You can trust me and read all about it here." But when you do read her policies, you can see she hasn't thought about these problems at all. She's basically just doing what the loudest, most ignorant complainers and pundits are saying to do. She doesn't seem to understand that Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon present incredibly different problems. Beating them all up with the same stick is pointless and won't fix any of the problems. The fact that they are big isn't really the worst of the problems they cause. In incredibly simplistic terms, Facebook is bad because of what they do with your data. Google is bad because of what it does with all the rest of the data on the internet. Apple is bad because of what they won't let people do. And Amazon is bad because of what they will let anyone do. Chopping them up into smaller entities won't solve any of those problems. None of it addresses any of the problems at all. But in a time where doing anything is far more important to people than doing something useful, it gets traction. She also clearly does not understand section 230 of the CDA, and would like to get rid of that, which will do nothing but ensure that only the big companies--even broken up--will ever be able to compete. The same kind of thing applies to the wealth tax idea. It's just a base appeal to class animosity. There's no nuance, and even if it did happen, it wouldn't make that much difference in our overall tax revenues. Certainly not enough to fund the kinds of programs she wants to fund. If you want to fix taxes, you have to shut down loopholes for wealthy people and corporations. The latter will make much more of an impact than the former. I'm certainly on board with higher taxes to a certain extent. But this is just pandering to angry people who don't think the world is fair, and that's not healthy for society. All of this really makes me question her bona fides on topics I really don't know anything about. Is it more of the same shallow pandering? I haven't really heard any good policy ideas from her so far, and as much as I want to like her as my kind of candidate, I just don't have any reason to believe she'll do anything worthwhile if she does get elected aside from not being Trump. Which is valuable to me, I admit. But . . . is a huge swath of awful social, tax, economic, and tech policy actually better than having to deal with the buffoonery we have right now? I hope we don't have to find out. I suspect that many people will not like that choice and keep things as they are.

simplecomplex 7y ago

Elizabeth Warren is an idiot, and her ignorance is destructive and a threat to a productive and free society. Arbitrarily destroying businesses doesn't make anyone richer.

rvn1045 7y ago

The anti tech sentiment amongst candidates like warren and sanders is a bit annoying. if you rank order the problems we need to solve as a nation this issue wouldnt even make it in the top 10. its getting more attention than it should. i think a part of the reason is just this deep seated feeling within people that if some group of people became really really successful (and especially really really fast) there must be something unfair or fishy about it. that they don't really deserve it or somehow cheated. atleast this is the feeling i get when i hear warren or sanders.

chillacy 7y ago
I think that's the psychology of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo (video of monkey getting a grape and the other monkey getting a cucumber)

zepto 7y ago

If this means that google would have to stop operating the play store and Apple would have to stop operating the App store, it would simply fragment the marketplace, and consumer risk and make it even more expensive to be an independent developer or producer. This is not the way to foster innovation. It’s a way to produce a bunch of meaningless middlemen.

WalterBright 7y ago

Breaking apart large US tech companies will open the door for foreign large companies to fill that niche. This doesn't sound like a smart move for the US government.

RickJWagner 7y ago

Interesting the article mentions Robert Bork. Bork was the first Supreme Court nominee to earn his own eponymous verb. Bork was put through a ringer similar to the one Judge Kavanaugh went through recently. Per Google, the verb 'bork' means "obstruct (someone, especially a candidate for public office) through systematic defamation or vilification."