5 ms·

As fun as this is, why not investigate companies that actually display anticompetitive behavior? Luxottica? Comcast? AT&T? I feel like this simply won't benefit

• smush 7y ago
  Luxottica can be fought with ZenniOptical and friends. Besides my very first pair of glasses, I've never in my optical-aid-lifetime given money to Luxottica for glasses/frames/contacts. That is not to toot my own horn, but demonstrate that an informed consumer can sidestep their monopoly without adverse impacts. Comcast & AT&T are terrible actors, and they need more regulation, not less, to counter their natural monopoly + rent-seeking behaviors, but there is at least some regulation going on that could be iterated on. Google is, relatively speaking, running amok through the streets.
  • tzs 7y ago
    It had never occurred to me to try to avoid Luxottica, because until about three years ago I had never even heard of them. Yet I seem to have avoided them by accident. My current frames are Zyloware frames from Walmart. Before that, my frames were made by Safilo. I had those for something like a decade. The frames before that say "Frame Japan". I can't find anything useful about "Frame Japan" on Google, so don't know if those are made by Luxottica or not.
  • flokie 7y ago
    They also own all of the equipment everyone else uses to make your glasses.
    • alanbernstein 7y ago
      Own? Or produce? You're not saying lens grinding equipment is always leased from some Luxottica subsidiary, are you?
• moate 7y ago
  1- Do you believe that Google isn't engaged in anti-competitive behavior? 2- Investigations have to start somewhere. Sure, those would also be some great people to go after, and everyone is going to have all kinds of expectations of "what's important" but that's entirely subjective. Basically, I don't see progress, even if it's maybe not the most important thing, as ever being a bad thing.
  • spsful 7y ago
    Very true. I guess it is nice to know there are things done against SOME monopoly/anticompetitive organizations, but still I wish it would go further. After reading your comment I do agree with you though!
  • dodobirdlord 7y ago
    > 1- Do you believe that Google isn't engaged in anti-competitive behavior? People seem to be broadly confusing competitive practices with anti-competitive practices. There's nothing anti-competitive about outperforming your competition. No amount of outperforming your competition can make a company anti-competitive. The premise is ridiculous. As long as Bing exists, Google search obviously isn't a monopoly. GSuite is obviously not a monopoly, Microsoft sells essentially the same product. GCP is obviously not a monopoly, it's piddling compared to AWS, and smaller than Azure too. The only Google product I can think of that a reasonable person might find concerning from a monopolistic perspective is Youtube, since afaik it has no comparable competition these days. But even still, having no competition doesn't make your behavior anti-competitive unless you arranged to have no competition through some mechanism other than offering a superior product. Youtube appears to have beaten out the other products in its niche based on merit. why is it Google's problem if no other company was up to the challenge of profiting in that niche?
• dehrmann 7y ago
  Grandstanding before the 2020 election. Google's big, successful, and there have been enough tech scandals in the past few years that it's an easy target.
• CameronNemo 7y ago
  One possible reason is that the telco giants are indestructible. Are you going to poke one of the largest media conglomerates in the world? Seems like you may face some rapid backlash there. Telco voices sure do carry.
  • Invictus0 7y ago
    I don't understand this sentiment. Antitrust laws are specifically designed to deal with "indestructible" companies.
    • CameronNemo 7y ago
      And yet they have historically not been used in such a way. The railroads that were targeted during the height of US antitrust legislation were some of the smaller groups.
      • dymk 7y ago
        They were used to literally break up a telco, Bell, in the 80s, so it’s not like it’s impossible or unheard of
        • CameronNemo 7y ago
          Yes, that is true. But now the telcos have adapted into an oligopoly. Additionally, that action was initiated by the Feds, not state AGs as in this context. I would maintain the position that prosecutors often look for attainable (low risk) fruit. It certainly depends on the prosecutor, but the federal level has been quite reluctant in the past (e.g. how did at&t become so large?...).
• badrabbit 7y ago
  Biggest fish in the pond is google. With at&t and comcast you typically have one other competitor within a 25% margin of 50% market share that offers similar services. It benefits consumers immensly since with good alternatives users can for example use more privacy conscious apps or apps with different approaches of solving their problem than what google thinks is best.