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I see mention to a Google one as well. What about others like Amazon?
by turc1656 7y ago
I see mention to a Google one as well. What about others like Amazon?
- x220 7y agoWhat is amazon a near-monopoly in?
- throwaway87378 7y agoAmazon is a trust, not yet a monopoly. There is an inherent conflict of interest, and lack of recourse (forced arbitration), between Amazon marketplace sellers and Amazon the e-commerce store. Likewise between AWS customers and Amazon the e-commerce store and advertising network. By any reasonable consumer standards, AWS should be split off into a separate company. The pervasive surveillance and continual scandals surrounding Ring's handling of user data, when taken in context of Amazon's collection of user data from the e-commerce store, advertising network, Alexa, other Amazon business units, and purchased third party data, mean that Amazon should never have been allowed to acquire Ring in the first place. If the Department of Justice Antitrust Division had not been completely captured by corporate interests, they would be in the process of litigating to undo this acquisition right now.
- smegma2 7y agoHave we seen companies get split off in similar circumstances in the past?
- tombert 7y agoNot exactly the same, but in the 90's we almost split up Microsoft to two separate divisions: a company that builds the operating system, and a company that builds user-space applications. This was because, during the browser wars of the 90s, Microsoft was purposefully gimping competing browsers at the OS level like Netscape Navigator so as to encourage people to use Internet Explorer.
- akiselev 7y agoThe textbook case studies would be the break up of Bell Telephone Company [1] or Standard Oil [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil_Co._of_New_Jersey_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil_Co._of_New_Jersey...
- sp332 7y agoThey're buying competing booksellers, which is by definition anti-competitive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Amazon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
- officialchicken 7y agoWhatabout-ism is a real problem. Be aware if you find yourself engaging in bad-faith arguments or logical fallicies. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- turc1656 7y agoThis isn't whataboutism even though it contains the words "what about". Whataboutism is an attempt to excuse one thing because some other bad actor or event wasn't dealt with properly. It's when you try to discredit an argument by implicitly charging them with some sort of hypocritical stance. I'm simply saying Amazon should be next on the list that they investigate. I'm not trying to say that these are bullshit inquires because Amazon hasn't been investigated, which is what a whataboutism on this would be. I'm saying the opposite - that Facebook and Google should be investigated but so should Amazon.
- badrequest 7y agoBe aware of what Whataboutism actually is before warning others about logical fallacies or bad-faith arguments.
- einpoklum 7y agoAmazon provides cloud services to the government now; and Bezos owns the Washington Post. Plus, and perhaps more importantly, the Democrats did not try to pin "Russiagate" allegations on Amazon. Now, Trump kind of dislikes him IIRC, but still - the political climate does not seem favorable to going after Amazon that way.