3 ms·

My first thoughts were similar to Thompson's- investigating small acquisitions will chill the market (a market each of us dreams of being in :-) But then, I st

My first thoughts were similar to Thompson's- investigating small acquisitions will chill the market (a market each of us dreams of being in :-) But then, I started thinking like an entrepreneur- "Hey, Zuckerberg, I know you are only offering 7M for my awesome iphone app, but if you buy at this price it might look to the FTC you are hiding something. Now if you upped your price to 94.1M and reported the deal, everyone will be happy! I remain hopeful. More seriously, pretty much everything certain "systemically important"'companies do (Utilities, banks etc) in the M&A space is reviewed and regulated - Big Tech is just going to face more and more of that in more and more countries. I should think they could get ahead of the curve - start embracing things like GDPR and lobby for it. Get (bribe? lobby?) regulators in different jurisdictions to choose similar compatible rules - forget about trying to keep regulators off your backs while making money, if Thompson is right and these companies are in place for the next century their strategic goals should be sane, coherent and transparent regulation globally - that global regulation is coming is inevitable - that it is sane and coherent and transparent is far from not.

pdonis 7y ago
> I should think they could get ahead of the curve... What makes you think they haven't? What you are describing is straightforward regulatory capture. Every previous industry that has gotten large enough for regulation of it to get public attention has done it. There is no reason to expect big tech to be any different.
strbean 7y ago
Unfortunately, I think the more strategic approach is to lobby for insane, incoherent, opaque regulation that varies wildly across jurisdictions. Then FAANG will be the only organizations large enough to handle compliance, and competitors will be shut out by the barrier to entry. This is pretty much how most well-established industries are regulated today.
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago
  Maybe. Well, probably based on thousands of years experience. But ... imagine coding that shit. It's ok to have country heads who manipulate and hide the illegal moves and regulatory shifts, but what if you want your web scale architecture to just work with simple configuration - not rewrite that shot in ten or twenty countries. who has enough good web scale engineers who can fuck up a great design to meet country specific needs but still keep it running? Imagine wifi being regulated in different ways in different countries? or GSM signals. I think we are about to see a clash between the power of simple engineering and the wants of local regulations Maybe
  - strbean 7y ago
    Here's hoping!
    - lifeisstillgood 7y ago
      Absolutely :-)

pdonis 7y ago

> I should think they could get ahead of the curve... What makes you think they haven't? What you are describing is straightforward regulatory capture. Every previous industry that has gotten large enough for regulation of it to get public attention has done it. There is no reason to expect big tech to be any different.

strbean 7y ago

Unfortunately, I think the more strategic approach is to lobby for insane, incoherent, opaque regulation that varies wildly across jurisdictions. Then FAANG will be the only organizations large enough to handle compliance, and competitors will be shut out by the barrier to entry. This is pretty much how most well-established industries are regulated today.

lifeisstillgood 7y ago
Maybe. Well, probably based on thousands of years experience. But ... imagine coding that shit. It's ok to have country heads who manipulate and hide the illegal moves and regulatory shifts, but what if you want your web scale architecture to just work with simple configuration - not rewrite that shot in ten or twenty countries. who has enough good web scale engineers who can fuck up a great design to meet country specific needs but still keep it running? Imagine wifi being regulated in different ways in different countries? or GSM signals. I think we are about to see a clash between the power of simple engineering and the wants of local regulations Maybe
- strbean 7y ago
  Here's hoping!
  - lifeisstillgood 7y ago
    Absolutely :-)