4 ms·

> I mean, your choices for flying somewhere are what - Delta or United? Both delta and united are operating very high capital cost businesses on thin margins.

> I mean, your choices for flying somewhere are what - Delta or United? Both delta and united are operating very high capital cost businesses on thin margins. What can we gain by trust busting them? > What about for internet service - just a single ISP in most areas. ISPs can be dealt with effectively at the local level - and they are not as invasive or as politically powerful as the tech giants. I’ve never had my searches for coronavirus related content restricted in any way by my ISP for example. > Your choices for searching something on the internet, hosting a video, doing email, etc. are innumerable. You are ignoring network effects and the advertising monopoly. But maybe that’s a good way to trust bust them? Perhaps YouTube should be made to start showing my dlive streams in the search results?

shadowgovt 6y ago
> I’ve never had my searches for coronavirus related content restricted in any way by my ISP for example. Your ISP isn't a search engine. It's also regulated more like a utility, unlike Google. If your ISP started black-holing IP addresses for reason of the content they carried, there would be Congressional action (if the FCC didn't get there first).
- iateanapple 6y ago
  That’s exactly right - we have plenty of options for redress against an ISP abusing its power at the local, state, and federal levels.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    And on the flip side of the coin, we can change our search engine if we don't like the results it vends.
    - iateanapple 6y ago
      Because of network effects that turns out to be a lot weaker protection against much more powerful companies. Edit: Perhaps network effect is the wrong term - but it’s a bit like saying if you don’t like guns don’t buy a gun - that doesn’t really limit the negative impacts from guns...
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        How? What network effect is keeping Bing a poor alternative to Google search?
dmitrygr 6y ago
> Both delta and united are operating very high capital cost businesses on thin margins. You are right, the capital cost of millions of servers worldwide, with security guards, and buildings, and cooling is zero.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > You are right, the capital cost of millions of servers worldwide, with security guards, and buildings, and cooling is zero. Not even close to the capital costs and margins of an airline. Compare AWS margins and capital costs with Amazons retail margins and capital costs for example.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    The capital costs might actually be similar (or higher for AWS). The margins, of course, are much lower for an airline. The best data point I can find is that Google spent 13B on datacenter and office construction in 2019, which is about the same as the purchase cost of all 130 of Delta Airlines' 737-900ER aircraft (which is about 1/6 of Delta's entire fleet).
    - iateanapple 6y ago
      > The best data point I can find is that Google spent 13B on datacenter and office construction in 2019 It’s hard to do a fair comparison like this between high growth companies and normal companies - for example what fraction of that cost for Google is growth based vs to maintain exisiting services?

shadowgovt 6y ago

> I’ve never had my searches for coronavirus related content restricted in any way by my ISP for example. Your ISP isn't a search engine. It's also regulated more like a utility, unlike Google. If your ISP started black-holing IP addresses for reason of the content they carried, there would be Congressional action (if the FCC didn't get there first).

iateanapple 6y ago
That’s exactly right - we have plenty of options for redress against an ISP abusing its power at the local, state, and federal levels.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  And on the flip side of the coin, we can change our search engine if we don't like the results it vends.
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    Because of network effects that turns out to be a lot weaker protection against much more powerful companies. Edit: Perhaps network effect is the wrong term - but it’s a bit like saying if you don’t like guns don’t buy a gun - that doesn’t really limit the negative impacts from guns...
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      How? What network effect is keeping Bing a poor alternative to Google search?

dmitrygr 6y ago

> Both delta and united are operating very high capital cost businesses on thin margins. You are right, the capital cost of millions of servers worldwide, with security guards, and buildings, and cooling is zero.

iateanapple 6y ago
> You are right, the capital cost of millions of servers worldwide, with security guards, and buildings, and cooling is zero. Not even close to the capital costs and margins of an airline. Compare AWS margins and capital costs with Amazons retail margins and capital costs for example.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  The capital costs might actually be similar (or higher for AWS). The margins, of course, are much lower for an airline. The best data point I can find is that Google spent 13B on datacenter and office construction in 2019, which is about the same as the purchase cost of all 130 of Delta Airlines' 737-900ER aircraft (which is about 1/6 of Delta's entire fleet).
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    > The best data point I can find is that Google spent 13B on datacenter and office construction in 2019 It’s hard to do a fair comparison like this between high growth companies and normal companies - for example what fraction of that cost for Google is growth based vs to maintain exisiting services?