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How do we decide which companies to break up ? Similar argument can be made for any big conglomerate. Look at Reliance in India or Samsung in Korea, they sell a

How do we decide which companies to break up ? Similar argument can be made for any big conglomerate. Look at Reliance in India or Samsung in Korea, they sell anything and everything possible. Could it make companies hide businesses as well, just to not want to break up.

kevingadd 6y ago
Well, this is not a new problem. Antitrust enforcement and breaking up companies has been a thing for decades (if not at least a century) Starting with companies that make over a billion dollars a year and are in multiple markets seems like an uncontroversial place, though.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Starting with companies that make over a billion dollars a year and are in multiple markets seems like an uncontroversial place, though. The problems don't occur when companies are in multiple markets, arguable that is better for competition and hence the person on the street. The problem is when a company or two dominates a single market.
  - ijpsud 6y ago
    > The problem is when a company or two dominates a single market. It would also be bad if one company dominated multiple markets. (just a nit pick on your phrasing)
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    You're correct that dominating a single market is bad, but using your dominance of a single market to bankroll taking over other markets is pretty nasty and you can't trivially do something like that if you aren't already fabulously wealthy from dominating a market. In the case of the article, it's specifically talking about how Google is doing that.
mtgx 6y ago
Just because we don't have a good framework for it now, doesn't mean we shouldn't look at creating one. For instance, we could have companies get into "pre-monopoly" reviews. What would activate such reviews? Stuff like buying out competitors for more than $50 million let's say (the number can be decided from some analyses of harmful mergers), aggressively invading other markets with money from their core business, passing over 40% market share in its core market, exclusive deals with suppliers/clients, competing against your own clients on "platforms," arbitrary bans of clients from said platforms, etc. At the very least, I think attempting to stop/break-up/sue a company for "monopoly" only when it goes over 90% market share is WAY too late in the process and is too short-sighted. By that point whatever measure is taken is too disruptive on the whole while also being too ineffective as a punishment/deterrent for whatever the company did. Not to mention that most of the damage might have already done since a decade prior to that point against customers, smaller competitors, etc. It's not a very useful system at all. It needs to be changed. For all the hype about AI that these companies create, and then that AI gets used to create automatic killer robots, arrests and even convictions, maybe it's also time to turn that against them and use all of the above factors and more to create an "AI solution" that will identify when a company is starting to become a "risk" of turning into a monopoly, and try to restrict/prevent that from happening before it's too late. For instance, I've noticed a lot of anti-GDPR criticism here saying stuff like "but now GDPR will only hurt the new guys, as Google/FB have already gotten all the data on everyone and can use it for their algorithms, etc". Now, wouldn't it be nice if we could've prevented that from happening before it was too late, because we had an "early monopoly alert" system in place go off a decade earlier?

kevingadd 6y ago

Well, this is not a new problem. Antitrust enforcement and breaking up companies has been a thing for decades (if not at least a century) Starting with companies that make over a billion dollars a year and are in multiple markets seems like an uncontroversial place, though.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Starting with companies that make over a billion dollars a year and are in multiple markets seems like an uncontroversial place, though. The problems don't occur when companies are in multiple markets, arguable that is better for competition and hence the person on the street. The problem is when a company or two dominates a single market.
- ijpsud 6y ago
  > The problem is when a company or two dominates a single market. It would also be bad if one company dominated multiple markets. (just a nit pick on your phrasing)
- kevingadd 6y ago
  You're correct that dominating a single market is bad, but using your dominance of a single market to bankroll taking over other markets is pretty nasty and you can't trivially do something like that if you aren't already fabulously wealthy from dominating a market. In the case of the article, it's specifically talking about how Google is doing that.

mtgx 6y ago

Just because we don't have a good framework for it now, doesn't mean we shouldn't look at creating one. For instance, we could have companies get into "pre-monopoly" reviews. What would activate such reviews? Stuff like buying out competitors for more than $50 million let's say (the number can be decided from some analyses of harmful mergers), aggressively invading other markets with money from their core business, passing over 40% market share in its core market, exclusive deals with suppliers/clients, competing against your own clients on "platforms," arbitrary bans of clients from said platforms, etc. At the very least, I think attempting to stop/break-up/sue a company for "monopoly" only when it goes over 90% market share is WAY too late in the process and is too short-sighted. By that point whatever measure is taken is too disruptive on the whole while also being too ineffective as a punishment/deterrent for whatever the company did. Not to mention that most of the damage might have already done since a decade prior to that point against customers, smaller competitors, etc. It's not a very useful system at all. It needs to be changed. For all the hype about AI that these companies create, and then that AI gets used to create automatic killer robots, arrests and even convictions, maybe it's also time to turn that against them and use all of the above factors and more to create an "AI solution" that will identify when a company is starting to become a "risk" of turning into a monopoly, and try to restrict/prevent that from happening before it's too late. For instance, I've noticed a lot of anti-GDPR criticism here saying stuff like "but now GDPR will only hurt the new guys, as Google/FB have already gotten all the data on everyone and can use it for their algorithms, etc". Now, wouldn't it be nice if we could've prevented that from happening before it was too late, because we had an "early monopoly alert" system in place go off a decade earlier?