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Who says it's bad for consumers? Big corporations are monitoring what's popular to develop their own offerings in these markets. For consumers it means more cho

Who says it's bad for consumers? Big corporations are monitoring what's popular to develop their own offerings in these markets. For consumers it means more choice and potentially better products. It's bad for startups which obviously don't want competition from stronger players.

thomk 6y ago
Having less options because one giant company ate up all the small companies is always bad for consumers. Competition is good for consumers. Monopolies are good for corporations.
- auganov 6y ago
  This is not done by just one giant company. Many majors like Amazon and Facebook have been reported to have similar strategies. This is competition. All the giants want to grow. That's the name of the game. Google is now said to be going against Amazon (and a ton of small e commerce startups) with their product search offering. Yes, when it comes to booting rival apps off app stores and so forth, I agree, it's a problem. It should be looked at. But developing copy cat products is unavoidable[0]. Let's say we ban big corps from doing this. Then you'll just see them funding it. This has been going on forever. Most of the time it's just knocking out an undercapitalized startup and actually bringing the product to a much bigger audience at a better price point. The consumer wins. [0] where IP issues don't apply
  - thomk 6y ago
    I feel like the problem has more to do with big players owning the app stores. They have access to all of the data that allows them to know which apps are popular and profitable. It's easier for them to know which apps to knock off; the own the data that tells them that.
    - auganov 6y ago
      I don't know, I feel like they just have access to this data so they're using it. There are many 3rd party app store intelligence products out there. And you can buy incredible datasets from some tracking companies. There are only as many popular things out there, have a hard time believing that they fundamentally wouldn't be able to do it without the more privileged access. Wouldn't be surprised if they are actually using a ton of 3rd party data too, but only this kind of usage makes headlines as it seems "wrong".
RedBeetDeadpool 6y ago
Is it really? Big Corp destroys competition, gains monopoly, stops innovating, and then they hike up prices. Look at what autodesk has done for the 3D-software industry. AutoCAD is a bloated piece of crap and hasn’t changed much in years yet everyone drawing details uses it because of file system monopoly And industry standard. Same can be said for revit. 3ds max and maya are all in one modeling/texturing/animation software that just repeat the offering of what the other does just with a different interface, both of which are clunky and outdated. Oh and they also have the benefit of being industry standard so if you work in a team, likely you have it just so you can modify files. I could go on but this is classic Autodesk, and they aren’t the only company that does this. We the consumers are ultimately the ones to pay for the disproportional power dynamics, while big megacorp keeps the dough.
Proven 6y ago
You're right. In this case Google develops (largely) free features or apps and (largely) monetizes them with ads. One should also wonder why startups want to free-ride on Chrome and then complain about Google harvesting this info when they could help drive users to community browsers (the answer is obvious: they don't want to spend their money and they'd prefer that taxpayer or government does that for them). Those who call this situation a monopoly are closet socialists who well know that even Chrome users can use Chromium or Edge or other flavors but use the M word to create outrage that would lead to higher taxes or government-forced breakups of Google and other dominant internet players in the US. I don't use Chrome (I use alternative browsers) because I don't like Google. Ocassionally, when I want to, I use Google Search Engine. What monopoly?

thomk 6y ago

Having less options because one giant company ate up all the small companies is always bad for consumers. Competition is good for consumers. Monopolies are good for corporations.

auganov 6y ago
This is not done by just one giant company. Many majors like Amazon and Facebook have been reported to have similar strategies. This is competition. All the giants want to grow. That's the name of the game. Google is now said to be going against Amazon (and a ton of small e commerce startups) with their product search offering. Yes, when it comes to booting rival apps off app stores and so forth, I agree, it's a problem. It should be looked at. But developing copy cat products is unavoidable[0]. Let's say we ban big corps from doing this. Then you'll just see them funding it. This has been going on forever. Most of the time it's just knocking out an undercapitalized startup and actually bringing the product to a much bigger audience at a better price point. The consumer wins. [0] where IP issues don't apply
- thomk 6y ago
  I feel like the problem has more to do with big players owning the app stores. They have access to all of the data that allows them to know which apps are popular and profitable. It's easier for them to know which apps to knock off; the own the data that tells them that.
  - auganov 6y ago
    I don't know, I feel like they just have access to this data so they're using it. There are many 3rd party app store intelligence products out there. And you can buy incredible datasets from some tracking companies. There are only as many popular things out there, have a hard time believing that they fundamentally wouldn't be able to do it without the more privileged access. Wouldn't be surprised if they are actually using a ton of 3rd party data too, but only this kind of usage makes headlines as it seems "wrong".

RedBeetDeadpool 6y ago

Is it really? Big Corp destroys competition, gains monopoly, stops innovating, and then they hike up prices. Look at what autodesk has done for the 3D-software industry. AutoCAD is a bloated piece of crap and hasn’t changed much in years yet everyone drawing details uses it because of file system monopoly And industry standard. Same can be said for revit. 3ds max and maya are all in one modeling/texturing/animation software that just repeat the offering of what the other does just with a different interface, both of which are clunky and outdated. Oh and they also have the benefit of being industry standard so if you work in a team, likely you have it just so you can modify files. I could go on but this is classic Autodesk, and they aren’t the only company that does this. We the consumers are ultimately the ones to pay for the disproportional power dynamics, while big megacorp keeps the dough.

Proven 6y ago

You're right. In this case Google develops (largely) free features or apps and (largely) monetizes them with ads. One should also wonder why startups want to free-ride on Chrome and then complain about Google harvesting this info when they could help drive users to community browsers (the answer is obvious: they don't want to spend their money and they'd prefer that taxpayer or government does that for them). Those who call this situation a monopoly are closet socialists who well know that even Chrome users can use Chromium or Edge or other flavors but use the M word to create outrage that would lead to higher taxes or government-forced breakups of Google and other dominant internet players in the US. I don't use Chrome (I use alternative browsers) because I don't like Google. Ocassionally, when I want to, I use Google Search Engine. What monopoly?