14 ms·

The Antitrust Hearing, the Role of Congress, CEO Questions

133 points by simonpure 6y ago

partingshots 6y ago
Prepared statements from each of the companies respectively: Alphabet Inc., Sundar Pichai Statement -http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-PichaiS-20200729.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-... Amazon.com Inc., Jeff Bezos Statement - http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-BezosJ-20200729.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-... Apple Inc., Tim Cook Statement - http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-CookT-20200729.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-... Facebook Inc., Mark Zuckerberg Statement - http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-ZuckerbergM-20200729.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-... Interesting to see what they’ve all chosen to say to start off with.
- aniketpant 6y ago
  > For example, people have more ways to search for information than ever before — and increasingly this is happening outside the context of only a search engine. Often the answer is just a click or an app away: You can ask Alexa a question from your kitchen; read your news on Twitter; ask friends for information via WhatsApp; and get recommendations on Snapchat or Pinterest. When searching for products online, you may be visiting Amazon, eBay, Walmart, or any one of a number of e-commerce providers, where most online shopping queries happen. Similarly, in areas like travel and real estate, Google faces strong competition for search queries from many businesses that are experts in these areas. I like how they've mentioned competitors as if they want to take a stand against regulations together while also enacting a feeling that there's enough competition within each of these markets.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    > Often the answer is just a click or an app away. It used to be "a click away". Now that it's "an app away", what does that say about App Store antitrust? Also, "We face competition from... the other gigacorps in this hearing" is not a great look.
  - gen220 6y ago
    I think it was Thiel in Zero to One, who said something like "Companies with monopolies love to talk about their competition", and then he goes on to use Google as a case study, ironically. Historically, Google made themselves look small by casting themselves as an advertising company, instead of a web-search company. (they own a very small portion of overall advertising, compared to their portion of web search). By making advertisers their competitors, they look like the underdog. Here, it seems like Google's position has evolved further: "hey, look at all of these other websites with search bars, they are our competition, and they're crushing us". I guess moving the goal-posts is a very effective strategy. :)
    - xtracto 6y ago
      The Amazon PR writing says the same, they compare themselves to US Retail saying that they are just 1% of that huge diverse market.... really?
      - dodobirdlord 6y ago
        Is that not fair? Amazon is legitimately in competition with me walking to the store.
        mc32 6y ago
        I don’t think it’s fair, just like I don’t think Standard Oil could have pulled off a “We’re in competition with millions of people’s feet” and millions of horses.
        ksdale 6y ago
        Tangential thought that this reminded me of - I remember reading that when Rockefeller started Standard Oil, the total market for refined oil products was tiny, and the reason it was called "Standard Oil" was because it was so hard to find reliable refined oil products with consistent chemical qualities, and that the introduction of more standardized products contributed to the demand exploding. Within a few decades, the market for oil products was a few orders of magnitude larger than it was when Standard Oil began. By 1890, even though Standard Oil sold like 90% of the oil in the US, the size of the market not controlled by Standard Oil was bigger than the total market when Standard Oil started (or close). So, in a sense, Standard Oil could have plausibly said they were in a competition with feet and horses? If they disappeared entirely, the market would have been the same size it was before they existed. Obviously the demand for oil would have gone up dramatically anyway without Standard Oil's anti-competitive practices, but it doesn't seem exactly right to treat Standard Oil as taking a slice of a fixed pie when the pie grew so much during it's existence... Here's a chart of US oil production - https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=a https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=m... Standard Oil was started in 1870.
  - deleted 6y ago
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santoshalper 6y ago
The hearings will definitely not focus on competition because that is not what congress cares about. At most, they will try to portray their actual concerns (perception of censorship or bias) as a byproduct of the lack of competition. To be clear the people driving this do not care about increasing competition in the digital world, they care almost exclusively about advancing the GOP agenda and forcing these companies to be more compliant and cooperative. This is all chilling effect.
Barrin92 6y ago
>"This is a remarkable bit of framing for a (checks link) news article. It is taken as a given that the big tech companies are akin to big banks after the financial crisis, the tobacco industry, and airlines — no wonder there are “long-simmering frustrations”! People must hate Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook! Needless to say, this doesn’t match reality; every year The Verge conducts a tech survey and the results speak for themselves:" Wrong comparison. During its heyday high finance was actually very popular and bankers had a positive reputation as brave risk takers. In the 80s it was still very much seen as the heart of American capitalism. The demise of Wall Street in popular opinion is quite new, and I'm sure if you go back to the days of the Marlboro Cowboy when smoking represented freedom rather than lung cancer you could find similar surveys. (not to mention smoking in popular culture, the risks of smoking were not widely publicised until the 60s). Whether big tech is comparable to big banks or big tobacco isn't really a question of popular opinion on big tech right now, but rather on the externalities they produce. The population being blind to externalities and negative effects of emerging industries is exceedingly common.
- sukilot 6y ago
  The S&L crisis was 1986-1995. The demise in popular opinion is not new.
  - smallnamespace 6y ago
    Savings and loans were not high finance outfits, they were mostly local, small banks that made bad bets.
  - techbio 6y ago
    Source(s) for popular opinion across that date range?
    - Anon4Now 6y ago
      I doubt you'd find much polling. The movies Wall Street (1987) and Other People's Money (1991) would be the next best thing for a pop culture view of the finance industry.
shuntress 6y ago
"generally speaking the idea is that more competition should address harms — and that increased regulation, in contrast, reduces competition" I think this idea that regulation is the opposite of competition is not correct (or is too simplified to be meaningful). It is obviously possible to enact regulation that would make competition less viable. It is also just as obvious that regulation which enables competition is possible. For example, consider a regulation that standardizes a "social contacts list" and requires that ecosystems in which a use can maintain a list of contacts must be capable of import/export in this standard format. Do you think this would help or hurt competition among social networks? Would this be an overreach? Is this an example of regulation performing "product design"?
- JackFr 6y ago
  > For example, consider a regulation that standardizes a "social contacts list" and requires that ecosystems in which a use can maintain a list of contacts must be capable of import/export in this standard format. Such an innocuous regulation may seem pro consumer and pro competition, but in practice is probably not great. To start, Congress is probably not qualified to come up with such a standard, leaving you with two possibilities, and new government bureaucracy to manage the standard -- who simply become targets of industry lobbying, or an industry consortium, which is not subject to lobbying because it is already controlled by industry incumbents. This bureaucracy now exists to protect incumbents through 'certification' hurdles and other gatekeeping and reduces innovation since by simply preventing changes.
  - shuntress 6y ago
    This seems like you are saying "The system is broken and cannot work" but that this assertion hinges mainly on the assumption that "new government bureaucracy to manage the standard" is automatically a bad thing. In reality, there should be both a government bureaucracy and industry consortium for the exact reasons you have laid out. The industry consortium brings deep technical knowledge and pulls in private companies best interest. The government bureaucracy brings broad technical knowledge and pulls in the general public's best interest. Obviously there are significant complexities regarding the effectiveness and social consciousness of either group that are interdependent and potentially dead-locked by external factors (Such as the effectiveness/regulation of lobbying in general). But I don't think that justifies your apparent "Can't win don't try" attitude.
supercanuck 6y ago
I find Ben to be out of his depth when he discusses the role of a democratically elected body should be doing to represent its constituents. He still thinks the United States is a competitive market and that congress simply needs to open up competition. What a wonderful, fantastic world that must be to live in. Tech’s products are a series of unregulated skinner boxes vacuuming up data in order to segment each customer into Infinitely smaller market segments to charge them maximum prices they can afford while completely ignoring externalities. The average American is exhausted from playing this “free market virtual “game” in an ever increasing sociopathic world. The average consumer is simply ill-equipped to keep up and they aren’t earning enough to vote with their dollars. Tech and America business needs to shape up or welcome a bunch of bullshit laws because Americans are tired of this and will welcome “big government”. maybe ben living in Hong Kong can’t see what is happening “on the ground” so to speak. Read the room, Ben.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > The average American is exhausted from playing this “free market virtual “game” There is limited evidence for this. Polling certainly doesn’t show it. What the data do show is these companies’ app downloads are at record highs. To the degree polling shows broad concern, it’s around monopoly power, workers’ rights and speech suppression. > ben living in Hong Kong Believe he is in Taiwan.
  - skummetmaelk 6y ago
    Whenever I want to show someone the valley mindset I will pull up this comment. The app download numbers are at an all time high! That must be good, right guys? Right? ... Guys?...
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It seems like he is reading the room, and the room says Americans are not in fact tired of this. It's hard to reconcile your claim that "Americans are tired of this and will welcome big government" with polls showing 90% of Americans view Amazon and Google favorably.
oxymoran 6y ago
Using a poll from the Verge to validate your opinion that people like tech companies...sorry, that’s a no from me. You discount that the vast majority of people are completely ignorant of how computers and the internet actually function. They have no idea or, because of their ignorance, do not care that companies such as Google are hovering up all their data and doing who know what with it. Or that large monopolies are wielding more power than any entity has ever possessed. Or that social media is being weaponized by domestic and foreign parties. Or that they are acting as arbiters as to what is and what is not science. I love tech but Facebook, Google, and Twitter are tearing society apart. Twitter and Facebook aren’t even special as far as code goes. Let’s just create open source social media to remove the advertising aspect and kill Facebook and Twitter completely. These sort of companies should NEVER be publicly traded FFS.
- deleted 6y ago
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- hrhrhrd 6y ago
  Mastodon already exists; it's just unpopular outside of small circles. People have already spoken with their time that they prefer hosted, "easy" solutions regardless of the evil they perpetuate (even if this preference is coming from a place of ignorance). The biggest question now is how to popularise it.
  - single_source 6y ago
    I just tried Mastodon yesterday. I was highly unimpressed with the on-boarding funnel and confusing UX. I think one point people miss is, the social media market is highly competitive. All it takes is for Twitter's UX and on-boarding funnel to be 1% better than Mastodon's for Twitter to win. Someone needs to provide decentralized social media platform without leaking the decentralization into the UX and on-boarding funnel and I've yet to see anyone do that to date.* *I'm still looking so if anyone has anything for me to check out I'd be thrilled!
  - CincinnatiMan 6y ago
    I looked into Mastodon a bit but didn't quite understand it and saw clusters/servers for fringe groups that I didn't really want to be associated with.
skrowl 6y ago
Keeping in mind that the hearing is in the Dem-controlled HOUSE and all these companies are censoring people to help the Dems win the election, I doubt anything exciting will happen. The questions will be "Isn't it true that you don't censor conservatives and just white supremacist nazi scumbags?"
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Both Democrats and Republicans alike are unhappy with tech companies' behavior. While many conservatives do believe tech companies censor right-leaning voices, many liberals blame tech companies' inaction on curtailing foreign interference and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories for the election of Donald Trump. Which is to say, you may think big tech is hurting conservatives, but liberals think they're helping conservatives.
  - umvi 6y ago
    Democrats want more speech control - "hate speech" moderation/curtailing, misinformation moderation/curtailing, etc. Democrats view right wing news sources as misinformation and want it censored. Republicans don't view their own news sources as misinformation and think they are being censored.
- deleted 6y ago
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bconnorwhite 6y ago
The best thing about "tech monopolies" is that there are so many of them
- vageli 6y ago
  The problem is with word choice. "Tech" has little to do with the business domain.
  - bconnorwhite 6y ago
    True, but even after narrowing this, you usually end up with 3/4 of these companies in competition. Messaging? FB vs Apple vs Google Ads? FB vs Google vs Amazon Video? FB vs Google (YouTube) vs Amazon (Twitch) Especially re: Google linking to its own sites, are we now arguing Google has a monopoly over google.com? It gets a bit weird
    - guerrilla 6y ago
      That's only if you rig it by choosing the market to make it turn out that way. They aren't a monopoly in every market they are in. They're monopolies in specific markets. No company has ever been a monopoly in general, except perhaps the Soviet state but even that isn't strictly true. Search? Google. Online retail? Amazon. Video hosting? Google.
    - enumjorge 6y ago
      > are we now arguing Google has a monopoly over google.com? It gets a bit weird I don't know anyone who's arguing that. But I do see people arguing Google having a monopoly on search. In a lot of domains, a business can be created or destroyed entirely on their Google search rank.
      - twblalock 6y ago
        Even if Google search was broken off to a standalone company, it would still have a monopoly on search. The competition just isn't as good at search. Bing has been around for a long time and has managed to gain less than 10% of market share, even though almost everyone has heard of it.
aripickar 6y ago
People have a very optimistic view of what this hearing is going to reveal, and think that it is going to accomplish anything. But it’s largely gonna be republicans performance vomiting rhetoric about tech companies censoring conservative voices with no evidence, and democrats wanting to discuss everything but what the hearing is actually about, anti-trust. I expect a few democrats to make some interesting queries, and the tech news media to report minor stories that are unknown as breaking news. Full disclosure: I work at a subsidiary of Amazon
- jcadam 6y ago
  Well considering Google, Twitter, Facebook, et. al, are actively working to shape public opinion to the benefit of the Democrats in the lead up to the election, I wouldn't expect a Democratic-controlled legislative body to do anything that might displease them. These tech CEOs, after all, are really the ones in charge here. They participate in this bit of political theater for the benefit of the proles. They probably find the whole thing amusing.
  - theplague42 6y ago
    How are they shaping public opinion to benefit Democrats?
    - aripickar 6y ago
      Hint: They're not.
    - chroma 6y ago
      Try running the following experiment: open an incognito window and do a Google search for "antifa violence". Then do the same search on Bing or DuckDuckGo. On Google, the top results are things like "Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years" and "Antifa Activist Killed At ICE Jail Becomes Symbol For The Right And Left".[1] The first headline is outright false[2] and the second is about a man who assaulted a detention center in Tacoma using firebombs and a rifle.[3] On DuckDuckGo[4], the first result is undercover video footage of an antifa leader admitting that they are violent and encouraging recruits to do things such as eye gouge. Other results are from both left and right-leaning media. Some claim antifa doesn't cause violence. Others claim that antifa is the sole cause of violence. In short: it's far more balanced than what Google is showing. You can also look at the political climate inside of Google. The leaked communications are pretty wild. You have people discussing banning recommendations of videos containing "nazis" using "dog whistles" and examples of such "nazis" are PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro[5]. Look at their internal docs on correcting "algorithmic unfairness" in news and search results.[6] They admit to tweaking the autocomplete behavior for both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, as the defaults suggested (correctly) that Martin was a drug dealer. These docs also claim that factually accurate representations of the world can constitute algorithmic unfairness. Look at the internal responses to James Damore's memo: https://imgur.com/a/S48QN https://imgur.com/a/S48QN Damore's politics are left-leaning libertarian. If that's the response he gets for making his opinion known, there is no chance that a work environment like that can accept a conservative viewpoint. Finally (I wish I could find a better source for this), Tucker Carlson describes an email by the head of Google's Multicultural Marketing department. In it, she explains how she used the company's resources & influence to target latino voters in key states with the goal of swinging the election towards Clinton. She even calls it a "silent donation". If what Tucker Carlson says is true, then that is one hell of a smoking gun. 1. https://i.imgur.com/7rqtQrF.png https://i.imgur.com/7rqtQrF.png 2. The trick is that antifa doesn't exactly have a membership list, so technically nobody who commits a crime can be tied to them. If you count those who claim to be anti-fascist, you can get quite the body count. For example, one antifa supporter killed 9 people last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_attack 4. https://i.imgur.com/aDNHvNq.png https://i.imgur.com/aDNHvNq.png 5. https://images.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/adFf4yhVbUojBIGoAymc6/5e2d800a63f92cf37c73181eec4f9c71/on_peterson-REDACTED.png https://images.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/adFf4yhVbUojBIGoAy... 6. https://pv-uploads1.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/06/SS1DocDump.pdf https://pv-uploads1.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/06/SS1DocD... 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7iPJMCxOZY&t=1m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7iPJMCxOZY&t=1m16s
LatteLazy 6y ago
Ultimately we need a viable alternative to the current system before we trash it. And no one has that.
deleted 6y ago
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sschueller 6y ago
Live now: https://youtu.be/1s1uWo1_bzg https://youtu.be/1s1uWo1_bzg
Nelkins 6y ago
I wonder if any of these companies are mining their vast troves of data to research the members of Congress who are asking questions.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
Judging from the types of questions asked during last congressional hearing to these CEOs regarding privacy(They didn't even understand that Android & iOS were from different manufacturers), I would be really surprised if they really understood the difference between having single Appstore with 30% fee vs allowing 3rd party Appstores, not allowing native browser engines and forcing them to use your own browser with different skin etc.
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in3d 6y ago
I wonder what the fact-checkers would say about Pichai’s claims that the ad prices fell by 40% because of more competition... Cook says that the developers have so many other choices like Android, PlayStation, or Windows. This is about the U.S. mobile market where the iOS has a monopoly-like market share in terms of app revenue. Similar to Bezos trying to make an argument that it’s not about online marketshare but all of retail. Zuckerberg should take notes - social media apparently also includes phone and in-person meetings. Cook claims that Apple’s 30% cut is half of what the distributors were charging software publishers or developers before Apple came along to save them. Apparently having your software for sale on the web with just the payment processor’s cut was not a thing.
- discordance 6y ago
  Apple have 17% of the smartphone market share [0] and 32% of smartphone related revenue [1] worldwide. I understand the constraints on developers/consumers on iOS in regards to the walled garden, but are those numbers considered monopolistic? 0: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/03/apple-iphone-marketshare-growing-amidst-contracting-global-market https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/03/apple-iphone-mark... 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-phone-profits-apple-66-samsung-17-everyone-else-unlucky-13/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...
  - in3d 6y ago
    I think you missed some words in my post: “in the U.S.,” “revenue,” “apps.”
  - mrep 6y ago
    IOS has a 58% market share in the US [0] which single handedly is well above the threshold of market power using the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index [1] which the antitrust department uses for mergers and acquisitions concerns (they don't care about international users). "The Supreme Court has defined market power as the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market, and monopoly power as the power to control prices or exclude competition" [2]. For people wanting to sell software to mobile users for which web does not suffice, there is no substitute and apple actively excludes you from 58% of the US market if you need mobile software unless you accept Apples 30% cut. With Android at least, they don't exclude you as you can side load like fortnite [3] but Apple is 100% abusing their market power by excluding developers from avoiding their 30% fee. [0]: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america/ https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman_I... [2]: https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-... [3]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/3/17645982/epic-games-fortnite-android-version-bypass-google-play-store https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/3/17645982/epic-games-fortni...
ampgt 6y ago
Am I the only one who finds some of these representatives impressively... unimpressive? And don’t even get me started on the format. How are we supposed to set an example for the world when our representatives won’t even let the CEOs of some of our most successful companies finish answering a question? What a waste of time.
game_the0ry 6y ago
That hearing was a joke, to be frank. Anyone notice how much time the congressmen spoke versus the CEOs? Or how often they were interrupted mid-sentence? They weren't interested in answers, congress wanted to put on a show. Except it was a poor attempt at...whatever they were trying to accomplish - should have been expected given that it was congress. And of course nothing will come of this hearing - those companies are not technical monopolies. That's why they are being grilled in congress, rather than being taken to court, because they would win in court.
- sharatvir 6y ago
  That’s a product of this limited time format. Without interruptions, nothing prevents the executives from wasting even more time and avoiding answering the question.
yuhong 6y ago
See my Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Effects_of_the_2007-2008_financial_crisis_on_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Effects_of_the_2007-2008...
supernova87a 6y ago
Comparing these companies to tobacco, big banks, airlines? Are you kidding? I'll tell you a simple reason why this won't fly like the other "big company scandals" in the past that the author is alluding to. The success of every one of these FAANG companies is because each one of us uses, buys, and likes using their products on average. Complain once in a while as we might that XYZ is hurting some group on some specialized issue, we still continue to visit their websites, buy their hardware, use their search engines, and yes -- enjoy doing it. Why would these companies be worth billions of $ otherwise? Sorry, I mean Trillions of $. It's not like they're forcing something down our throats and pillaging the earth as their primary reason for existence, or fraudulently filing loan applications in our name or selling shady mortgages. We created them, each one of us in our hour-by-hour behavior, every day. We don't hold our noses and patronize them reluctantly once per year. We do it every minute. Voluntarily. So, no, I don't think the average person cares as much about the specialized negatives of these businesses as you think he/she does. And btw, conduct a self-diagnostic once in a while: reading here on HN, you get an inflated sense of how Apple's 30% cut of developer app store fees is the worst thing in the world that everyone should take to the streets about, or how Google's map API key pricing has become an outrage. For what they get in return, it's not that bad to the average person. Or even average senator or representative.
nojvek 6y ago
I don’t know if the hearing is going to go anywhere. All the CEOs are basically saying “hey we did everything legally in an open market, the power of tech has brought more choice and wealth to everyone, we aren’t monopolies, anyone had a fair shot at bearing us if they have better tech” I’m interested in hearing the other side. Big tech is so big they can afford to take big losses and capture huge markets like maps, android, chrome etc fueled by profits from one part of the business and undercutting the small players until they’re dead. The other bit that surprised me is why Microsoft isn’t part of this. Have they made themselves so diverse that they’re not in the radar anymore? Isn’t what Microsoft doing with bundling a bazillion things in Office 365 fair competition? E.g Teams vs Slack.

133 points by simonpure 6y ago

Prepared statements from each of the companies respectively: Alphabet Inc., Sundar Pichai Statement -http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-PichaiS-20200729.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-... Amazon.com Inc., Jeff Bezos Statement - http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-BezosJ-20200729.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-... Apple Inc., Tim Cook Statement - http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-CookT-20200729.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-... Facebook Inc., Mark Zuckerberg Statement - http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-ZuckerbergM-20200729.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-... Interesting to see what they’ve all chosen to say to start off with.

aniketpant 6y ago
> For example, people have more ways to search for information than ever before — and increasingly this is happening outside the context of only a search engine. Often the answer is just a click or an app away: You can ask Alexa a question from your kitchen; read your news on Twitter; ask friends for information via WhatsApp; and get recommendations on Snapchat or Pinterest. When searching for products online, you may be visiting Amazon, eBay, Walmart, or any one of a number of e-commerce providers, where most online shopping queries happen. Similarly, in areas like travel and real estate, Google faces strong competition for search queries from many businesses that are experts in these areas. I like how they've mentioned competitors as if they want to take a stand against regulations together while also enacting a feeling that there's enough competition within each of these markets.
- sukilot 6y ago
  > Often the answer is just a click or an app away. It used to be "a click away". Now that it's "an app away", what does that say about App Store antitrust? Also, "We face competition from... the other gigacorps in this hearing" is not a great look.
- gen220 6y ago
  I think it was Thiel in Zero to One, who said something like "Companies with monopolies love to talk about their competition", and then he goes on to use Google as a case study, ironically. Historically, Google made themselves look small by casting themselves as an advertising company, instead of a web-search company. (they own a very small portion of overall advertising, compared to their portion of web search). By making advertisers their competitors, they look like the underdog. Here, it seems like Google's position has evolved further: "hey, look at all of these other websites with search bars, they are our competition, and they're crushing us". I guess moving the goal-posts is a very effective strategy. :)
  - xtracto 6y ago
    The Amazon PR writing says the same, they compare themselves to US Retail saying that they are just 1% of that huge diverse market.... really?
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      Is that not fair? Amazon is legitimately in competition with me walking to the store.
      - mc32 6y ago
        I don’t think it’s fair, just like I don’t think Standard Oil could have pulled off a “We’re in competition with millions of people’s feet” and millions of horses.
        ksdale 6y ago
        Tangential thought that this reminded me of - I remember reading that when Rockefeller started Standard Oil, the total market for refined oil products was tiny, and the reason it was called "Standard Oil" was because it was so hard to find reliable refined oil products with consistent chemical qualities, and that the introduction of more standardized products contributed to the demand exploding. Within a few decades, the market for oil products was a few orders of magnitude larger than it was when Standard Oil began. By 1890, even though Standard Oil sold like 90% of the oil in the US, the size of the market not controlled by Standard Oil was bigger than the total market when Standard Oil started (or close). So, in a sense, Standard Oil could have plausibly said they were in a competition with feet and horses? If they disappeared entirely, the market would have been the same size it was before they existed. Obviously the demand for oil would have gone up dramatically anyway without Standard Oil's anti-competitive practices, but it doesn't seem exactly right to treat Standard Oil as taking a slice of a fixed pie when the pie grew so much during it's existence... Here's a chart of US oil production - https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=a https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=m... Standard Oil was started in 1870.
- deleted 6y ago
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santoshalper 6y ago

The hearings will definitely not focus on competition because that is not what congress cares about. At most, they will try to portray their actual concerns (perception of censorship or bias) as a byproduct of the lack of competition. To be clear the people driving this do not care about increasing competition in the digital world, they care almost exclusively about advancing the GOP agenda and forcing these companies to be more compliant and cooperative. This is all chilling effect.

Barrin92 6y ago

>"This is a remarkable bit of framing for a (checks link) news article. It is taken as a given that the big tech companies are akin to big banks after the financial crisis, the tobacco industry, and airlines — no wonder there are “long-simmering frustrations”! People must hate Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook! Needless to say, this doesn’t match reality; every year The Verge conducts a tech survey and the results speak for themselves:" Wrong comparison. During its heyday high finance was actually very popular and bankers had a positive reputation as brave risk takers. In the 80s it was still very much seen as the heart of American capitalism. The demise of Wall Street in popular opinion is quite new, and I'm sure if you go back to the days of the Marlboro Cowboy when smoking represented freedom rather than lung cancer you could find similar surveys. (not to mention smoking in popular culture, the risks of smoking were not widely publicised until the 60s). Whether big tech is comparable to big banks or big tobacco isn't really a question of popular opinion on big tech right now, but rather on the externalities they produce. The population being blind to externalities and negative effects of emerging industries is exceedingly common.

sukilot 6y ago
The S&L crisis was 1986-1995. The demise in popular opinion is not new.
- smallnamespace 6y ago
  Savings and loans were not high finance outfits, they were mostly local, small banks that made bad bets.
- techbio 6y ago
  Source(s) for popular opinion across that date range?
  - Anon4Now 6y ago
    I doubt you'd find much polling. The movies Wall Street (1987) and Other People's Money (1991) would be the next best thing for a pop culture view of the finance industry.

shuntress 6y ago

"generally speaking the idea is that more competition should address harms — and that increased regulation, in contrast, reduces competition" I think this idea that regulation is the opposite of competition is not correct (or is too simplified to be meaningful). It is obviously possible to enact regulation that would make competition less viable. It is also just as obvious that regulation which enables competition is possible. For example, consider a regulation that standardizes a "social contacts list" and requires that ecosystems in which a use can maintain a list of contacts must be capable of import/export in this standard format. Do you think this would help or hurt competition among social networks? Would this be an overreach? Is this an example of regulation performing "product design"?

JackFr 6y ago
> For example, consider a regulation that standardizes a "social contacts list" and requires that ecosystems in which a use can maintain a list of contacts must be capable of import/export in this standard format. Such an innocuous regulation may seem pro consumer and pro competition, but in practice is probably not great. To start, Congress is probably not qualified to come up with such a standard, leaving you with two possibilities, and new government bureaucracy to manage the standard -- who simply become targets of industry lobbying, or an industry consortium, which is not subject to lobbying because it is already controlled by industry incumbents. This bureaucracy now exists to protect incumbents through 'certification' hurdles and other gatekeeping and reduces innovation since by simply preventing changes.
- shuntress 6y ago
  This seems like you are saying "The system is broken and cannot work" but that this assertion hinges mainly on the assumption that "new government bureaucracy to manage the standard" is automatically a bad thing. In reality, there should be both a government bureaucracy and industry consortium for the exact reasons you have laid out. The industry consortium brings deep technical knowledge and pulls in private companies best interest. The government bureaucracy brings broad technical knowledge and pulls in the general public's best interest. Obviously there are significant complexities regarding the effectiveness and social consciousness of either group that are interdependent and potentially dead-locked by external factors (Such as the effectiveness/regulation of lobbying in general). But I don't think that justifies your apparent "Can't win don't try" attitude.

supercanuck 6y ago

I find Ben to be out of his depth when he discusses the role of a democratically elected body should be doing to represent its constituents. He still thinks the United States is a competitive market and that congress simply needs to open up competition. What a wonderful, fantastic world that must be to live in. Tech’s products are a series of unregulated skinner boxes vacuuming up data in order to segment each customer into Infinitely smaller market segments to charge them maximum prices they can afford while completely ignoring externalities. The average American is exhausted from playing this “free market virtual “game” in an ever increasing sociopathic world. The average consumer is simply ill-equipped to keep up and they aren’t earning enough to vote with their dollars. Tech and America business needs to shape up or welcome a bunch of bullshit laws because Americans are tired of this and will welcome “big government”. maybe ben living in Hong Kong can’t see what is happening “on the ground” so to speak. Read the room, Ben.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> The average American is exhausted from playing this “free market virtual “game” There is limited evidence for this. Polling certainly doesn’t show it. What the data do show is these companies’ app downloads are at record highs. To the degree polling shows broad concern, it’s around monopoly power, workers’ rights and speech suppression. > ben living in Hong Kong Believe he is in Taiwan.
- skummetmaelk 6y ago
  Whenever I want to show someone the valley mindset I will pull up this comment. The app download numbers are at an all time high! That must be good, right guys? Right? ... Guys?...
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It seems like he is reading the room, and the room says Americans are not in fact tired of this. It's hard to reconcile your claim that "Americans are tired of this and will welcome big government" with polls showing 90% of Americans view Amazon and Google favorably.

oxymoran 6y ago

Using a poll from the Verge to validate your opinion that people like tech companies...sorry, that’s a no from me. You discount that the vast majority of people are completely ignorant of how computers and the internet actually function. They have no idea or, because of their ignorance, do not care that companies such as Google are hovering up all their data and doing who know what with it. Or that large monopolies are wielding more power than any entity has ever possessed. Or that social media is being weaponized by domestic and foreign parties. Or that they are acting as arbiters as to what is and what is not science. I love tech but Facebook, Google, and Twitter are tearing society apart. Twitter and Facebook aren’t even special as far as code goes. Let’s just create open source social media to remove the advertising aspect and kill Facebook and Twitter completely. These sort of companies should NEVER be publicly traded FFS.

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hrhrhrd 6y ago
Mastodon already exists; it's just unpopular outside of small circles. People have already spoken with their time that they prefer hosted, "easy" solutions regardless of the evil they perpetuate (even if this preference is coming from a place of ignorance). The biggest question now is how to popularise it.
- single_source 6y ago
  I just tried Mastodon yesterday. I was highly unimpressed with the on-boarding funnel and confusing UX. I think one point people miss is, the social media market is highly competitive. All it takes is for Twitter's UX and on-boarding funnel to be 1% better than Mastodon's for Twitter to win. Someone needs to provide decentralized social media platform without leaking the decentralization into the UX and on-boarding funnel and I've yet to see anyone do that to date.* *I'm still looking so if anyone has anything for me to check out I'd be thrilled!
- CincinnatiMan 6y ago
  I looked into Mastodon a bit but didn't quite understand it and saw clusters/servers for fringe groups that I didn't really want to be associated with.

skrowl 6y ago

Keeping in mind that the hearing is in the Dem-controlled HOUSE and all these companies are censoring people to help the Dems win the election, I doubt anything exciting will happen. The questions will be "Isn't it true that you don't censor conservatives and just white supremacist nazi scumbags?"

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Both Democrats and Republicans alike are unhappy with tech companies' behavior. While many conservatives do believe tech companies censor right-leaning voices, many liberals blame tech companies' inaction on curtailing foreign interference and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories for the election of Donald Trump. Which is to say, you may think big tech is hurting conservatives, but liberals think they're helping conservatives.
- umvi 6y ago
  Democrats want more speech control - "hate speech" moderation/curtailing, misinformation moderation/curtailing, etc. Democrats view right wing news sources as misinformation and want it censored. Republicans don't view their own news sources as misinformation and think they are being censored.
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bconnorwhite 6y ago

The best thing about "tech monopolies" is that there are so many of them

vageli 6y ago
The problem is with word choice. "Tech" has little to do with the business domain.
- bconnorwhite 6y ago
  True, but even after narrowing this, you usually end up with 3/4 of these companies in competition. Messaging? FB vs Apple vs Google Ads? FB vs Google vs Amazon Video? FB vs Google (YouTube) vs Amazon (Twitch) Especially re: Google linking to its own sites, are we now arguing Google has a monopoly over google.com? It gets a bit weird
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    That's only if you rig it by choosing the market to make it turn out that way. They aren't a monopoly in every market they are in. They're monopolies in specific markets. No company has ever been a monopoly in general, except perhaps the Soviet state but even that isn't strictly true. Search? Google. Online retail? Amazon. Video hosting? Google.
  - enumjorge 6y ago
    > are we now arguing Google has a monopoly over google.com? It gets a bit weird I don't know anyone who's arguing that. But I do see people arguing Google having a monopoly on search. In a lot of domains, a business can be created or destroyed entirely on their Google search rank.
    - twblalock 6y ago
      Even if Google search was broken off to a standalone company, it would still have a monopoly on search. The competition just isn't as good at search. Bing has been around for a long time and has managed to gain less than 10% of market share, even though almost everyone has heard of it.

aripickar 6y ago

People have a very optimistic view of what this hearing is going to reveal, and think that it is going to accomplish anything. But it’s largely gonna be republicans performance vomiting rhetoric about tech companies censoring conservative voices with no evidence, and democrats wanting to discuss everything but what the hearing is actually about, anti-trust. I expect a few democrats to make some interesting queries, and the tech news media to report minor stories that are unknown as breaking news. Full disclosure: I work at a subsidiary of Amazon

jcadam 6y ago
Well considering Google, Twitter, Facebook, et. al, are actively working to shape public opinion to the benefit of the Democrats in the lead up to the election, I wouldn't expect a Democratic-controlled legislative body to do anything that might displease them. These tech CEOs, after all, are really the ones in charge here. They participate in this bit of political theater for the benefit of the proles. They probably find the whole thing amusing.
- theplague42 6y ago
  How are they shaping public opinion to benefit Democrats?
  - aripickar 6y ago
    Hint: They're not.
  - chroma 6y ago
    Try running the following experiment: open an incognito window and do a Google search for "antifa violence". Then do the same search on Bing or DuckDuckGo. On Google, the top results are things like "Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years" and "Antifa Activist Killed At ICE Jail Becomes Symbol For The Right And Left".[1] The first headline is outright false[2] and the second is about a man who assaulted a detention center in Tacoma using firebombs and a rifle.[3] On DuckDuckGo[4], the first result is undercover video footage of an antifa leader admitting that they are violent and encouraging recruits to do things such as eye gouge. Other results are from both left and right-leaning media. Some claim antifa doesn't cause violence. Others claim that antifa is the sole cause of violence. In short: it's far more balanced than what Google is showing. You can also look at the political climate inside of Google. The leaked communications are pretty wild. You have people discussing banning recommendations of videos containing "nazis" using "dog whistles" and examples of such "nazis" are PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro[5]. Look at their internal docs on correcting "algorithmic unfairness" in news and search results.[6] They admit to tweaking the autocomplete behavior for both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, as the defaults suggested (correctly) that Martin was a drug dealer. These docs also claim that factually accurate representations of the world can constitute algorithmic unfairness. Look at the internal responses to James Damore's memo: https://imgur.com/a/S48QN https://imgur.com/a/S48QN Damore's politics are left-leaning libertarian. If that's the response he gets for making his opinion known, there is no chance that a work environment like that can accept a conservative viewpoint. Finally (I wish I could find a better source for this), Tucker Carlson describes an email by the head of Google's Multicultural Marketing department. In it, she explains how she used the company's resources & influence to target latino voters in key states with the goal of swinging the election towards Clinton. She even calls it a "silent donation". If what Tucker Carlson says is true, then that is one hell of a smoking gun. 1. https://i.imgur.com/7rqtQrF.png https://i.imgur.com/7rqtQrF.png 2. The trick is that antifa doesn't exactly have a membership list, so technically nobody who commits a crime can be tied to them. If you count those who claim to be anti-fascist, you can get quite the body count. For example, one antifa supporter killed 9 people last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_attack 4. https://i.imgur.com/aDNHvNq.png https://i.imgur.com/aDNHvNq.png 5. https://images.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/adFf4yhVbUojBIGoAymc6/5e2d800a63f92cf37c73181eec4f9c71/on_peterson-REDACTED.png https://images.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/adFf4yhVbUojBIGoAy... 6. https://pv-uploads1.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/06/SS1DocDump.pdf https://pv-uploads1.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/06/SS1DocD... 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7iPJMCxOZY&t=1m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7iPJMCxOZY&t=1m16s

LatteLazy 6y ago

Ultimately we need a viable alternative to the current system before we trash it. And no one has that.

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sschueller 6y ago

Live now: https://youtu.be/1s1uWo1_bzg https://youtu.be/1s1uWo1_bzg

Nelkins 6y ago

I wonder if any of these companies are mining their vast troves of data to research the members of Congress who are asking questions.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

Judging from the types of questions asked during last congressional hearing to these CEOs regarding privacy(They didn't even understand that Android & iOS were from different manufacturers), I would be really surprised if they really understood the difference between having single Appstore with 30% fee vs allowing 3rd party Appstores, not allowing native browser engines and forcing them to use your own browser with different skin etc.

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in3d 6y ago

I wonder what the fact-checkers would say about Pichai’s claims that the ad prices fell by 40% because of more competition... Cook says that the developers have so many other choices like Android, PlayStation, or Windows. This is about the U.S. mobile market where the iOS has a monopoly-like market share in terms of app revenue. Similar to Bezos trying to make an argument that it’s not about online marketshare but all of retail. Zuckerberg should take notes - social media apparently also includes phone and in-person meetings. Cook claims that Apple’s 30% cut is half of what the distributors were charging software publishers or developers before Apple came along to save them. Apparently having your software for sale on the web with just the payment processor’s cut was not a thing.

discordance 6y ago
Apple have 17% of the smartphone market share [0] and 32% of smartphone related revenue [1] worldwide. I understand the constraints on developers/consumers on iOS in regards to the walled garden, but are those numbers considered monopolistic? 0: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/03/apple-iphone-marketshare-growing-amidst-contracting-global-market https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/03/apple-iphone-mark... 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-phone-profits-apple-66-samsung-17-everyone-else-unlucky-13/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...
- in3d 6y ago
  I think you missed some words in my post: “in the U.S.,” “revenue,” “apps.”
- mrep 6y ago
  IOS has a 58% market share in the US [0] which single handedly is well above the threshold of market power using the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index [1] which the antitrust department uses for mergers and acquisitions concerns (they don't care about international users). "The Supreme Court has defined market power as the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market, and monopoly power as the power to control prices or exclude competition" [2]. For people wanting to sell software to mobile users for which web does not suffice, there is no substitute and apple actively excludes you from 58% of the US market if you need mobile software unless you accept Apples 30% cut. With Android at least, they don't exclude you as you can side load like fortnite [3] but Apple is 100% abusing their market power by excluding developers from avoiding their 30% fee. [0]: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america/ https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman_I... [2]: https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-... [3]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/3/17645982/epic-games-fortnite-android-version-bypass-google-play-store https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/3/17645982/epic-games-fortni...

ampgt 6y ago

Am I the only one who finds some of these representatives impressively... unimpressive? And don’t even get me started on the format. How are we supposed to set an example for the world when our representatives won’t even let the CEOs of some of our most successful companies finish answering a question? What a waste of time.

game_the0ry 6y ago

That hearing was a joke, to be frank. Anyone notice how much time the congressmen spoke versus the CEOs? Or how often they were interrupted mid-sentence? They weren't interested in answers, congress wanted to put on a show. Except it was a poor attempt at...whatever they were trying to accomplish - should have been expected given that it was congress. And of course nothing will come of this hearing - those companies are not technical monopolies. That's why they are being grilled in congress, rather than being taken to court, because they would win in court.

sharatvir 6y ago
That’s a product of this limited time format. Without interruptions, nothing prevents the executives from wasting even more time and avoiding answering the question.

yuhong 6y ago

See my Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Effects_of_the_2007-2008_financial_crisis_on_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Effects_of_the_2007-2008...

supernova87a 6y ago

Comparing these companies to tobacco, big banks, airlines? Are you kidding? I'll tell you a simple reason why this won't fly like the other "big company scandals" in the past that the author is alluding to. The success of every one of these FAANG companies is because each one of us uses, buys, and likes using their products on average. Complain once in a while as we might that XYZ is hurting some group on some specialized issue, we still continue to visit their websites, buy their hardware, use their search engines, and yes -- enjoy doing it. Why would these companies be worth billions of $ otherwise? Sorry, I mean Trillions of $. It's not like they're forcing something down our throats and pillaging the earth as their primary reason for existence, or fraudulently filing loan applications in our name or selling shady mortgages. We created them, each one of us in our hour-by-hour behavior, every day. We don't hold our noses and patronize them reluctantly once per year. We do it every minute. Voluntarily. So, no, I don't think the average person cares as much about the specialized negatives of these businesses as you think he/she does. And btw, conduct a self-diagnostic once in a while: reading here on HN, you get an inflated sense of how Apple's 30% cut of developer app store fees is the worst thing in the world that everyone should take to the streets about, or how Google's map API key pricing has become an outrage. For what they get in return, it's not that bad to the average person. Or even average senator or representative.

nojvek 6y ago

I don’t know if the hearing is going to go anywhere. All the CEOs are basically saying “hey we did everything legally in an open market, the power of tech has brought more choice and wealth to everyone, we aren’t monopolies, anyone had a fair shot at bearing us if they have better tech” I’m interested in hearing the other side. Big tech is so big they can afford to take big losses and capture huge markets like maps, android, chrome etc fueled by profits from one part of the business and undercutting the small players until they’re dead. The other bit that surprised me is why Microsoft isn’t part of this. Have they made themselves so diverse that they’re not in the radar anymore? Isn’t what Microsoft doing with bundling a bazillion things in Office 365 fair competition? E.g Teams vs Slack.