4 ms·

This isn't just an American move. The EU is preparing similar antitrust cases and the introduction of a digital tax.

by foepys 6y ago

jeffbee 6y ago
You can trick a Eurocrat into regulating anything, though. The seeds of Euro proceedings against Google were planted years ago by a Microsoft astroturf campaign called FairSearch and the tree was watered since then by incumbent interests like putrescent newspaper conglomerates and software industry also-rans that nobody ever heard of.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  nobody ever heard of. If I were a European, I would benefit a lot more from a flourishing ecosystem of "also-rans" (yuck, so harsh) building their own local workforces and communities. As an American, I miss the days when it was considered acceptable to run a business that makes yourself and your local area rich, instead of the only "cool" thing being an extractive VC-launched all-or-nothing gluttonous monopoly (joining in the harsh adjectives I guess). We would have many more opportunities for all levels with thousands of $50mil companies instead of a handful of $500bil companies.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    > thousands of $50mil companies instead of a handful of $500bil companies Great point. To me, it seems like those $500bil companies have perfected the art of wrangling those people who could be building the $50 million companies. I mean, why risk failure when, did someone say free lunch?
    - njarboe 6y ago
      That and $1/2 million in comp (pre-tax, of course).
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    I'm not willing to take it on faith that in the industries where Google has dominant market share there was formerly a better ecosystem. Many of these efforts are being driven by lobbyists for newspapers who are sad that they lost their local influence and extortionate local advertising monopolies. It's also not obvious to me that in the realm of indexing and searching the web it would be better to have numerous worse choices instead of one big one. Say what you want anecdotally about Google search quality, but it is better than anything else on the market in objective terms. What will the searching public lose if you impair Google's ability to pay for search quality? That's my main beef with the European line of thinking on antitrust, that it considers for some reason the well-being of certain failing companies and doesn't really seem to take into account what the public harms and benefits might be. Whereas in the American approach of the last 40 years, regulators need to show that customers are being harmed, without much regard for competitors.
    - an_opabinia 6y ago
      How can you tell the difference between an earnest concern for public harms and an opinion from a lobbying campaign?
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        I don't know why, I just find it rather easy to identify astroturf campaigns run by spammers, SEO outfits, and Microsoft. Maybe it is just my age but the answer of the question "is Microsoft sincerely trying to save the Web?" is "LOL obviously not." When I read what seem to me to be rational and legitimate criticism of Google, it tends to come from a disinterested source like a law school or philosophers of ethics, or economists. But these also tend to be even-handed, recognizing that it might be globally optimal to have a single search provider, while criticizing Google for things where it is vulnerable to criticism, such as the fact that it both operates the major ads marketplace and owns the largest participant in that market.
  - gumby 6y ago
    These smaller businesses are still the dominant model. VC in total is a vanishingly minuscule portion of the financial sector, and really only works because that is the case. Bigger companies get more press as they employ more people and (more significantly) more people tend to be their customers. Wal Mart is in the press more than Lockheed because Lockheed has few customers. But the Mittlestand (as the Germans call it) is a big part of the US economy.

This isn't just an American move. The EU is preparing similar antitrust cases and the introduction of a digital tax.

by foepys 6y ago

This isn't just an American move. The EU is preparing similar antitrust cases and the introduction of a digital tax.

You can trick a Eurocrat into regulating anything, though. The seeds of Euro proceedings against Google were planted years ago by a Microsoft astroturf campaign called FairSearch and the tree was watered since then by incumbent interests like putrescent newspaper conglomerates and software industry also-rans that nobody ever heard of.

nitrogen 6y ago
nobody ever heard of. If I were a European, I would benefit a lot more from a flourishing ecosystem of "also-rans" (yuck, so harsh) building their own local workforces and communities. As an American, I miss the days when it was considered acceptable to run a business that makes yourself and your local area rich, instead of the only "cool" thing being an extractive VC-launched all-or-nothing gluttonous monopoly (joining in the harsh adjectives I guess). We would have many more opportunities for all levels with thousands of $50mil companies instead of a handful of $500bil companies.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  > thousands of $50mil companies instead of a handful of $500bil companies Great point. To me, it seems like those $500bil companies have perfected the art of wrangling those people who could be building the $50 million companies. I mean, why risk failure when, did someone say free lunch?
  - njarboe 6y ago
    That and $1/2 million in comp (pre-tax, of course).
- jeffbee 6y ago
  I'm not willing to take it on faith that in the industries where Google has dominant market share there was formerly a better ecosystem. Many of these efforts are being driven by lobbyists for newspapers who are sad that they lost their local influence and extortionate local advertising monopolies. It's also not obvious to me that in the realm of indexing and searching the web it would be better to have numerous worse choices instead of one big one. Say what you want anecdotally about Google search quality, but it is better than anything else on the market in objective terms. What will the searching public lose if you impair Google's ability to pay for search quality? That's my main beef with the European line of thinking on antitrust, that it considers for some reason the well-being of certain failing companies and doesn't really seem to take into account what the public harms and benefits might be. Whereas in the American approach of the last 40 years, regulators need to show that customers are being harmed, without much regard for competitors.
  - an_opabinia 6y ago
    How can you tell the difference between an earnest concern for public harms and an opinion from a lobbying campaign?
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      I don't know why, I just find it rather easy to identify astroturf campaigns run by spammers, SEO outfits, and Microsoft. Maybe it is just my age but the answer of the question "is Microsoft sincerely trying to save the Web?" is "LOL obviously not." When I read what seem to me to be rational and legitimate criticism of Google, it tends to come from a disinterested source like a law school or philosophers of ethics, or economists. But these also tend to be even-handed, recognizing that it might be globally optimal to have a single search provider, while criticizing Google for things where it is vulnerable to criticism, such as the fact that it both operates the major ads marketplace and owns the largest participant in that market.
- gumby 6y ago
  These smaller businesses are still the dominant model. VC in total is a vanishingly minuscule portion of the financial sector, and really only works because that is the case. Bigger companies get more press as they employ more people and (more significantly) more people tend to be their customers. Wal Mart is in the press more than Lockheed because Lockheed has few customers. But the Mittlestand (as the Germans call it) is a big part of the US economy.