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Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech
- amelius 5y agoSounds similar to the EU Digital Markets Act. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...
- FridayoLeary 5y agoThey won't.
- mycologos 5y agoI mean, maybe, but this comment is useless without some elaboration.
- fhrow4484 5y ago> Jeff Bezos, this one’s for you. This provision aims at Amazon’s practice of using data it collects from third-party merchants to enhance its own private label offerings. If it passes, the practice would be blatantly illegal. Would it equally apply to physical stores like Safeway, Kroger, Costco's private labels like "Private Selection", "Simple Truth", "Kirkland", ... What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently? (Like go out on their own instead of partnering with the product company to produce "Amazon" branded version of theirs)
- mattnewton 5y agoReminds me of the Florida laws that explicitly carve out exceptions for businesses that run theme parks (cough cough Disney) https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-censorship-law-loophole-for-theme-park-operators-2021-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-censorship-law-looph...
- mod 5y agoIn Arkansas, specific laws were in place to disallow gambling at any establishment besides Oaklawn (a horse racing track), and Southland (dog track). A couple of years ago they allowed for four casino licenses in the state, so there's a couple more options.
- nostrademons 5y agoIt makes me wonder why Google or Facebook hasn't bought Great America yet.
- mattnewton 5y agoIt’s a recent law, there is still time for Faceland or Google America.
- neuro 5y agoI just saw you and nickb’s posts from 2007 searching for something, good to see you again old timer. You still got your hair?
- nostrademons 5y agoYes, but it's a lot whiter now. :-)
- jbverschoor 5y agoNot for bezos anymore
- rootusrootus 5y ago> What makes Amazon different in this regard? Safeway/Kroger/Costco do not have direct third-party merchants, do they? They are just resellers. This is fundamentally different from what Amazon is doing.
- xyzzyz 5y agoThey all have their own store brands.
- rootusrootus 5y agoSure, but if they are the actual customers of their suppliers, it doesn't seem like what Amazon does. I don't walk into Kroger and buy Doritos from Frito-Lay with Kroger just doing the fulfillment and payment processing, do I? I'm actually buying product that Kroger owns. At least this is how I understand it. I am 100% open to being schooled in how it actually plays out. I'm just a software guy, but I like to learn.
- jsolson 5y agoIf you're curious, The Secret Life of Groceries is a good (and interesting) read. One tl; dr thing is that the supermarkets are a _supplier_ to both end customers and those with products to sell. They supply shelf space and customer reach, in the very literal sense that companies bid for things like endcap placement (the end of the aisle being better than being in the aisle, since everyone making an orbit through, say, the deli section will pass your goods).
- rootusrootus 5y agoThanks! That is an interesting aspect. I had not considered that it could be a two-way relationship, rather than the store just buying what they want to sell and putting it on the shelf. I guess it seems a little obvious in retrospect that there must be a bit of that going on, I've long noticed that some suppliers have a lot of responsibility in the store beyond delivering product. Like the beer guy pretty much runs the entire beer aisle. And it's one of the big names supplying all the beer, not just their own. I've seen similar action in some stores by the soft drink vendors and even the bread vendor. Non-store employees on the floor putting stock directly on the shelf.
- felipellrocha 5y agoI mean, those are still awful. This would be a two birds with one stone kind of situation.
- Cerium 5y agoTrader Joe's is the closest to Amazon in this regard. They introduce new products as the name brand, the best sellers are cloned and then replaced with the store brands.
- dec0dedab0de 5y agoAldi is similar, which is kind of interesting because Trader Joes is one of the Aldis. I always wonder how they get away with blatant trademark infringement. They come up with similar product design for the purpose of confusing consumers. I assume they have deals with most of the name brand products, or their parent companies.
- arrosenberg 5y agoI don't know about Trader Joe's specifically, but a lot of "Store Brands" are made in the same place as the name brand. It's just a giant game of price discrimination.
- rurp 5y agoThis is very true. I worked at Traders many years ago and at least back then the store brands were often made by the same name brand company.
- Stratoscope 5y agoAgreed. I never worked there but have shopped there for many years, along with the other usual places like Whole Foods and Safeway. A game I used to play was "spot the TJ's store brand item under its own name at another store." One example is TJ's French Village plain nonfat yogurt, which is very obviously Nancy's yogurt from Springfield Creamery in Oregon. Same exact taste and texture in the same packaging. (Nancy's used to come in clear plastic tubs like TJ's. A few years ago they switched to opaque white for their name brand, but it's still the same product.) Another is some of the frozen Indian foods, which Whole Foods carries under the manufacturer's brand name.
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- schnable 5y agoThey don't operate a marketplace for third party merchants.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoWalmart and Target do.
- Aissen 5y agoThe only difference is this: > ‘covered platforms’ (companies that have a half-million monthly U.S. users and more than $600 billion in market cap) There are only 8 companies in the world that match the market cap. Probably 6 if you add "users": Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and probably Tencent.
- bogota 5y agoSounds like this would be easily defeated by spinning amazon out into different companies? Maybe that is a good end result though.
- ethbr0 5y agoI haven't looked at any formal studies of the net effects of the Bell breakup, but I'd be hard-pressed to say they were net negative. Especially with a relatively light "break-up, then allow to recombine as market evolution renders their previous monopoly moot" long-term approach.
- ben_w 5y agoEspecially as Amazon is already many companies, in many different jurisdictions, and covering different product and service categories: https://opencorporates.com/corporate_groupings/Amazon https://opencorporates.com/corporate_groupings/Amazon
- tedunangst 5y agoSpinning off AWS, which is pretty independent, might be enough.
- ab_testing 5y ago600B seems like a totally arbitrary made up number to target Amazon but leave out Walmart (which is close to 400B). Looks like Walmart lobbying dollars are bearing fruit.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pontus 5y agoI've had the same thought about Google promoting its own products over competitor's in search results. Isn't that the same as Whole Foods putting a stack of their 365 brand cereals at the front of the store?
- paulpauper 5y agoi don't see what the big deal is about google promoting its own products on the results page. All that means is one less slot for wikipedia/pinterest/amazon/ebay/nytimes or some other big site.
- Jaygles 5y agoAnother difference between Amazon and physical stores is that Amazon has pagination. If a product ends up on the second or third page, it will likely not be seen by the vast majority of customers. With physical stores, your options are always all right in front of you.
- nerfhammer 5y agofor physical stores sellers fight over having products placed on eye-level shelves vs. not
- 8note 5y agoOr at the front of the store, vs a back corner
- root_axis 5y agoStores are constrained by the limits of physical space, it's exactly the same thing as an Amazon "first page" except at least with Amazon you have the option to visit the second page. In a physical store anything that would have been relegated to the second page is simply unavailable.
- officialjunk 5y agothere is an analogous experience at physical stores, though. the proximity of items to entryways, cashiers, etc matters for sales. also, which height shelf a product is put on also matters. some at eye level, for example, and others at children's eye level, make certain products more prominent. if you are trying to place a product at a store, how much it would cost you depends greatly on where in the store it is placed.
- Jaygles 5y agoSure, but I would argue that that is more of an analogy to the first page of products only. Things that are beyond the third or fourth page may as well be in the back of the store, and not on the shelves.
- zer00eyz 5y agoYour point is valid and correct. Most of you remember Twinkies, its parent company going bankrupt and them being gone... Those products were delivered to stores, fresh every day(ish) by manufacturer employees and put ON THE SHELF by them... This still remains true for tons of products. For some products grocery stores function like a merchant on amazon. Data tracking... well that really matters to a grocery store, because people have "brand loyalty" and tend not to return (ever again) if their "item" is out of stock. These anchor items are often loss leaders (detergent is the massive example). Amazon isn't any different than anyone else, and isn't even the biggest one (Walmart still has that crown). Oddly I could make an argument that amazon, being allowed to be dominant and pushing large retail out of business would be good for everyone... a return of small retailers might happen on the back of that.
- frumper 5y agoAmazon claims it doesn't have liability if those Twinkie's cause harm like the grocery store would.
- zer00eyz 5y agoThe sale of contaminated beef has happened many many times in my lifetime, leading to massive recalls, even lettuce has seen contamination and outbreaks. The liability has not been on the store, rather the supplier/manufacturer of those products. The local ford dealer wast at fault for your pinto exploding of the tires blowing off your SUV. You didn't get to sue the store that sold you cigarets or round up that gave you cancer...
- dannyr 5y agoIt's the scale! A lot of things that Big Tech is doing is usually fine if you're a company with a small market share.
- tedunangst 5y agoGood thing there's an exception for mom and pop stores like Walmart.
- billjings 5y ago"What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently?" Nothing, and they aren't. Except they're maybe the biggest. The intellectual foundation of this new movement isn't specifically anti big tech. It's anti all kinds of anticompetitive business practices, many of which have had huge negative effects outside of tech. Grocery stores are one of them, but one can point to any area of the economy and find businesses engaging in what is currently standard practice that the new movement is seeking to outlaw, or in many cases just restore the teeth to laws that have been ignored for years, or just so narrowly interpreted that they're meaningless.
- dantheman 5y agoThese aren't anti-competitive, they increase competition. The help the consumer get better prices.
- timmytokyo 5y agoUntil they push the competition out, and then there is no more downward pressure on prices.
- raverbashing 5y agoUntil they become the monopoly and are free to hike prices
- dantheman 5y agoUnless the monopoly is granted/enforced by the government this has literally never happened.
- Supermancho 5y ago>> Until they become the monopoly and are free to hike prices > Unless the monopoly is granted/enforced by the government this has literally never happened. It happens often enough. So often, you can find stories about it all over...if you looked. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/business/amazon-dc-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/business/amazon-dc-lawsui... https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/11/21431962/public-citizen-amazon-price-gouging-coronavirus-covid-19-hand-sanitizer-masks-soap-toilet-paper https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/11/21431962/public-citizen-a... https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-bernanke-revealed-in-texas-antitrust-case-11618097760 https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-bernanke... etc. It's a matter of them getting caught and when, because nothing lasts forever, even for the tech robber barons.
- Paedor 5y agoThere's a great episode by planet money on the difference between Amazon and physical stores, the transcript is here: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/697060225 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/697060225. They mention two key differences. The first is just that Amazon is arguably more dominant than any physical distributor, and has more power over offerings. The second is that if you make a new product for a retailer, the retailer usually has to invest in you to some extent, by giving you physical space and buying your product for resale. So, there's some shared risk and for developing new products. Amazon, on the other hand, doesn't need to give you anything to see how a new product will play out, so it might have too much of a position of power.
- Hongwei 5y agoI buy the first, not the second. Retailers often charge consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs) for preferential placement in aisle and carry no risk on inventory. The bigger the retailer (eg. bestbuy, walmart), the more likely they can assume no risk on inventory with a full return policy to the CPG. Best Buy just rents out space on their store floor to individual brands.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 5y agoIt's the monopoly aspect. Amazon is a quasi-monopoly for sellers in the sense that many sellers can only be profitable selling on Amazon, they have no choice. If Amazon has data on their entire customer base, clones their product and puts them out of business, you can view that as monopoly abuse of power. On the other hand, Ruffles sells their potato chips to hundreds if not thousands of national grocery store chains. If some stores sell their own potato chips as well, those are just blips. Stores don't have insight into Ruffles' sales nationwide across all chains.
- graeme 5y agoThere are basically three large grocery chains in the US, plus Target and Walmart. The e commerce market isn’t so different. Amazon has a 40% share. Walmart is a big player, then Shopify et al enable lots of DTC companies. Amazon is only a monopoly if you redefine the relevant market to be “Amazon” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_i...
- bingidingi 5y agoI believe Amazon is more like 50%+ now, and to compared to brick & mortar... Wal-Mart is considered huge and still only ~10% of the market. There are more than 3 grocery chains in your link, I think you may have overlooked the regional chains listed below.
- graeme 5y agoNope, 40.4%: https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecommerce-though-its-market-share-varies-by-category https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecomme...
- bingidingi 5y agomaybe I was looking at bad data? this says 51.2% of retail ecommerce https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2021/amazon-walmart-nearly-tied-in-full-year-share-of-retail-sales/ https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2021/amazon-walmart-nearl...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoThis tired take is in every single thread.
- jjcm 5y agoSafeway, Kroger, and Costco's market caps are all under the 600b limit. Even Walmart is under this. What makes Amazon different is Amazon controls 38% of all online retail sales in the United States[1]. No company comes close to their dominance in the market. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-13/emarketer-cuts-estimate-of-amazon-s-u-s-online-market-share https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-13/emarketer...
- missedthecue 5y agoAnd because they trade at a frothy multiple.
- 8note 5y agoHow much big box retail sales does Walmart control?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fidesomnes 5y agoLeftism in a nutshell: biting the hand that feeds.
- flapjaxy 5y agoIt still baffles me how these laws have such broad support but ISPs and telcos are no where in the discussion.
- foobarian 5y agoSee above re: lobbying
- optimiz3 5y agoPerfect is the enemy of the good.
- annadane 5y agoYep. The HN whataboutism is really annoying
- smolder 5y agoThe USG has a codependent relationship with its telcos and ISPs, just like it does with big tech. You can point to these bills as evidence that the USG intends to control tech giants, but remember how long people have been complaining about some of the issues these bills address, and that they still need to be voted on. Also remember that all these companies sell services to the USG.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago>Bill 4: Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act of 2021 >This bill from Rep. Joe Neguse would increase fees for mergers and help fund the regulators. >Text: “There is authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2022— $252,000,000 for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice; and $418,000,000 for the Federal Trade Commission.” Isn't tech specific, let alone big tech specific. Huge fan here.
- sbacic 5y agoI remember reading once that tech companies, on average, lobby less that traditional industries, such as fossil fuels and finance. I wonder if the lesson they will take from this is that, rather than reform, they should invest more in lobbying. Considering how much money and influence on the public opinion they have, that's a rather scary thought.
- WalterBright 5y agoI read that Microsoft never did any lobbying before the anti-trust suit. Once you're big enough to be a target, you have to spend money on lobbying, and contribute to campaigns.
- Growling_owl 5y ago> Once you're big enough to be a target, you have to spend money on lobbying, and contribute to campaigns. Absolutely not. You do the opposite of that. You go at layer zero. At the population level and enter the culture wars arena with the goal of winning. Some of these companies are structured in a way that the founders are poised to retain control of their companies till they retire (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Berkshire). If you are Zuck or Brin or Dorsey and you want to do this until you are 95 like Buffett then you are better off barking and biting back, acquire a reputation of a fighter so that people like Sanders and Warren would leave you alone. There will be consequences such as employees criticizing and leaving but in the long term you are better off fighting. When a politician comes after you and your company, you just attack back, if you are not prepared to do this you should simply not start a proper company and opt for a carrer in a hedge fund instead, where you can make money in the dark. Founders and CEOs should not be the first offender but when they are called out they should absolutely attack back. Sanders is pouring manure all over corporate America since 2015 and all he had to endure was Michael Bloomberg attacking him back for half a debate, and wouldn't have happened if Bloomberg didn't decide to run. If a guy like Bezos or Zuck were to tweet back at Sanders something to the tune "I've started a company in a garage and now it has the same credit rating of the US Government, what have you done with your life?" That would be fair game, politicians prey on weakness, they smell it and keep biting till you lay there unconscious
- justinclift 5y agoSounds like good news to me. :)
- h2odragon 5y agoGood reporting! Congress is made of people, the process of lawmaking is just group text editing, and they answer their phones. If you think any of these ideas are good ones and would make good law; call your Congresspipples and tell them so. Otherwise the only people they hear from are the sleazy lobbyists speaking paid words, and the silly beltway denizens who wouldn't know the real world if it shat on their desk.
- beastman82 5y agoUnless the real world shits on their desk with a large campaign contribution they still won't care.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoFunnily enough, some politicians care about their jobs.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gred 5y agoI usually have a libertarian bent, but I'm finding it hard to muster much sympathy here. If these companies have generally angered the "small government" crowd, I don't know who they expect to protect them from the "big government" crowd.
- motohagiography 5y agoReminds me of what Machiavelli said about coming to power using mercenaries and auxilieries the way the current crop of politicians have used tech today: "Captains of mercenaries are either able men or they are not. If they are, you cannot trust them, since they will always seek their own aggrandizement, either by overthrowing you who are their master, or by the overthrow of others contrary to your desire." What did these companies think would happen if they became partisan mercenaries? Future reference: always back underdogs or nobody at all because when they win you still have some leverage. The platforms just made themselves disposable stepping stones and now they are being disposed of. I'm untroubled by it because it was staggeringly naive on their part to compromise themselves, and we need fresh platforms anyway, but they really walked right into that one.
- TheBlight 5y agoCounter-point: They've never hit them with any fine/punishment so they probably won't throw "the kitchen sink" at them now.
- qwerty456127 5y agoWhat if the FAANG companies were paying taxes like ordinary businesses do, wouldn't this be enough to fund free medical services for every US resident?
- creato 5y agoIt's not even remotely close. FAANG total revenue is $275 billion [1]. National health expenditures are $3.8 trillion [2]. You'd have to tax FAANG on revenue at a rate of over 1000% for this to be true. 1. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/trading-investing/faang-stocks/ https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/tr... 2. https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NHE-Fact-Sheet https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...
- grumple 5y agoYour first source does not cite revenue. For reference, just Amazon's total revenue for 2020 was 386 billion [1]. Apple's was 274 billion [2]. I think your point still stands. FAANG alone obviously won't get us there, but taxing corporations generally would help (since other nations are able to afford state funded healthcare on a level of taxation only slightly higher than the US, despite having less income). 1. https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-details/2021/Amazon.com-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-Results/default.aspx https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-details... 2. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY20_Q4_Consolidated_Financial_Statements.pdf https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY20_Q4_Consolidated_Fin...
- legitster 5y agoMost businesses don't pay corporate income tax. Income is passed through to the owners/partners and it shows up on their person income. C-Corps (where corporate income is separate and taxable) account for only 5% of businesses in the US. Also, the Medicare for All proposal (which seems to have gotten the furthest) would require ~ $4-5 trillion dollars a year. Completely taking Amazon for all it's worth would fund it for 1/3 of a year.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThey pissed off the left by being sociopathic big businesses that treated people poorly. They pissed off the right by exerting perceived control over public discourse. They've pissed off government in general by swinging around their power when called out on these things. It wasn't a question of if the feds would screw them it was a question of when.
- fallingknife 5y agoThat's not really why they pissed off the left though. What other industry treats its workers better than tech? They pissed off the left by moving in on their turf. Big tech is a direct threat to universities, journalism, media, and entertainment industries. It's not a threat, and even a benefit to transportation, oil/gas/mining, and agriculture, which are more republican industries.
- lovich 5y ago>What other industry treats its workers better than tech? There's a bit of a disconnect between what a FAANG company considers an employee and what the colloquial definition of employees are at a company. The large corporations have shed every worker they can that's unrelated to their core business, such as by contracting out security or cleaning. Then the large corporations say they treat their employees better and point at the ones remaining who get all the nice perks. The average person however, sees someone who goes to work every day at the same corporate campus and views them as employees who are not treated well
- fallingknife 5y agoYes, but that happens in every industry, and this is about why the left hates tech in particular.
- unionpivo 5y agoBecause tech is very good at it.¸ There is a reason why a lot of people consider uber and other similar business tech, even though their core business is not tech.
- didibus 5y ago> This is very clearly aimed at advertising on Amazon, potentially Google as well, where merchants often must pay to gain visibility in the search results I'm a little confused here. Are they saying that this would prevent a business to pay to be listed at the top as an ad for some specific searches in those results?
- throwawaysea 5y agoAlso see WSJ article on Amazon potentially needing to shed assets: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27474448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27474448
- tschellenbach 5y agoI spoke to a commission of congressman about this topic. (they wanted to talk to small startups). It seems really difficult to effectively regulate this. - acquisitions are part of what make the startup ecosystem work. It's not at all clear which acquisitions you should block - the bundling approach that google uses makes things like android free - you dont want apps on iOS and android running their own payment infrastructure since some will abuse it There definitely needs to be regulation, but its not at all easy to see what shape it should take.
- shkkmo 5y agoYou don't think that the huge start up acquisitions market has a negative distorting effect on tech entrepreneurship and innovation? I feel like it prioritizes growth at any cost and deprioritizes the disruption of the established tech players.
- SllX 5y ago> There definitely needs to be regulation, but its not at all easy to see what shape it should take. How do you draw the conclusion that there definitely needs to be regulation if you have no idea what you would be regulating? Everything about this pan-societal debate has been disappointing because it boils down to: “how do we draw up Bills of Attainder without calling them that and without completely wiping out the free flow of money and capital in the Valley?”
- bogwog 5y ago> acquisitions are part of what make the startup ecosystem work. That's such BS. A startup whose only business plan is to get acquired doesn't deserve to succeed in a competitive market. If that route becomes nonviable and a bunch of silicon valley startups go under, then good riddance. The US economy needs startups with sustainable business practices and highly competitive products and services. Not acquihire schemes.
- Jcowell 5y agoMy question is why not ? If it’s something thriving in the competitive market why should it not be allowed to succeed ?
- paulpauper 5y ago>The bills may change before they’re introduced, and they’ll inevitably go through a political process that will water them down. But even if only a portion of what’s written gets passed, the tech giants will lose several advantages they’ve exploited in recent years. Yeah that is the rub. It's like in 1998 "we're gonna break up Microsoft!" 2002: "ok Microsoft will agree to make some some changes to their business but otherwise whatever" Big tech is going to get bigger. Congress does not want to risk destabilizing the economy and and losing reelection as a result by being too hard on tech. These companies employ a lot of people and generate a lot of econ value even if there are a lot of reasons to complain about their business practices.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThe federal government will destabilize the economy the nanosecond it sees big tech as a bigger threat to its power than economic instability. The question is can tech boil the frog so they never notice.
- minsc__and__boo 5y ago>The federal government will destabilize the economy the nanosecond it sees big tech as a bigger threat to its power than economic instability. Given that tech companies obey court orders, subpoenas, and the letter of the law, I don't think that slippery slope is currently a problem.
- betwixthewires 5y agoNormally I'd agree with you, but I've been thinking on this for a while and when you look at history this is not the case. Prominent examples are Southwestern Bell and Standard Oil. The elected officials in the US government are happy to take campaign contributions and play the game and let the monopolies run wild, but when their behaviors threaten the monopoly of power the US government has or threatens political stability the US government acts, sometimes very heavy handed and often effectively.
- machello13 5y ago
- ethbr0 5y agoI've come around and landed more on the opinion that we're now enabling our jailors. Light tech regulation was exactly the correct approach in the 1990s (and arguably the 2000s). It enabled mind-boggling rapid and stunning innovation. ... However, the massive corporate fortunes built by the winners of those times are now primarily enabling rent seeking. Google and Facebook's other work is interesting in the same way that Bell Labs was interesting -- great for a few, but funded by taxing everyone (albeit via tracking and ad market control in this instance). And they've learned from their predecessors' demises that part of their winnings need to be continually re-invested in buying startups that might threaten their dominance. IMHO, everyone will be better off if Facebook, Google, and Amazon are shattered into small enough independent pieces that (1) "get bought" is no longer the startup win condition & (2) they have peer level competitors in all markets in which they participate. Apple and Microsoft? Mandate open app stores and devices, if an owning user so chooses. Thinking back to the 90s... if anyone has guaranteed revenue streams out 10 and 20 years these days, the market as a whole isn't competitive enough. That should be enough time for the entire playing field to upend itself. At least, it used to be.
- skak 5y agoHow do you (and most other people, especially Americans) not realize how unrealistic this is? It’s such a common refrain to say “break `em up!” but it seems as if nobody stops to question why it never happens despite it’s popularity... These corporations control the government because the same people demanding to “break `em up!” have also been demanding “small government!” for decades on end, which in practice simply means a government that works for the corporate private sector. The morale of this story is that your solution is no solution at all, and to the extent that it is a solution the means to implement it are nowhere to be found.
- danShumway 5y ago> These corporations control the government So proposing these bills is more feasible, because... why exactly? Are you under the impression that corporations aren't allowed to lobby about bills? What makes you think that legislating tech will be easier than breaking tech up? Complicated rules about vertical integration aren't going to be less susceptible to lobbying and corporate FUD.
- psychlops 5y agoWhat exactly do these new bills do that the Sherman and Clayton antitrust laws don't do already?
- tedunangst 5y agoSpecifically target only companies with $600 billion market caps.
- mr_toad 5y ago> What exactly do these new bills do that the Sherman and Clayton antitrust laws don't do already? They play better in the sticks.
- zero_deg_kevin 5y agoIf past efforts are any indication, whatever regulatory scheme they come up with will cost these companies a good deal of time and money without doing anything to effectively solve the problem.
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- hamilyon2 5y agoCan anyone please explain to me, what the covered platform means? Will duckduckgo become covered platform? Microsoft?
- taylodl 5y agoThis is going to be interesting to watch as these companies are HUGE political campaign donors...
- nerdponx 5y agoSomewhat OT, but I love how this "kitchen sink" idiom has become so warped over the last several years. As far as I know (native AmE), the original expression was "everything but the kitchen sink", which evokes the idea of taking everything in the kitchen and using it all in a recipe, only stopping short of dismantling the kitchen itself. Whether through mishearing or laziness, the "everything but the" part has been dropped. I only noticed it in the last few years, but maybe it's been happening for a lot longer than that. So it's now totally the opposite: the only thing in the expression is the kitchen sink, i guess suggesting that there's a bunch of junk in the sink? But this title is even better. We have abandoned all pretense of caring about the meaning of the expression. In 2021, Chuck Schumer is going to call Mark Zuckerberg in to testify, and he is going to physically hurl a big metal sink at him. I know that language evolves and stuff, but it's pretty funny to see such a silly corruption of an already-kind-of-silly idiom in a "serious" title.
- crazygringo 5y agoI think you're confusing it a bit... One expression still is "everything but the kitchen sink", which means all reasonable effort. But that means the kitchen sink is now the metaphorical "last thing", i.e. the full extent of our effort, the theoretical maximum. So to "throw the kitchen sink" at something is to put in all your effort, literally everything you've got. (And there's no need for junk in the sink...) It's a different expression with a different meaning but derived from the first. And of course metaphors are very often silly... that's why we love using and abusing them! :)
- nerdponx 5y agoI've never heard that one before, but it would be pretty clever. I think most people just use it wrong.
- crazygringo 5y agoWhat do you mean using it wrong? The article is using it in exactly the way I described. "Throw the kitchen sink at something" is a widely used, valid expression these days. People are using it to mean expending every effort, so people seem to be using it right. And the wonderful thing about language is that however most people are using it is by definition what it means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description
- cletus 5y agoGiven the current state of the Senate, it seems unlikely there is going to be any big legislative changes before 2024. 2022 is still eons away (in political timescales) but a fairly likely scenario seems to be that the GOP will narrowly gain the House and the Democrats will pick up 1 seat in the Senate. So we're largely arguing academic situations. And the thing about that is you then have a lot of people who are virtue signaling rather than genuinely arguing a position because they know their rhetorics, even their votes, won't change anything. It's why opposition parties always vote for campaign finance reform. So I'm highly skeptical of the need for any government action here, be it sweeping legislation or antitrust. There are several reasons for this: 1. Big tech companies are more fragile than you might think. Government action is slow. As we've seen from Myspace, Yahoo and the like, big companies can disappear almost overnight. If a company can face an existential threat and possibly disappear within a few years then, by definition, it's not the monopoly you think it is. It's certainly not Standard Oil. 2. Western companies have been largely excluded from Chinese markets while those companies have far less restrictions elsewhere; 3. Chinese companies are essentially an extension of the state. US companies are not, not to the same degree anyway. What we actually need is company-agnostic action that protects consumers, their data and what you can do that with that data. This is sort of happening already thanks to the EU (eg GDPR). The US needs to start extending those protections to US consumers. And that needs to apply to both domestic and foreign companies.
- tootahe45 5y ago> Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech Didn't America just elect a big-tech puppet govt or did i miss something.
- ojbyrne 5y agoAnd right below this story there's a link to how Amazon got provisions that would have affected them removed from a bill that actually passed the Senate[1]. Discussing 5 separate bills sponsored by Democrats in the house like they might actually go anywhere seems ludicrous. 1.https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/09/amazon-consumer-china-legislation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/09/amazon-...
- crazygringo 5y agoI can see some app store regulation coming (which will have minimal impact on big tech's profits), but there just isn't enough political support for breaking up America's success-story companies. It's not gonna happen. But part of me wonders, if it did -- might the broken-up companies turn out to be more valuable in aggregate than the original ones? Remember, when the gov't split up AT&T that's exactly what happened.
- vonsydov 5y ago600 billion? Wtf is that number? It could be pegged to something.
- king07828 5y agoCreate a monopoly tax that incentivises large companies to "right size". E.g., if the company is larger than X and has captured a market (like google with search) then tax all revenue above a threshold percentage of the market. For example, the market is $100B and the company makes $90B revenue, then tax away everything above $40B in revenue. This may take away the incentive of a large company to take too much market share and may encourage them to enable competitors. The parameters (company_size, marketshare_percentage, tax rate, etc.) may be adjusted to maximize performance
- cwkoss 5y agoThe 'market size' part seems squishy and game-able. I've always liked the idea of revenue-neutral progressive taxes on corporate revenue. Tax economy of scale. Ex. Zero corporate taxes on the first 100k of revenue. For every order of magnitude above this revenue is taxed at ~1% more. $1M in revunue -> 1% $1B in revenue -> 4% $100B in revenue -> 6% Then reduce other corporate taxes to make it revenue neutral. In the most extreme case, the 1% figure or the curve could be tuned so that this is the only tax corporations pay. This encourages companies to split: if your economy of scale isn't yielding enough to justify the tax, you could spin off multiple smaller companies that would each be more profitable. The capacity for corporations to do evil is directly proportional to concentration of power. Smaller companies won't be able to afford as many lobbyists, their threats to move their businesses will be less existential for municipalities and they'll get less-sweet sweetheart deals. Being "Too Big to Fail" is unsustainable and wasteful. This would be a massive boon for competition. Small businesses would be easier to start. Businesses may choose to stop growing: if you're making a healthy profit, don't jeopardize your margin in a perpetual struggle to amass the most power, leaving room in the market for competitors to coexist and meaningfully compete on quality.
- xallarap 5y agoThrow the toilet at big gay AL while you're at it! Or the hotel industry. Since trump has a hotel it must be dirtier than a bloody 69. Also, friends sucks. In other words, we need to cancel the cancel culture movement.
- summerlight 5y agoI think this can be easily defeated by breaking companies into a cartel of smaller companies which effectively operate as is. This $600B cap should go down significantly to prevent this, something like $50B but I don't expect that to happen thanks to Walmart, Verizon and Comcast.
- weezin 5y agoTech has been a huge deflationary pressure since the 90s. I believe that heavy regulation in this space can cause a scary amount of inflation given the monetary policy that was used to combat this deflation.
- amadeuspagel 5y ago> D) Force businesses to buy ads to survive > Text: The bill would make it unlawful to do anything that "conditions access to the covered platform or preferred status on the platform on the purchase or use of other products or services offered by the covered platform operator." > Analysis: This is very clearly aimed at advertising on Amazon, potentially Google as well, where merchants often must pay to gain visibility in the search results. Doesn't this basically outlaw ads? Aren't all ads "preferred status on the platform"? If I offer a product on amazon, and there are already hundreds of other people offering the same thing, who already have a lot of sales and reviews, how else should I be able to gain visibility other then by buying an ad?
- bpye 5y agoMy take is to compare how ads are displayed today, vs maybe 10 years ago. Ads today are almost indistinguishable from organic content, and are typically at the top of any results. I would think that ads could still exist if organic results were still prioritised, and probably that the ads are clearly marked.
- amadeuspagel 5y ago> Ads today are almost indistinguishable from organic content If that's the problem then there should be specific rules addressing that. > and are typically at the top of any results. I don't think ads were ever not at the top of the results. > I would think that ads could still exist if organic results were still prioritised What does that mean concretely? How many organic results would have to be above the ads?
- repsilat 5y ago>> Ads today are almost indistinguishable from organic content > If that's the problem then there should be specific rules addressing that. Honest question, why? If ads make the experience worse for users then the page owner will suffer and be vulnerable to competition. If they make the experience better (possibly by raising money to fund unrelated improvements) it's pro-consumer. Is the problem that it's deceitful? That it's fraud? That users are tricked into clicking a link? IMO the barrier to regulation should be pretty high, and I'm not sure this is something where the government needs to get involved. (Now, if the ad content appears to be attributed to someone, I guess that person could consider it defamatory. And if it's untrue or illegal I could see the page owner being liable. But "not clearly an ad" is too thin.)
- mrobin88 5y agoin the past it was antivirus and window promoting there own. later they have the best antivirus and other ones are ads and targeted as cloned adware. then it was the browser war. obviously firefox is the answer but it is the same as chrome. minus a few algorithms but in the end they are neck and neck with features. They will end up making a superior product. minus the distributors ie slack, discord, and whatever next gen tech companies.... (Ycombinator)......politicians want kickbacks and favors.and the giant 5 will continue to put out superior products that the general masses will end up consuming. or services and data will be stored on their infastructure. this bill does nothing. besides pander to a red base and make polititions some kickback bucks, and free advertisement for the big 5.
- lazyeye 5y agoExcellent. Hopefully they'll also be able to do something about the massive profit-shifting by these companies where they extract massive profits from countries and contribute virtually nothing back in tax. Its also laughable how they loudly advocate for E2E encryption to "protect people's privacy" whilst they themselves, monetize and invade people's privacy on a scale never before seen in human history. Big tech truly are the robber-barons of the 21st century.
- anotherevan 5y agoWhenever these discussions about breaking up or regulating Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc come up, I often wonder how much of it is that these are nice big, visible targets that make politicians look good to demonise, rather than that it would genuinely improve lives and society. And leading from that, which much less visible behemoths and industries having a kitchen sink or two launched in their direction would generate societal improvement.
- truth_seeker 5y agoThis bill must pass. There is too much monopoly created by tech giants.
- bawana 5y agoWhy should the federal government unilaterally regulate US big tech and do it openly? Do they want to trigger massive wastes of money in commissions to analyze the problem, hiring consultants to generate reams of bs, legal fees, etc. It would be a much fairer and economical solution to get the NSA to plant ransomware in every large company with monopolistic practices across the globe. Why single out FAANG? What about Alibaba? Tencent? Siemens? And all the others I do not even know about? It's time for the world to get a BIG reset.
- kumarvvr 5y agoTo think there might be legitimate fear in the Congress, that going too hard on big tech, might lead to losing elections shows how much the locus of power has shifted from elected representatives to corporations.
- Animats 5y agoNone of the proposed bills are that severe. Most of the behaviors in Bill 1 are already illegal under current law. The FTC has been out to lunch on enforcement for years. Bill 2 is broader, but not well defined. Bill 3 is about data portability, a feature nobody actually uses even when available, as it is in Europe. Bill 4 is about getting the FTC and DOJ enough money to do their jobs. These jobs are hard because Congress hasn't enacted a "bright line" standard that can be easily enforced. Amy Klobuchar, in her book, "Antitrust", suggests defining 30% market share as the point beyond which antitrust enforcement should start. None of these bills go that far. Bill 5 is about stopping mergers which increase tying. But they're not about really stopping tying. None of these do any of the following: - Force Google to pick one business and split off all the others. They could keep search with ads, but would have to sell off third party ads, YouTube, and the data center business. - Force Amazon to take on all the responsibilities of a seller for all merchandise on their platform. - Force Facebook to sell off Instagram. Also, none of these bills address AT&T or Comcast, which have real monopolies, not just market dominance. This set of bills is thus mostly PR, not real change.
- sixdimensional 5y agoNot to mention, nothing on cloud egress fees. That is probably one easy way to encourage competition. Eliminate the egress fees. If it costs nothing abnormal to use services across clouds or on premises, then you can likely pick and choose best of breed anywhere as long as there is a decent network.
- kragen 5y agoCopyrights, patents, and legally-enforceable trade secrets are government-granted monopolies on particular inventions and works of authorship. Granting such monopolies may be good public policy in many cases, though it is never without its deadweight costs. However, it always carries the risk that the grantee will overexploit their monopoly, to the detriment of the public. In this case, there are at least two possible public policy options: 1. Reduce or eliminate the monopolies. 2. Continue to grant such monopolies, while attempting to limit their overexploitation through other means, such as prohibiting the forms of abuse that were most egregious three or four years ago. Unaccountably, Congress seems to have chosen option #2. I doubt it will be effective.
- iammisc 5y agoGood. Big tech alienated their only natural defenders the gop, declared them it's enemy, and is now reaping its effects. No one is going to feel sad. Most will feel vindicated. Good for country unity.