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There’s certainly some cartel-like behaviour going on, such as the recently uncovered collusion between Facebook and Google in the ad markets. That has to be st

by simonh 5y ago

There’s certainly some cartel-like behaviour going on, such as the recently uncovered collusion between Facebook and Google in the ad markets. That has to be stamped on. I’m a little uneasy about Facebook owning WhatsApp, but I can’t see any concrete way they are able to use that to significantly exclude competition. I just don’t see how Google is leveraging its other properties in significant ways to exclude say Bing or DDG. I use Google docs and gmail, but what has that got to do with whether I use Google search or Bing? What anti-trust action do you think is needed, and what is it’s desired outcome? I don’t know what ‘breaking up Facebook ’ really means, except maybe making them sell WhatsApp. What would that achieve?

salawat 5y ago
The essence of anti-trust is killing vertical integration, or at least keeping that integration from getting so deep it's harmful to the ability to maintain a healthy marketplace. When you start to see all eggs start to get destined for one basket (Facebook, Amazon, Google, or Microsoft), and especially in Google's or Apple's case of buyout and extinguish, you have a problem. Amazon is also right on top of that precarious position as well; sitting on top of and utilizing third-party sales data to front-run. It's not just about harm to the consumer, it's harm to the market as a whole. The case of Tech in particular is fascinating, because what their service offerings enable is apparently highly destabilizing to the very authorities that would regulate them. And no, Tech isn't the only sector on my sh*tlist. Media consolidation has gotten rather out of hand as well in my opinion. Walmart has also started to devastate the dairy industry for everyone but the industrial ops as well after buying out one of the big packaging outfits.
- simonh 5y ago
  OK, I'll ask again. What action do you think needs to be taken, and how would it improve the market for users? How should be prevent these companies from being monopolies, accepting for a moment that they are. I still don't know what "break up Google" or "Break up Facebook" actually means and how that would help. There are bits of them you could forcefully spin off, but so what?
  - salawat 5y ago
    Simple. You (a company) do one thing. You do not absorb other companies and extinguish them. Somebody else does the same thing you do, but a bit different? Want to merge? Bend over, cuz here comes the part where you have to painstakingly prove why you merging with them is good, and won't subject the market to crippling hyperoptimization forces. Walmart took control of pricing in the dairy sector causing small operations to no longer be able to compete, propped up by income from other revenue streams. Google has basically set up a value desert around itself as far as advertising goes. As a knock on, it's extinguished potential competitor/disruptor after disruptor. Facebook has absorbed and integrated personal info on a gargantuan scale with the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions. Action items off the top of my head: Alphabet gets dissolved. Facebook calves off Instagram/WhatsApp. Bare minimum. Start an investigation into how vertical integration of brick and mortar grocers and packaging Industries effects actors in that space. Murdoch I'd have to do more research on, as he's a relatively recent arrival on my list. Amazon gets to decide if it's going to be a logistics company, or a platform for the sellers, or it's own "brick and mortar"-like. If marketplace, no using third-party seller for order flow analysis and front running. AWS gets calved, period. The bigger you get, the more regulators take a stake in shaping your growth, to the breaking point. Thems the breaks. Stay small if you want to do it your way. Risk becoming national infrastructure/utility as the numbers of M&A's increase. It's not all stick though. A company can do a strategic "merge-and-release" whereby for a short period of time, a company can acquire another, help it scale, then calve off after a period. After a certain size point, this is the only arrangement by which consolidation can happen. Calving off of industrial verticals is required for further permanent merger activity to continue. The end goal of this doctrine is to keep network effects at bay. Once you start getting snowball effect, your shareholder's needs take second place to stakeholder's needs. Period. It is insane how effective a one way wealth funnel our system can become once we stop trustbusting. Oh, every telecom merger in the past 10 years gets audited, and gets subjected to a public review. Any found to have not significantly increased in the benefit delivered to the end user gets an asset auction, loses eligibility for bidding on municipal projects, all last mile municipal ISP bans are nulled. I'd throw in a day in the stocks as a target of rotten vegetation in the town square for lobbyists that have been intentionally obtuse, but I really don't think that's within the realm of possibility. All of this is liable to change if someone would be interested in hiring me for a reasonable sum to map it all out full-time complete with authority to engage in legal discovery to get what info I don't have access to that'd actually make anything in this post more than frustrated pontificating.

by simonh 5y ago

salawat 5y ago

The essence of anti-trust is killing vertical integration, or at least keeping that integration from getting so deep it's harmful to the ability to maintain a healthy marketplace. When you start to see all eggs start to get destined for one basket (Facebook, Amazon, Google, or Microsoft), and especially in Google's or Apple's case of buyout and extinguish, you have a problem. Amazon is also right on top of that precarious position as well; sitting on top of and utilizing third-party sales data to front-run. It's not just about harm to the consumer, it's harm to the market as a whole. The case of Tech in particular is fascinating, because what their service offerings enable is apparently highly destabilizing to the very authorities that would regulate them. And no, Tech isn't the only sector on my sh*tlist. Media consolidation has gotten rather out of hand as well in my opinion. Walmart has also started to devastate the dairy industry for everyone but the industrial ops as well after buying out one of the big packaging outfits.

simonh 5y ago
OK, I'll ask again. What action do you think needs to be taken, and how would it improve the market for users? How should be prevent these companies from being monopolies, accepting for a moment that they are. I still don't know what "break up Google" or "Break up Facebook" actually means and how that would help. There are bits of them you could forcefully spin off, but so what?
- salawat 5y ago
  Simple. You (a company) do one thing. You do not absorb other companies and extinguish them. Somebody else does the same thing you do, but a bit different? Want to merge? Bend over, cuz here comes the part where you have to painstakingly prove why you merging with them is good, and won't subject the market to crippling hyperoptimization forces. Walmart took control of pricing in the dairy sector causing small operations to no longer be able to compete, propped up by income from other revenue streams. Google has basically set up a value desert around itself as far as advertising goes. As a knock on, it's extinguished potential competitor/disruptor after disruptor. Facebook has absorbed and integrated personal info on a gargantuan scale with the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions. Action items off the top of my head: Alphabet gets dissolved. Facebook calves off Instagram/WhatsApp. Bare minimum. Start an investigation into how vertical integration of brick and mortar grocers and packaging Industries effects actors in that space. Murdoch I'd have to do more research on, as he's a relatively recent arrival on my list. Amazon gets to decide if it's going to be a logistics company, or a platform for the sellers, or it's own "brick and mortar"-like. If marketplace, no using third-party seller for order flow analysis and front running. AWS gets calved, period. The bigger you get, the more regulators take a stake in shaping your growth, to the breaking point. Thems the breaks. Stay small if you want to do it your way. Risk becoming national infrastructure/utility as the numbers of M&A's increase. It's not all stick though. A company can do a strategic "merge-and-release" whereby for a short period of time, a company can acquire another, help it scale, then calve off after a period. After a certain size point, this is the only arrangement by which consolidation can happen. Calving off of industrial verticals is required for further permanent merger activity to continue. The end goal of this doctrine is to keep network effects at bay. Once you start getting snowball effect, your shareholder's needs take second place to stakeholder's needs. Period. It is insane how effective a one way wealth funnel our system can become once we stop trustbusting. Oh, every telecom merger in the past 10 years gets audited, and gets subjected to a public review. Any found to have not significantly increased in the benefit delivered to the end user gets an asset auction, loses eligibility for bidding on municipal projects, all last mile municipal ISP bans are nulled. I'd throw in a day in the stocks as a target of rotten vegetation in the town square for lobbyists that have been intentionally obtuse, but I really don't think that's within the realm of possibility. All of this is liable to change if someone would be interested in hiring me for a reasonable sum to map it all out full-time complete with authority to engage in legal discovery to get what info I don't have access to that'd actually make anything in this post more than frustrated pontificating.