3 ms·

Duopolies are a consequence of antitrust law, specifically that the Executive branch fails to apply the law and the Legislative branch keeps it on the books. Gi

Duopolies are a consequence of antitrust law, specifically that the Executive branch fails to apply the law and the Legislative branch keeps it on the books. Given our government, we’re actually fairly fortunate to end up with the Apple/Google duopoly of near peers instead of the asymmetric Intel/AMD chip duopoly or the laughable Google/Mozilla browser duopoly.

scarface74 4y ago
So big bad Apple caused Microsoft, Nokia, etc not to be able to compete even though they had a multiple year head start and at the time that the iPhone came out, they were both much larger. Not to mention Rim and Palm were shipping phones for ages.
- politician 4y ago
  That many competitors became two is simply proof of my point: a duopoly that cannot consolidate further due to the existential threat posed by an underused ancient law.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    So should the government have stepped in to prop up RIM and Microsoft? Should they have forced app makers to support other platforms? What could the government do to help inept competitors?
    - politician 4y ago
      The government should not be helping inept competitors or propping up minor players. The government should be enforcing antitrust laws on the giants that are too big to fail colluding to workaround antitrust by balancing a duopoly against the interests of the citizenry.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Specifically, what should they be doing? What policies?
        politician 4y ago
        You don't seem to be reading what I've written three times now. Perhaps you aren't aware of antitrust law, its purpose, and relevant cases: you might not know about how AT&T ("Ma Bell") was broken up using antitrust law, or how Microsoft was found guilty of abusing its monopoly position by bundling Internet Explorer. Standard Oil was the impetus for the legislation - that's a good one to learn about. More recently, businesses have created duopolies of convenience and mutual defense. I'm not a fan of this workaround. Please refer to my earlier posts for details.
        scarface74 4y ago
        How should Apple be broken up to make it more competitive? Should they break up Apple into operating systems and hardware and force Apple to license iOS? Should they break Apple up into a computer company and a phone company? Should they create a separate company for computers , iPads, and phones? If they break Apple up and force it to license it’s operating system, how does that make Apple products better for the end users instead of worse just like Android? And nothing came of the MS suit. To this day, IE is bundled with Windows and always was.
        politician 4y ago
        > nothing came of the MS suit Microsoft was forced to implement the browser choice scheme which directly led to underinvestment in IE, the rise of Chrome, and the subsequent abandonment of their in-house engine and adoption of Blink. A good case could be made that it led to the rise of Adtech and social media and Apple by democratizing access to the web, similar to how the release of XHRHttpRequest in IE6 led to the downfall of native application development and a shift in Microsoft to cloud-based services.
ece 4y ago
Intel/AMD sell chips that you can do what you want with, there are also many skins of open source browser engines, it's asymmetric, but more tolerable than Apple's closed platforms (except the Mac) and Android's sideloading being relegated to an afterthought instead of being a usable feature by the majority. It makes sense why regulators would want to focus on the mobile market.

scarface74 4y ago

So big bad Apple caused Microsoft, Nokia, etc not to be able to compete even though they had a multiple year head start and at the time that the iPhone came out, they were both much larger. Not to mention Rim and Palm were shipping phones for ages.

politician 4y ago
That many competitors became two is simply proof of my point: a duopoly that cannot consolidate further due to the existential threat posed by an underused ancient law.
- scarface74 4y ago
  So should the government have stepped in to prop up RIM and Microsoft? Should they have forced app makers to support other platforms? What could the government do to help inept competitors?
  - politician 4y ago
    The government should not be helping inept competitors or propping up minor players. The government should be enforcing antitrust laws on the giants that are too big to fail colluding to workaround antitrust by balancing a duopoly against the interests of the citizenry.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Specifically, what should they be doing? What policies?
      - politician 4y ago
        You don't seem to be reading what I've written three times now. Perhaps you aren't aware of antitrust law, its purpose, and relevant cases: you might not know about how AT&T ("Ma Bell") was broken up using antitrust law, or how Microsoft was found guilty of abusing its monopoly position by bundling Internet Explorer. Standard Oil was the impetus for the legislation - that's a good one to learn about. More recently, businesses have created duopolies of convenience and mutual defense. I'm not a fan of this workaround. Please refer to my earlier posts for details.
        scarface74 4y ago
        How should Apple be broken up to make it more competitive? Should they break up Apple into operating systems and hardware and force Apple to license iOS? Should they break Apple up into a computer company and a phone company? Should they create a separate company for computers , iPads, and phones? If they break Apple up and force it to license it’s operating system, how does that make Apple products better for the end users instead of worse just like Android? And nothing came of the MS suit. To this day, IE is bundled with Windows and always was.
        politician 4y ago
        > nothing came of the MS suit Microsoft was forced to implement the browser choice scheme which directly led to underinvestment in IE, the rise of Chrome, and the subsequent abandonment of their in-house engine and adoption of Blink. A good case could be made that it led to the rise of Adtech and social media and Apple by democratizing access to the web, similar to how the release of XHRHttpRequest in IE6 led to the downfall of native application development and a shift in Microsoft to cloud-based services.

ece 4y ago

Intel/AMD sell chips that you can do what you want with, there are also many skins of open source browser engines, it's asymmetric, but more tolerable than Apple's closed platforms (except the Mac) and Android's sideloading being relegated to an afterthought instead of being a usable feature by the majority. It makes sense why regulators would want to focus on the mobile market.