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And in a world where competition is allowed to see its course, Instagram would have disappeared. And further down the line, Facebook's poor decisions would have

And in a world where competition is allowed to see its course, Instagram would have disappeared. And further down the line, Facebook's poor decisions would have spelled oblivion for them too. It also means the 2010s may have perhaps seen investors print billions into businesses that actually matter and deliver real innovation

scarface74 4y ago
Or it just would have copied Instagram’s feature set like it’s done dozens of times with other competitors. Or it would have just hired all of its founders to recreate it. Do you now also want to stop acquihires?
fallingknife 4y ago
If Instagram would have disappeared on its own, Facebook would have just built it in house. They spent $1 billion on it because it was cheaper to do that than to start from scratch. And how could anti-trust possibly stop that?
- mrkurt 4y ago
  The point of antitrust is to encourage that. That's competition. We want Facebook to build net new things. Facebook's not all that good at building new things, though. Most big companies aren't. Partially because they don't need to be.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And how would that be a better outcome for the startups? If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft and Apple have both been around for over four decades “creating new things”.
    - mrkurt 4y ago
      I don't mind startups failing. I would prefer that startups fail. I would prefer big companies fail. It's healthy for companies to die. Apple and Amazon are more of a vertical integration problem. They expand their market power by monopolizing the vertical supply chain. Microsoft acquires companies to increase their market power. Skype, GitHub, LinkedIn, now Activision.
      - fallingknife 4y ago
        Monopolizing a vertical supply chain isn't even a concept that makes sense. The point is that with a monopoly customers have only one purchasing option. This condition does not exist when a company integrates vertically.
        mrkurt 4y ago
        You're arguing the semantics of a monopoly, but you should just mentally replace the word "monopoly" with "market power". When Apple buys components from a vendor, they have less market power. When they build their own components, they have more market power. Both Apple and Amazon shipped their own ARM chips. This increased their market power. Because they're the only companies with access to those chips. Meanwhile, independent ARM vendors go out of business about once every 3 months because the biggest companies using ARM aren't part of their addressable market. Which means small companies have limited access to ARM CPUs. When Amazon builds their own delivery company, they increase their market power. When they buy from Fedex and UPS, they decrease their market power. And, when they do their own deliveries, they limit competitors market power. You can be fine with all of this. Those of us who are interested in competitive markets worry about it a lot. You don't have to be worried about competitive markets, though. It's totally valid to not think increased competition is a good thing. There is a lot of nuance here. If you're stuck on the word monopoly, I don't think you're going to really hear the things antitrust folks have to say.
        scarface74 4y ago
        > You're arguing the semantics of a monopoly, Yes “words mean things”. > When Apple buys components from a vendor, they have less market power. When they build their own components, they have more market power So now you’re saying a company shouldn’t be allowed to build and design their own components? Doesn’t it help competition that Apple, Microsoft, Google, Qualcomm, and MediaTek among others are creating and modifying their own processors? > Which means small companies have limited access to ARM CPUs. Any company can buy an ARM processor from Qualcomm and MediaTek. Have you looked at all of the phone manufacturers who sell in China and India and even the US? > Those of us who are interested in competitive markets worry about it a lot. You don't have to be worried about competitive markets, though. It's totally valid to not think increased competition is a good thing. Every market you mentioned has a competitor that third parties can go to - ARM chips, delivery companies etc.
    - salawat 4y ago
      They really haven't. They've been acquiring startups, digesting and rebranding said startups innovations with an in house version, and (arguably innovating) in finding ways to plaster a transaction layer into solved problems that previously lacked a recurring revenue compatible transaction framework. In short, subsidizing themselves by abandoning one time purchasable software, and replacing it with either ad serving or subscription based versions.
- kennywinker 4y ago
  That's just wrong. It doesn't cost $1 billion to copy instagram, at most it'd cost a few million. By buying them, you not only get the app/feature set - more importantly you also remove them from the market as a competitor. This is exactly what we're seeing play out with tiktok. If FB could have bought tiktok, they would have - they couldn't, so they cloned it for far less than $1bil (fb reels) - but now we have a situation of two competing services that users can compare and contrast and prefer. The market it segmented. Which is bad for facebook's shareholders, but good for users, workers, and advertisers. This is exactly why we need good anti-trust

scarface74 4y ago

Or it just would have copied Instagram’s feature set like it’s done dozens of times with other competitors. Or it would have just hired all of its founders to recreate it. Do you now also want to stop acquihires?

fallingknife 4y ago

If Instagram would have disappeared on its own, Facebook would have just built it in house. They spent $1 billion on it because it was cheaper to do that than to start from scratch. And how could anti-trust possibly stop that?

mrkurt 4y ago
The point of antitrust is to encourage that. That's competition. We want Facebook to build net new things. Facebook's not all that good at building new things, though. Most big companies aren't. Partially because they don't need to be.
- scarface74 4y ago
  And how would that be a better outcome for the startups? If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft and Apple have both been around for over four decades “creating new things”.
  - mrkurt 4y ago
    I don't mind startups failing. I would prefer that startups fail. I would prefer big companies fail. It's healthy for companies to die. Apple and Amazon are more of a vertical integration problem. They expand their market power by monopolizing the vertical supply chain. Microsoft acquires companies to increase their market power. Skype, GitHub, LinkedIn, now Activision.
    - fallingknife 4y ago
      Monopolizing a vertical supply chain isn't even a concept that makes sense. The point is that with a monopoly customers have only one purchasing option. This condition does not exist when a company integrates vertically.
      - mrkurt 4y ago
        You're arguing the semantics of a monopoly, but you should just mentally replace the word "monopoly" with "market power". When Apple buys components from a vendor, they have less market power. When they build their own components, they have more market power. Both Apple and Amazon shipped their own ARM chips. This increased their market power. Because they're the only companies with access to those chips. Meanwhile, independent ARM vendors go out of business about once every 3 months because the biggest companies using ARM aren't part of their addressable market. Which means small companies have limited access to ARM CPUs. When Amazon builds their own delivery company, they increase their market power. When they buy from Fedex and UPS, they decrease their market power. And, when they do their own deliveries, they limit competitors market power. You can be fine with all of this. Those of us who are interested in competitive markets worry about it a lot. You don't have to be worried about competitive markets, though. It's totally valid to not think increased competition is a good thing. There is a lot of nuance here. If you're stuck on the word monopoly, I don't think you're going to really hear the things antitrust folks have to say.
        scarface74 4y ago
        > You're arguing the semantics of a monopoly, Yes “words mean things”. > When Apple buys components from a vendor, they have less market power. When they build their own components, they have more market power So now you’re saying a company shouldn’t be allowed to build and design their own components? Doesn’t it help competition that Apple, Microsoft, Google, Qualcomm, and MediaTek among others are creating and modifying their own processors? > Which means small companies have limited access to ARM CPUs. Any company can buy an ARM processor from Qualcomm and MediaTek. Have you looked at all of the phone manufacturers who sell in China and India and even the US? > Those of us who are interested in competitive markets worry about it a lot. You don't have to be worried about competitive markets, though. It's totally valid to not think increased competition is a good thing. Every market you mentioned has a competitor that third parties can go to - ARM chips, delivery companies etc.
  - salawat 4y ago
    They really haven't. They've been acquiring startups, digesting and rebranding said startups innovations with an in house version, and (arguably innovating) in finding ways to plaster a transaction layer into solved problems that previously lacked a recurring revenue compatible transaction framework. In short, subsidizing themselves by abandoning one time purchasable software, and replacing it with either ad serving or subscription based versions.
kennywinker 4y ago
That's just wrong. It doesn't cost $1 billion to copy instagram, at most it'd cost a few million. By buying them, you not only get the app/feature set - more importantly you also remove them from the market as a competitor. This is exactly what we're seeing play out with tiktok. If FB could have bought tiktok, they would have - they couldn't, so they cloned it for far less than $1bil (fb reels) - but now we have a situation of two competing services that users can compare and contrast and prefer. The market it segmented. Which is bad for facebook's shareholders, but good for users, workers, and advertisers. This is exactly why we need good anti-trust