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Are you being pedantic? Do you even know the shape of a competitive market? [1] I am not conducting a legalistic argument. Name a period where digital tech was

Are you being pedantic? Do you even know the shape of a competitive market? [1] I am not conducting a legalistic argument. Name a period where digital tech was not controlled by a cozy arrangement of one or two entities, offering all the menu options of Cola vs Pepsi. > Literally based on what? It is hard to make it an "exact science" when we don't have actual long periods of competition driven innovation to juxtapose. But there are plenty of hints. Take for example the story of RISC. The architecture is only now being "rediscovered" after being crushed for decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_concentration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_concentration

thfuran 3y ago
>Are you being pedantic? Do you even know the shape of a competitive market? [1] Do you know what the landscape was like in the 80s?
panick21_ 3y ago
I am not being pedantic, I have no idea what you are talking about. > Name a period where digital tech was not controlled by a cozy arrangement of one or two entities Ok, lets talk about the 80s. I could do this for other decades. Monopoly in Operating Systems? No clearly not, IBM had its own (more then 1), various Unix, VMS, CSM, various DOS, lots of costume proprietary stuff. Monopoly in machine architecture? Clearly not, you had IBM mainframe and midrange, you had DEC Vax (and PDP11 still around). DEC had many competitors, most failed in the early 80s. But were replaced by Motorola based workstations and servers. HP was a big player in the 80s. You had Apple doing its own thing. PC based systems were on the rise, including being used as servers. You also still had a huge amount of 8-bit micros being sold as well. I don't see a monopoly. Lets talk about processors fabs. Lots more companies had fabs back then. IBM, DEC, Intel, AMD, Toshiba, NEC, Motorola, National Semiconductor, HP and even Commodore had their own fabs and you had contract fabs like VLSI. Monopoly? And there was so much more strange stuff happening in Britain, Germany and so on. So please, actual tell me what monopoly you are talking about instead vaguely referencing abstract concepts! > Take for example the story of RISC. The architecture is only now being "rediscovered" after being crushed for decades. This is just complete nonsense. First of all the RISC/CISC division isn't as relevant today as it was then, and the idea that 'RISC' was lost is complete nonsense. Sun/Oracle/Toshiba and co build new SPARC to this day, Tosbia mainframes have been running on SPARC this whole time. Lots of IBM stuff runs on POWER to this day as well. Even in the 2010s SGI MIPS based clusers were common. And during this whole time MIPS and RISC basically owned the embedded markets between them. So its really only on the PC and server PC where x86 was dominate. Turns out that's not all of computing.
- nologic01 3y ago
  > I could do this for other decades. Please do this for the 60's and 70's and IBM's 70% market share that actually eventually led formally to an anti-trust case against the company [1]. You seem to conflating the availability of occasional and niche alternatives with an actual competitive market concerning products with major mainstream adoption. In a real competitive market you would have like five to ten providers for substantially the same product or close substitutes. This kind of market is when buyers benefit and this is when producers are forced to compete on price or features. Of course producers hate competition. Its less profit for the same work and a constant threat of extinction if you don't deliver. Various arguments have been advanced (by vested interests, most notably Microsoft trying turn black into white during its own anti-trust case in the 90's) to justify ex-post the pervasive tech exceptionalism in matters of market concentration and associated regulation: "network effects" and innate "winner-takes-all" in tech being the most prominent. > its really only on the PC and server PC where x86 was dominate. Turns out that's not all of computing Its a very strange view: If an entity is not dominating 100% all related markets its not a monopoly. Monopolists would love to have you as jury member in an anti-trust trial. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    I'm not going to go threw the history of computing and argue ever point. The simple fact is your statement was way to broad and you know it. And yes I know about IBM, I have heard of them before. > Its a very strange view: If an entity is not dominating 100% all related markets its not a monopoly. Where to draw lines in what is considered a market and a monopoly is always questionable. But its besides the points, because your statement was not, monopolies sometimes exist in the broader computer industry. Your statement was something inherent in 'Digital tech' was somehow extremely prone to monopolies. And I don't think that view holds water. Different market segments had different periods of consolidation and centralization. Yes, IBM and Microsoft were sued in anti-trust cases, but in both cases they didn't lost their dominate positions because of those anti-trust cases.

thfuran 3y ago

>Are you being pedantic? Do you even know the shape of a competitive market? [1] Do you know what the landscape was like in the 80s?

panick21_ 3y ago

I am not being pedantic, I have no idea what you are talking about. > Name a period where digital tech was not controlled by a cozy arrangement of one or two entities Ok, lets talk about the 80s. I could do this for other decades. Monopoly in Operating Systems? No clearly not, IBM had its own (more then 1), various Unix, VMS, CSM, various DOS, lots of costume proprietary stuff. Monopoly in machine architecture? Clearly not, you had IBM mainframe and midrange, you had DEC Vax (and PDP11 still around). DEC had many competitors, most failed in the early 80s. But were replaced by Motorola based workstations and servers. HP was a big player in the 80s. You had Apple doing its own thing. PC based systems were on the rise, including being used as servers. You also still had a huge amount of 8-bit micros being sold as well. I don't see a monopoly. Lets talk about processors fabs. Lots more companies had fabs back then. IBM, DEC, Intel, AMD, Toshiba, NEC, Motorola, National Semiconductor, HP and even Commodore had their own fabs and you had contract fabs like VLSI. Monopoly? And there was so much more strange stuff happening in Britain, Germany and so on. So please, actual tell me what monopoly you are talking about instead vaguely referencing abstract concepts! > Take for example the story of RISC. The architecture is only now being "rediscovered" after being crushed for decades. This is just complete nonsense. First of all the RISC/CISC division isn't as relevant today as it was then, and the idea that 'RISC' was lost is complete nonsense. Sun/Oracle/Toshiba and co build new SPARC to this day, Tosbia mainframes have been running on SPARC this whole time. Lots of IBM stuff runs on POWER to this day as well. Even in the 2010s SGI MIPS based clusers were common. And during this whole time MIPS and RISC basically owned the embedded markets between them. So its really only on the PC and server PC where x86 was dominate. Turns out that's not all of computing.

nologic01 3y ago
> I could do this for other decades. Please do this for the 60's and 70's and IBM's 70% market share that actually eventually led formally to an anti-trust case against the company [1]. You seem to conflating the availability of occasional and niche alternatives with an actual competitive market concerning products with major mainstream adoption. In a real competitive market you would have like five to ten providers for substantially the same product or close substitutes. This kind of market is when buyers benefit and this is when producers are forced to compete on price or features. Of course producers hate competition. Its less profit for the same work and a constant threat of extinction if you don't deliver. Various arguments have been advanced (by vested interests, most notably Microsoft trying turn black into white during its own anti-trust case in the 90's) to justify ex-post the pervasive tech exceptionalism in matters of market concentration and associated regulation: "network effects" and innate "winner-takes-all" in tech being the most prominent. > its really only on the PC and server PC where x86 was dominate. Turns out that's not all of computing Its a very strange view: If an entity is not dominating 100% all related markets its not a monopoly. Monopolists would love to have you as jury member in an anti-trust trial. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM
- panick21_ 3y ago
  I'm not going to go threw the history of computing and argue ever point. The simple fact is your statement was way to broad and you know it. And yes I know about IBM, I have heard of them before. > Its a very strange view: If an entity is not dominating 100% all related markets its not a monopoly. Where to draw lines in what is considered a market and a monopoly is always questionable. But its besides the points, because your statement was not, monopolies sometimes exist in the broader computer industry. Your statement was something inherent in 'Digital tech' was somehow extremely prone to monopolies. And I don't think that view holds water. Different market segments had different periods of consolidation and centralization. Yes, IBM and Microsoft were sued in anti-trust cases, but in both cases they didn't lost their dominate positions because of those anti-trust cases.