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> What monopolies have emerged out of venture capital in the last 3 decades? In any industry? I think you may be nitpicking more than necessary here. If you c
by csa 3y ago
> What monopolies have emerged out of venture capital in the last 3 decades? In any industry?
I think you may be nitpicking more than necessary here.
If you change it from “monopoly” to “dominant player” or “duopoly”, then there are many candidates, and ones which are (imho) causing problems:
- Google with search, with Bing a distant second, and Kagi and DDG being whatever.
- Google with user-created video via YT. TikTok has created a space for itself (so duopoly?), but YT is the elephant in the room for video.
- Amazon (various parts), with Walmart trying to figure out how to compete.
- AirBnB, with VRBO being a distant second.
- Facebook… FACEBOOK!!! It may have competitors, but it is the only dominant player in its section of social media. Ditto with IG.
- Uber, with Lyft being likely a permanent second (if it is able to continue existing).
As someone who has done business with Amazon, Google search/ads, Google YT, and FB, I will just say that they don’t really act like they are threatened by any competition — they are more scared of government interference/regulation. The efficiency of rent-seeking on their platforms is both impressive and appalling.
I’m not sure what the solution is, but I’m guessing that they will be whacked with the regulation hammer in some way due to having too much unilateral sway on business interactions.
As a simple example of what it might look like, the US federal government knows that it has a lot of potential power in contract negotiations, so it puts a lot of rules on itself so that it’s much more difficult for that power to be abused.
- a_gnostic 3y agoAbolish IP, enforce NDAs, and the problem is solved.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MichaelZuo 3y agoI didn't comment on the categories of “dominant player” or “duopoly" ? If you want to make a point about this instead, related topics, which companies fall into these buckets, etc., that's fine. But there's no need to disguise it.
- csa 3y ago> I didn't comment on the categories of “dominant player” or “duopoly" ? Maybe you should have. I get the feeling that you’re trying to win an argument over the use of the term “monopoly”, when what people are concerned about is anti-competitive behavior (which can happen in monopolies, duopolies, dominated markets, etc.). As I mentioned before, fixating on the use of the term “monopoly” doesn’t accomplish much and seems to miss the overarching point of the discussion.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoAnyone is free to 'fixate' on whatever topic they want? Just like how you can be 'fixating' on this? There's not that many HN users who can change what someone else decides, and you don't belong in that category, hence my opinion is just don't disguise it under a different angle. Otherwise, I simply don't care either way about those claims.