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Monopoly law needs to be reinterpreted in light of network effects. It's not merely the integration which is a problem, it's how that + network effects gives a

Monopoly law needs to be reinterpreted in light of network effects. It's not merely the integration which is a problem, it's how that + network effects gives apple undue market power to dictate terms to its users, devs, etc. Being a middleman between users and devs, say, takes on a different character when you're a 2-3T biz at the heart of the economy.

giantrobot 3y ago
Since market cap is a determinant in behavior (the speculative value of a secondary market) where's the case for forcing nVidia to open up CUDA or for Microsoft to let Nintendo open a store on the Xbox?
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  NVIDIA and CUDA are not comparable. NVIDIA isn't preventing you from running OpenCL or Vulkan.
starbugs 3y ago
Exactly. From my point of view, nobody needs to be a lawyer to see that this can't stand as it is. There are two major operating systems for each form factor. In the last ten years, no other vendor has been able to successfully place a new OS on the market. If there wasn't a monopoly (or duopoly or oligarchy or whatever you wanna call it), then this would have happened. And this appears mainly to be due to network effects and the high complexity of the underlying systems.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  You don’t need to be a lawyer to see that there’s a duopoly, but duopolies aren’t illegal. The DOJ has to prove illegal conduct, which is harder than just showing a lack of widespread competition.
  - starbugs 3y ago
    > but duopolies aren’t illegal They should be.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      So if there are 3 competitors and one drops out, the other two are now guilty of something? In all my years studying economics and law, I never heard anyone suggest anything remotely this draconian.
      - starbugs 3y ago
        So if there are 2 competitors and one drops out, then it's hardcore illegal, but otherwise it's a-okay?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        evilduck 3y ago
        Ugh, this entire thread will be a frustrating exercise in folks insisting their feel-feels are the law of the land because they hate Apple and that takes precedence over facts and reality. > So if there are 2 competitors and one drops out, then it's hardcore illegal, but otherwise it's a-okay? No, it is absolutely not. There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly in the US. The government even explicitly and purposefully creates and grants monopolies pretty often. Natural monopolies are not illegal. Abusing your government-granted or natural monopoly is the illegal behavior. I'm curious to see how they even construe a duopoly as a monopoly under current law, because this will have some profound impacts to the entire economy if they succeed.
        starbugs 3y ago
        > Ugh, this entire thread will be a frustrating exercise in folks insisting their feel-feels are the law of the land because they hate Apple and that takes precedence over facts and reality. Typing this on one of many Apple devices I own. I don't hate Apple. But, you're right, comments like yours make this a frustrating exercise indeed. > No, it is absolutely not. There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly in the US. Yes yes, it may technically not be illegal per se, but then again, it's a problem. I am not a lawyer and I don't care about the details of the law. That's for other people. I am looking at this from a perspective of a consumer who feels actively harmed by what the tech industry has become. And as a member of society who cares for other people. If one company accrues that much by making it hard for others to compete, then they will rightfully be forced to give back if they don't do it out of their own free will. You know that I have a point.
- GenerWork 3y ago
  >In the last ten years, no other vendor has been able to successfully place a new OS on the market. How much of this is because of evil monopoly forces, and how much of it is because users prefer iOS and Android? It's not like the mobile device market snapped into existence overnight, both Android and iOS beat out Blackberry and managed to fend off Microsoft.
  - bregma 3y ago
    Most of it was because of the channels. People buy a phone from their carrier. They don't buy from an OS manufacturer. They don't even buy from a phone manufacturer. They get a plan and it comes with a phone. Carriers only distribute phones from a few proven vendors, and that decision involves a lot of games of golf and karaoke nights on company tabs. Turns out the phone cartel is the phone company cartel in a trench coat.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      Before either iOS or Android existed, you could get phones running Windows CE from carriers. Why didn't that stick around? Especially since those primitive smartphones gave carriers a lot more control over their app stores.
- danaris 3y ago
  > If there wasn't a monopoly (or duopoly or oligarchy or whatever you wanna call it), then this would have happened. I...don't think that's sufficiently self-evident to stand on its own. Fundamentally, it's hard to have a world with more than a very small number of operating systems for the major form factors of device—unless those operating systems are mandated to interoperate in significant ways. Creating a new operating system for phones also requires some things that are not at all easy to get: 1) You need hardware. This means that either you're creating an OS for an existing hardware platform (in this case, Android or iOS) or you're building your own phones. Given the legal frameworks that existed over the past decade and a half (as distinct from the particular dominance of one platform or another), that basically means you're building your own phones. Some people have tried to do that, but it adds hugely to the up-front cost of getting an OS going. 2) You need to get a critical mass of people using it. Until and unless this happens, what you've created has to live or die based on the apps and services that you build for the phone. No one's going to dedicate their own time, effort, and money to creating software for a phone that only 10,000 people have ever bought. Now, I can see a pretty strong argument for a new legal framework that would make #1 much easier—specifically, requiring all hardware platforms (possible "all hardware platforms over X sales") to provide a fully-open specification for third-party OS makers to use (with appropriate clauses about dogfooding the open API to prevent the hardware maker from just using a bunch of private APIs to preference their OS). This would allow people to create their own OS for the iPhone without Apple's interference. But that's not what we've had since 2007, so your bold but unsupported statement that the lack of third choices for mobile OSes in and of itself proves that Apple is a monopoly (or at least that Apple/Google together make up an abusive duopoly) does not hold up to scrutiny.
- samatman 3y ago
  However, there are many unsuccessful mobile OSes. Perhaps dozens, depending on how you'd like to slice the pie. I don't see how Apple and Android's competitors failing is any sort of fact about Apple or Google, at all.
hgs3 3y ago
We need proactive antitrust laws that break up companies beyond a certain size criteria. There are many markets beyond the tech sector that need a breakup. But no, lets wait until there is enough outrage before the DoJ laggardly assembles a case against them.

giantrobot 3y ago

Since market cap is a determinant in behavior (the speculative value of a secondary market) where's the case for forcing nVidia to open up CUDA or for Microsoft to let Nintendo open a store on the Xbox?

_aavaa_ 3y ago
NVIDIA and CUDA are not comparable. NVIDIA isn't preventing you from running OpenCL or Vulkan.

starbugs 3y ago

Exactly. From my point of view, nobody needs to be a lawyer to see that this can't stand as it is. There are two major operating systems for each form factor. In the last ten years, no other vendor has been able to successfully place a new OS on the market. If there wasn't a monopoly (or duopoly or oligarchy or whatever you wanna call it), then this would have happened. And this appears mainly to be due to network effects and the high complexity of the underlying systems.

gnicholas 3y ago
You don’t need to be a lawyer to see that there’s a duopoly, but duopolies aren’t illegal. The DOJ has to prove illegal conduct, which is harder than just showing a lack of widespread competition.
- starbugs 3y ago
  > but duopolies aren’t illegal They should be.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    So if there are 3 competitors and one drops out, the other two are now guilty of something? In all my years studying economics and law, I never heard anyone suggest anything remotely this draconian.
    - starbugs 3y ago
      So if there are 2 competitors and one drops out, then it's hardcore illegal, but otherwise it's a-okay?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - evilduck 3y ago
        Ugh, this entire thread will be a frustrating exercise in folks insisting their feel-feels are the law of the land because they hate Apple and that takes precedence over facts and reality. > So if there are 2 competitors and one drops out, then it's hardcore illegal, but otherwise it's a-okay? No, it is absolutely not. There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly in the US. The government even explicitly and purposefully creates and grants monopolies pretty often. Natural monopolies are not illegal. Abusing your government-granted or natural monopoly is the illegal behavior. I'm curious to see how they even construe a duopoly as a monopoly under current law, because this will have some profound impacts to the entire economy if they succeed.
        starbugs 3y ago
        > Ugh, this entire thread will be a frustrating exercise in folks insisting their feel-feels are the law of the land because they hate Apple and that takes precedence over facts and reality. Typing this on one of many Apple devices I own. I don't hate Apple. But, you're right, comments like yours make this a frustrating exercise indeed. > No, it is absolutely not. There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly in the US. Yes yes, it may technically not be illegal per se, but then again, it's a problem. I am not a lawyer and I don't care about the details of the law. That's for other people. I am looking at this from a perspective of a consumer who feels actively harmed by what the tech industry has become. And as a member of society who cares for other people. If one company accrues that much by making it hard for others to compete, then they will rightfully be forced to give back if they don't do it out of their own free will. You know that I have a point.
GenerWork 3y ago
>In the last ten years, no other vendor has been able to successfully place a new OS on the market. How much of this is because of evil monopoly forces, and how much of it is because users prefer iOS and Android? It's not like the mobile device market snapped into existence overnight, both Android and iOS beat out Blackberry and managed to fend off Microsoft.
- bregma 3y ago
  Most of it was because of the channels. People buy a phone from their carrier. They don't buy from an OS manufacturer. They don't even buy from a phone manufacturer. They get a plan and it comes with a phone. Carriers only distribute phones from a few proven vendors, and that decision involves a lot of games of golf and karaoke nights on company tabs. Turns out the phone cartel is the phone company cartel in a trench coat.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    Before either iOS or Android existed, you could get phones running Windows CE from carriers. Why didn't that stick around? Especially since those primitive smartphones gave carriers a lot more control over their app stores.
danaris 3y ago
> If there wasn't a monopoly (or duopoly or oligarchy or whatever you wanna call it), then this would have happened. I...don't think that's sufficiently self-evident to stand on its own. Fundamentally, it's hard to have a world with more than a very small number of operating systems for the major form factors of device—unless those operating systems are mandated to interoperate in significant ways. Creating a new operating system for phones also requires some things that are not at all easy to get: 1) You need hardware. This means that either you're creating an OS for an existing hardware platform (in this case, Android or iOS) or you're building your own phones. Given the legal frameworks that existed over the past decade and a half (as distinct from the particular dominance of one platform or another), that basically means you're building your own phones. Some people have tried to do that, but it adds hugely to the up-front cost of getting an OS going. 2) You need to get a critical mass of people using it. Until and unless this happens, what you've created has to live or die based on the apps and services that you build for the phone. No one's going to dedicate their own time, effort, and money to creating software for a phone that only 10,000 people have ever bought. Now, I can see a pretty strong argument for a new legal framework that would make #1 much easier—specifically, requiring all hardware platforms (possible "all hardware platforms over X sales") to provide a fully-open specification for third-party OS makers to use (with appropriate clauses about dogfooding the open API to prevent the hardware maker from just using a bunch of private APIs to preference their OS). This would allow people to create their own OS for the iPhone without Apple's interference. But that's not what we've had since 2007, so your bold but unsupported statement that the lack of third choices for mobile OSes in and of itself proves that Apple is a monopoly (or at least that Apple/Google together make up an abusive duopoly) does not hold up to scrutiny.
samatman 3y ago
However, there are many unsuccessful mobile OSes. Perhaps dozens, depending on how you'd like to slice the pie. I don't see how Apple and Android's competitors failing is any sort of fact about Apple or Google, at all.

hgs3 3y ago

We need proactive antitrust laws that break up companies beyond a certain size criteria. There are many markets beyond the tech sector that need a breakup. But no, lets wait until there is enough outrage before the DoJ laggardly assembles a case against them.