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At this point, tech's major competitors are overseas. Never thought I'd be making this argument, but does breaking up the search monopoly help America or up and

At this point, tech's major competitors are overseas. Never thought I'd be making this argument, but does breaking up the search monopoly help America or up and comers?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jacksnipe 2y ago
I care more about how it affects consumers.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
stuartjohnson12 2y ago
There are certainly some short term consumer gains to be made in decoupling the oppressive monopoly of android, payments, chromium, search, and ads. If Google wants to send their search experience to shit that should probably be their right to mismanage, but the ramming home of Manifest v3 and Google Play Protect in the interest of nobody is beyond the pale.
arthurofbabylon 2y ago
Let's not turn into game-theory bros here. Despite the nationalist, pie-dividing rhetoric the billionaires are foisting upon us, it remains favorable to grow the pie with competitive markets.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  A bigger pie isn't desirable if most of the slices go to a select few. Or to use Lincoln's rising boats metaphor, a rising tide isn't great if most boats are full of holes.
thrance 2y ago
Does upholding monopolies help Americans at all? Do not conflate the ballooning wealth of billionaires with any kind of improvement in your material conditions.
- loeg 2y ago
  Americans marginally benefit from American owned monopolies over Chinese owned monopolies.
  - thrance 2y ago
    How so? They pay almost no taxes, they capture a huge share of the market, they stifle innovation, they regularly engage in anti-user practices... The bottom 90% is owning an ever smaller share of the economy, while the real economy doesn't seem to grow that much.
    - ImJamal 2y ago
      If a Chinese company has a monopoly you get All those things, minus the US jobs. It seems like you are comparing small companies vs large companies, rather than US vs Chinese.
      - AshamedCaptain 2y ago
        Cue the uncountable number of Chinese jobs generated by overseas companies / the US monopolies, indirectly or directly....
        ImJamal 2y ago
        Do you think a Chinese company results in more US jobs than a US company?
      - thrance 2y ago
        Ok, well in that case, sure. But the alternative to US monopoly is not automatically Chinese monopoly. No one was advocating for the destruction of Google in favor of Baidu or whatever.
Clubber 2y ago
>does breaking up the search monopoly help America or up and comers? Big companies tend to calcify. We can see that in FAMANG's products. Big companies can also remove any direct competition in multiple ways that smaller companies can't: 1. Bankrupt them through frivolous litigation. 2. Buy them. 3. Lower their prices so new competitors who don't have economies of scale can't be price competitive. 4. Propose legislative regulation that they can afford but smaller competitors can't. 5. Pay for negative news articles to be written against their competition (FUD). 6. Poach their talent. I'm sure there's more. Anyhow, monopoly status generally leads to stagnation not innovation.
p3rls 2y ago
As an American there is nothing I would love to see more than Google broken up into a thousand pieces and their stock reduced to negative amounts to atone for all the damage wrought upon the web in the past two decades.
- Henchman21 2y ago
  Agreed. I wouldn't feel this way if they had never had "Do No Evil" as an internal mantra. Walking away from that? Well, that was the point I removed as much Google from my life as possible. I'd be happy to remove the rest.
- asdfman123 2y ago
  Maybe, but would another large incumbent necessarily be better?
alwayslikethis 2y ago
The main benefit of having US monopolies is the spying capabilities that it enables. No other country ever had such a global surveillance network. For the average American, both the efficient parts of monopolies (reduced redundancy which means fewer well-paying jobs) as well as the inefficient parts (reduced competition, higher prices, reduced standards of living) are net negatives. The political influence inherent to monopolies are also a negative effect on democracy, whereas foreign monopolies tend to have a harder time maintaining political influence.
bearjaws 2y ago
This is the same commentary we had around the time of the ATT break up, and it all worked out fine.
- ThePowerOfDirge 2y ago
  It destroyed Bell Labs https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumo...
  - HaZeust 2y ago
    Yeah but AT&T is doing fine.
alex_abt 2y ago
Who does preventing abusive behaviour benefit? Those currently being abused. But doesn't that make room for someone else to come in and be abusive? Yes and we have the tools to prevent that, if necessary.
karmasimida 2y ago
On the other hand, keeping all eggs in one basket, which is Google, in this case, is unlikely to make it more competent against oversea competition anyway.
tehjoker 2y ago
who care, corporations are not national, they will discard their host when they find it convenient
a2128 2y ago
Monopolies lead to no competition, leading to reduced innovation, economic stagnation, consolidation of wealth and power. That directly harms the American people and if left unchecked other countries may actually start to get ahead, especially if they maintain a fair market environment within their own country and ban American monopolies. If the concern is that people will start using Baidu search, then the solution should be to ban Baidu search. It shouldn't be to let some monopolies run rampant with the hopes that other countries will never be able to compete, while forgetting that free market economy is what made America
- username332211 2y ago
  > Monopolies lead to no competition, leading to reduced innovation, economic stagnation That sounds smart, but is it actually true? How many of the things enabling the existence of this website are inventions made in the research institute of the Bell Telecom company. On top of my head, there are transistors, C, Unix and a fair bit of cryptographical work. I'm sure others can add a lot more to the list. Hell, this website recently carried an article that mentioned that the very financial concepts that enable companies like Y-combinator to exist were invented by a researcher at Bell labs.[1] [1]https://commoncog.com/cash-flow-games/ https://commoncog.com/cash-flow-games/
  - HaZeust 2y ago
    >"How many of the things enabling the existence of this website are inventions made in the research institute of the Bell Telecom company." In both giving them the bankroll to research it pre-breakup, and the economic freedom to pursue it under separate ventures post-forced breakup - it was most likely equally valuable. A lot of things that make our modern apparatus' possible came from both Bell Labs research, and Bell Labs branching out by force.

At this point, tech's major competitors are overseas. Never thought I'd be making this argument, but does breaking up the search monopoly help America or up and comers?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jacksnipe 2y ago

I care more about how it affects consumers.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

stuartjohnson12 2y ago

There are certainly some short term consumer gains to be made in decoupling the oppressive monopoly of android, payments, chromium, search, and ads. If Google wants to send their search experience to shit that should probably be their right to mismanage, but the ramming home of Manifest v3 and Google Play Protect in the interest of nobody is beyond the pale.

arthurofbabylon 2y ago

Let's not turn into game-theory bros here. Despite the nationalist, pie-dividing rhetoric the billionaires are foisting upon us, it remains favorable to grow the pie with competitive markets.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
A bigger pie isn't desirable if most of the slices go to a select few. Or to use Lincoln's rising boats metaphor, a rising tide isn't great if most boats are full of holes.

thrance 2y ago

Does upholding monopolies help Americans at all? Do not conflate the ballooning wealth of billionaires with any kind of improvement in your material conditions.

loeg 2y ago
Americans marginally benefit from American owned monopolies over Chinese owned monopolies.
- thrance 2y ago
  How so? They pay almost no taxes, they capture a huge share of the market, they stifle innovation, they regularly engage in anti-user practices... The bottom 90% is owning an ever smaller share of the economy, while the real economy doesn't seem to grow that much.
  - ImJamal 2y ago
    If a Chinese company has a monopoly you get All those things, minus the US jobs. It seems like you are comparing small companies vs large companies, rather than US vs Chinese.
    - AshamedCaptain 2y ago
      Cue the uncountable number of Chinese jobs generated by overseas companies / the US monopolies, indirectly or directly....
      - ImJamal 2y ago
        Do you think a Chinese company results in more US jobs than a US company?
    - thrance 2y ago
      Ok, well in that case, sure. But the alternative to US monopoly is not automatically Chinese monopoly. No one was advocating for the destruction of Google in favor of Baidu or whatever.

Clubber 2y ago

>does breaking up the search monopoly help America or up and comers? Big companies tend to calcify. We can see that in FAMANG's products. Big companies can also remove any direct competition in multiple ways that smaller companies can't: 1. Bankrupt them through frivolous litigation. 2. Buy them. 3. Lower their prices so new competitors who don't have economies of scale can't be price competitive. 4. Propose legislative regulation that they can afford but smaller competitors can't. 5. Pay for negative news articles to be written against their competition (FUD). 6. Poach their talent. I'm sure there's more. Anyhow, monopoly status generally leads to stagnation not innovation.

p3rls 2y ago

As an American there is nothing I would love to see more than Google broken up into a thousand pieces and their stock reduced to negative amounts to atone for all the damage wrought upon the web in the past two decades.

Henchman21 2y ago
Agreed. I wouldn't feel this way if they had never had "Do No Evil" as an internal mantra. Walking away from that? Well, that was the point I removed as much Google from my life as possible. I'd be happy to remove the rest.
asdfman123 2y ago
Maybe, but would another large incumbent necessarily be better?

alwayslikethis 2y ago

The main benefit of having US monopolies is the spying capabilities that it enables. No other country ever had such a global surveillance network. For the average American, both the efficient parts of monopolies (reduced redundancy which means fewer well-paying jobs) as well as the inefficient parts (reduced competition, higher prices, reduced standards of living) are net negatives. The political influence inherent to monopolies are also a negative effect on democracy, whereas foreign monopolies tend to have a harder time maintaining political influence.

bearjaws 2y ago

This is the same commentary we had around the time of the ATT break up, and it all worked out fine.

ThePowerOfDirge 2y ago
It destroyed Bell Labs https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumo...
- HaZeust 2y ago
  Yeah but AT&T is doing fine.

alex_abt 2y ago

Who does preventing abusive behaviour benefit? Those currently being abused. But doesn't that make room for someone else to come in and be abusive? Yes and we have the tools to prevent that, if necessary.

karmasimida 2y ago

On the other hand, keeping all eggs in one basket, which is Google, in this case, is unlikely to make it more competent against oversea competition anyway.

tehjoker 2y ago

who care, corporations are not national, they will discard their host when they find it convenient

a2128 2y ago

Monopolies lead to no competition, leading to reduced innovation, economic stagnation, consolidation of wealth and power. That directly harms the American people and if left unchecked other countries may actually start to get ahead, especially if they maintain a fair market environment within their own country and ban American monopolies. If the concern is that people will start using Baidu search, then the solution should be to ban Baidu search. It shouldn't be to let some monopolies run rampant with the hopes that other countries will never be able to compete, while forgetting that free market economy is what made America

username332211 2y ago
> Monopolies lead to no competition, leading to reduced innovation, economic stagnation That sounds smart, but is it actually true? How many of the things enabling the existence of this website are inventions made in the research institute of the Bell Telecom company. On top of my head, there are transistors, C, Unix and a fair bit of cryptographical work. I'm sure others can add a lot more to the list. Hell, this website recently carried an article that mentioned that the very financial concepts that enable companies like Y-combinator to exist were invented by a researcher at Bell labs.[1] [1]https://commoncog.com/cash-flow-games/ https://commoncog.com/cash-flow-games/
- HaZeust 2y ago
  >"How many of the things enabling the existence of this website are inventions made in the research institute of the Bell Telecom company." In both giving them the bankroll to research it pre-breakup, and the economic freedom to pursue it under separate ventures post-forced breakup - it was most likely equally valuable. A lot of things that make our modern apparatus' possible came from both Bell Labs research, and Bell Labs branching out by force.