9 ms·

Microsoft said the same back in the day. And it is true - in the immediate term, consumers benefit from a single vendor integrating all their products and limit

by azakai 12y ago

Microsoft said the same back in the day. And it is true - in the immediate term, consumers benefit from a single vendor integrating all their products and limiting competition. The problem happens when you look a little farther ahead. Anti-competitive measures prevent other companies from offering something even better. Those products might not exist now, but without an open and competitive environment, they won't show up. And consumers are very much hurt if that is the case.

magicalist 12y ago
This is where it's not helpful to talk generically about this issue. I might agree with you on some of the clauses in Android contracts, for instance, but the EU's previously proposed idea mandating cycling through different spammy vertical shopping search engines at the top of the search results helps no one but those spammy search engines, artificially propping a company up for years for the the appearance of competition. See declan's excellent post below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9382109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9382109
- azakai 12y ago
  Debating details can be useful, but that is the previously proposed idea. Until we know what the current proposals will be, we don't have the details to talk concretely. So all we can do for now is talk about the general issue.
  - magicalist 12y ago
    That's fair, but my point is that it's easy to talk about "oh, the market should be more competitive", but it turns out finding ways to do that is incredibly difficult without also hobbling the original thing to the point that it becomes simply not a good product. It's also perfectly possible to propose solutions of our own for the purposes of discussion :) edit: > Debating details can be useful, but that is the previously proposed idea it's also worth pointing out that the cycling vertical shopping search site links proposal was apparently rejected not because it was flawed but because those vertical shopping sites didn't think it went far enough.
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
I suspect we're overestimating how much end-consumer desire there was for alternatives. Removing the choice of O/S might well have made buying a computer possible ( in terms of internal bandwidth ) for some. Antitrust arguments famously switch between "harm to competitors" and "harm to consumers" while the empirical case is that with very few exceptions, these are nothing like the same thing. At least in the '90s, when this really was a thing, people just wanted to go to Best Buy, plonk down their $2k and get on that AOL thingy all the people at work are talking about. Now? Has anything been more proprietary and closed than iOS? Seems to be perceived as a virtue. When I am among the iOS people, they have trouble with 'em all the time.
- ocdtrekkie 12y ago
  Harm to competitors is most definitely harm to consumers.
  - ArkyBeagle 12y ago
    So goes the theory. There are a great many problems with monopolies, but consumer pain doesn't seem to much be one of them. The econometrics guys say it's not that simple. One of my go to pieces on this is by Stigler here: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Monopoly.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Monopoly.html
- azakai 12y ago
  Harm to competitors literally means less competition in the market for producing good products for consumers. In the worst case, that means you depend on a single monopoly corporation to produce the best possible product. It is almost a given that that results in lower-quality products for consumers. Although it might be hard to prove using examples - as the better products that would have existed simply never appear in the first place. It isn't that competitors fail, although that happens too. It is that it is irrational for competitors to even try to spend money on products to compete against a monopoly that will crush them.
euyyn 12y ago
What Microsoft did was completely different: They coerced OEMs to not include Netscape Navigator or they wouldn't license Windows to them. They prevented users from uninstalling IE claiming technical reasons that were proven false. And the reason they did those things was, as proven from internal communications, to protect Windows' monopoly from the threat of portable Java applications delivered via Netscape Navigator, by asphyxiating Netscape to death.
- probably_wrong 12y ago
  For comparison, here's what Google did in Germany: After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results. Given how much of their traffic and online revenue comes from Google they all agreed, rendering the law moot. That strikes me as a very similar situation.
  - Oletros 12y ago
    > After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results Source for that?
    - amatriain 12y ago
      It's been widely discussed http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444 http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-sprngr-idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-spr... In the end german newspapers gave Google permission to use snippets of content without paying any royalties. They needed Google News traffic more than Google needed them. Which is the reason why spanish lawmakers made a similar law but with a mandatory royalties clause. Spanish newspapers cannot give an exemption to any company, under the law paying royalties for using snippets is mandatory regardless of the content owner wishes. This law is not currently being enforced, but the consequences are dramatic all the same: Google has shut down Google News Spain, and other content aggregators are under threat of being hit with fines at any moment. And that's why I'm not currently allowing feedbunch.com users to subscribe to RSS feeds from spanish newspaper publishers, until the situation changes. Anti-monopoly legislation is fine, but sometimes it can be a hammer that the big players use to hit each other instead of a tool to help new players get in the market.
tracker1 12y ago
I don't know if google stops android phone developers from including a bing maps, or microsoft office app on their phones, in the same way MS was prohibiting OEMs/VARs from including Netscape Navigator or Opera. I know they require the google experience apps to be kept, or not as a whole in order to be in certain programs though. Just not sure the extent they block other apps from being installed.
- yohui 12y ago
  Microsoft is reportedly cutting their Android patent fees in return for manufacturers pre-installing apps such as Office, OneDrive, and Skype on Android devices, so it's definitely not prohibited: http://www.androidauthority.com/microsoft-cuts-patent-fees-for-apps-600824/ http://www.androidauthority.com/microsoft-cuts-patent-fees-f... Samsung is also notorious for pre-installing TouchWiz apps that duplicate functionality provided by Google's apps.
- Oletros 12y ago
  > I don't know if google stops android phone developers from including a bing maps, or microsoft office app on their phones No, it doesn't. At least in the case of office apps

by azakai 12y ago

magicalist 12y ago

This is where it's not helpful to talk generically about this issue. I might agree with you on some of the clauses in Android contracts, for instance, but the EU's previously proposed idea mandating cycling through different spammy vertical shopping search engines at the top of the search results helps no one but those spammy search engines, artificially propping a company up for years for the the appearance of competition. See declan's excellent post below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9382109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9382109

azakai 12y ago
Debating details can be useful, but that is the previously proposed idea. Until we know what the current proposals will be, we don't have the details to talk concretely. So all we can do for now is talk about the general issue.
- magicalist 12y ago
  That's fair, but my point is that it's easy to talk about "oh, the market should be more competitive", but it turns out finding ways to do that is incredibly difficult without also hobbling the original thing to the point that it becomes simply not a good product. It's also perfectly possible to propose solutions of our own for the purposes of discussion :) edit: > Debating details can be useful, but that is the previously proposed idea it's also worth pointing out that the cycling vertical shopping search site links proposal was apparently rejected not because it was flawed but because those vertical shopping sites didn't think it went far enough.

ArkyBeagle 12y ago

I suspect we're overestimating how much end-consumer desire there was for alternatives. Removing the choice of O/S might well have made buying a computer possible ( in terms of internal bandwidth ) for some. Antitrust arguments famously switch between "harm to competitors" and "harm to consumers" while the empirical case is that with very few exceptions, these are nothing like the same thing. At least in the '90s, when this really was a thing, people just wanted to go to Best Buy, plonk down their $2k and get on that AOL thingy all the people at work are talking about. Now? Has anything been more proprietary and closed than iOS? Seems to be perceived as a virtue. When I am among the iOS people, they have trouble with 'em all the time.

ocdtrekkie 12y ago
Harm to competitors is most definitely harm to consumers.
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  So goes the theory. There are a great many problems with monopolies, but consumer pain doesn't seem to much be one of them. The econometrics guys say it's not that simple. One of my go to pieces on this is by Stigler here: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Monopoly.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Monopoly.html
azakai 12y ago
Harm to competitors literally means less competition in the market for producing good products for consumers. In the worst case, that means you depend on a single monopoly corporation to produce the best possible product. It is almost a given that that results in lower-quality products for consumers. Although it might be hard to prove using examples - as the better products that would have existed simply never appear in the first place. It isn't that competitors fail, although that happens too. It is that it is irrational for competitors to even try to spend money on products to compete against a monopoly that will crush them.

euyyn 12y ago

What Microsoft did was completely different: They coerced OEMs to not include Netscape Navigator or they wouldn't license Windows to them. They prevented users from uninstalling IE claiming technical reasons that were proven false. And the reason they did those things was, as proven from internal communications, to protect Windows' monopoly from the threat of portable Java applications delivered via Netscape Navigator, by asphyxiating Netscape to death.

probably_wrong 12y ago
For comparison, here's what Google did in Germany: After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results. Given how much of their traffic and online revenue comes from Google they all agreed, rendering the law moot. That strikes me as a very similar situation.
- Oletros 12y ago
  > After a law was passed requiring all search engines to pay newspapers for using "small sections of text", Google gave newspapers two alternatives: Either they gave Google perpetual, royalty-free access to all their content, or they would be removed from search results Source for that?
  - amatriain 12y ago
    It's been widely discussed http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444 http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-sprngr-idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-spr... In the end german newspapers gave Google permission to use snippets of content without paying any royalties. They needed Google News traffic more than Google needed them. Which is the reason why spanish lawmakers made a similar law but with a mandatory royalties clause. Spanish newspapers cannot give an exemption to any company, under the law paying royalties for using snippets is mandatory regardless of the content owner wishes. This law is not currently being enforced, but the consequences are dramatic all the same: Google has shut down Google News Spain, and other content aggregators are under threat of being hit with fines at any moment. And that's why I'm not currently allowing feedbunch.com users to subscribe to RSS feeds from spanish newspaper publishers, until the situation changes. Anti-monopoly legislation is fine, but sometimes it can be a hammer that the big players use to hit each other instead of a tool to help new players get in the market.

tracker1 12y ago

I don't know if google stops android phone developers from including a bing maps, or microsoft office app on their phones, in the same way MS was prohibiting OEMs/VARs from including Netscape Navigator or Opera. I know they require the google experience apps to be kept, or not as a whole in order to be in certain programs though. Just not sure the extent they block other apps from being installed.

yohui 12y ago
Microsoft is reportedly cutting their Android patent fees in return for manufacturers pre-installing apps such as Office, OneDrive, and Skype on Android devices, so it's definitely not prohibited: http://www.androidauthority.com/microsoft-cuts-patent-fees-for-apps-600824/ http://www.androidauthority.com/microsoft-cuts-patent-fees-f... Samsung is also notorious for pre-installing TouchWiz apps that duplicate functionality provided by Google's apps.
Oletros 12y ago
> I don't know if google stops android phone developers from including a bing maps, or microsoft office app on their phones No, it doesn't. At least in the case of office apps