
Elizabeth Warren’s simple case for breaking up big tech - luu
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/22/18511860
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jessaustin
I would take Warren more seriously if she started out by talking about
ATT/VZN/Comcast. The "big tech" companies have the potential to harm
consumers, but telcos have been harming consumers for decades.

~~~
geofft
By harming do you mean on price? Big tech has the potential to harm through
externalities (privacy, control of the media, etc.). A sufficiently free
market - with appropriate safeguards to ensure competition and prevent
regulatory capture - tends to deal with price just fine, but not with
externalities.

Warren's argument here is a straightforward free market one: free markets only
work when there's a free flow of information. If Amazon both runs the market
and participates in it, it's an inherently unfair playing field. Her argument
is _not_ that we should break up companies that we don't like or even those
that hurt consumers; her argument is we should break up companies whose intact
existence threatens the fundamental nature of free markets.

All that said, as it happens, she opposed Comcast's attempt to buy Fox
[https://thehill.com/policy/technology/396559-senate-dems-
urg...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/396559-senate-dems-urge-justice-
department-to-review-comcast-bid-for-fox) and the T-Mobile / Sprint merger
[https://thehill.com/policy/technology/429618-dem-senators-
ur...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/429618-dem-senators-urge-fcc-
justice-department-to-reject-t-mobile-sprint-merger) — opposing both on the
grounds that they're anticompetitive.

~~~
utopian3
Telco’s have harmed privacy by sharing location data tracking, and adding
injections to web traffic

~~~
jhanschoo
> adding injections to web traffic

to substantiate this point:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890551)

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kryptiskt
As a foreigner, I'm amazed by how little weight Americans seem to put on
international competitiveness. I mean, I guess I should be gleeful that you
have presidential candidates that want to blow up the only companies that give
you a competitive edge. But really, isn't Warren at all concerned that the
ones to pick up the pieces after her plan is implemented are very unlikely to
be American?

~~~
pgcj_poster
It seems like this sort of thinking would lead to a "race to the bottom" where
every country gives maximum leniency to its biggest companies. I'm not sure
that's good for anyone.

~~~
Radle
Exactly what we German did with the big automobile companies. It's incredible
unhealthy. Once you start listening to their every whim, big corps start to
rely on politics to solve their problems. Obviously it's then that they stop
to perform, like a spoiled child.

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brianliou91
I think Warren is fantastic but I feel like her argument for Amazon is flawed
and I'm curious to hear counter arguments.

In her example of Amazon being a platform and information aggregator, wouldn't
a brick & mortar grocery chain like Safeway/Vons/CVS be guilty of the same
anti-competitive practices when they sell "Safeway Brand Fruity Os" next to
Kellogg Fruit Loops?

Businesses seem to have been able to be platforms and information aggregators
for a very long time and we've had plenty of innovation and competition

~~~
habnds
IMHO, your analogy is exactly correct and if Safeway was as big as Amazon,
Warren would be calling for them to be broken up too.

On the other hand, maybe the analogy isn't good because safeway displays
products side by side while Amazon can more easily promote their own products.
Level on a shelf has much less effect than a product being out of sight at the
bottom of a webpage or even the second page of search results.

Grocery store margins are razor thin though, they compete with each other a
lot.

~~~
saddlerustle
> IMHO, your analogy is exactly correct and if Safeway was as big as Amazon,
> Warren would be calling for them to be broken up too.

Walmart does this too and has double the revenue of Amazon. Warren has not
called for Walmart to be broken up.

~~~
habnds
But as a percentage of their perspective markets Amazon is larger. The
grocery/homegoods industries are very competitive. Think about how many
alterantives you have to walmart.

How many places do you routinely go to order things online? How many places do
you go for groceries? I bet you have at least three options. Walmart, Regional
grocery store, and Target or some other alterative place like trade joes.

Amazon's ability to affect customer behavior is much stronger than walmarts I
would argue.

edit: and maybe Walmart _should_ be broken up, just not as high visibility an
issue.

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igravious
Do nerds remember back in the day when many were calling out for Microsoft to
be broken up? Into two parts: OS division, and Apps division.

The idea was that time and again Microsoft's OS division would anti-
competitvely design internal APIs in DOS and Windows that its App division
would leverage. There were also instances where Microsoft subtley broke DOS
(and maybe even Windows, but definitely DOS) for competing applications.
People used to talk about "undocumented" API calls.

In the end Microsoft's OS gained proper competition through the paradigm shift
of FOSS, specifically with Linux. Microsoft helped a key competitor (Apple)
off its knees and look where we are now – Apple has a mobile OS, Microsoft has
none. Microsoft didn't board the internet/web train quick enough, didn't
forsee how big search and social media would become (in fairness, a
vanishingly small number of people did) and so now they have Google and
Facebook to compete with. Amazon parlaying their experience from a building an
at-scale marketplace to a cloud-computing platform took everyone by surprise.

Back in the day I lamented Microsoft's stranglehold on the software industry.
They are still a behemoth but they no longer have the stranglehold they once
had. Amazon has competition. Does Amazon unfairly leverage its marketplace
monopoly to crush competitors? If they do, prosecute them. If they don't, out
innovate and out compete them!

Will Google's stranglehold on search ever be broken? Maybe we'll have to think
laterally. Like distributed open-source search. Will Facebook's hegemony over
social media (FB, FB messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram) ever be challenged? Do we
have the luxury of finding out in a decade or two like we did with Microsoft?
Microsoft never amassed the data on their "customers" that Google and Facebook
and every Tom, Dick, and Harry do now.

Of all these companies I intuitively feel that Facebook should be broken up.
Into its constituent social media parts, that is. Either that or legally
mandate interoperability so that we can move to a federated social media
landscape to encourage genuine innovation and competition. We need the global
equivalent of the ITU but for social media.

Amazon are scary but that's only because they are bad-ass. If they break the
law, fine. If it turns out in a decade that it hasn't been possible to unseat
or challenge the enormous tech incumbents with FOSS challenges then maybe we
ought to take a serious look at the economics, social dynamics, and network
effects involved.

edit: clarity

edit ii: could people who have downvoted my comment explain why please?

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pgcj_poster
> In the end Microsoft's OS gained proper competition through the paradigm
> shift of FOSS, specifically with Linux.

Are you sure? Microsoft's monopoly was mostly on desktop PC operating systems,
and almost all desktops are _still_ running Windows. Most people have never
heard of Gnu/Linux and wouldn't want or even know how to install it if they
had. MacOS is exclusive to one luxury brand, and I really don't see it much
outside of developers and college students.

~~~
basch
I think its a correct statement if you see Android/Chrome as having displaced
Windows/IE as the way the majority of the word consumes the Internet/Web.

~~~
pgcj_poster
Sure, but the fact that the desktop became less important compared with
mobile/web doesn't actually solve the problem of Microsoft having a monopoly
on PC operating systems. Gnu/Linux is almost unusable for non-techies, not
because it's deficient, but because almost all third-party software and
hardware is built with Windows in mind, because that's what people get when
they buy a computer.

In a well-functioning market, all you would have to do to beat Microsoft would
be to make a better operating system. In the current market, to beat
Microsoft, you have to make a better operating system, target a new category
of device, and own one of the biggest companies and several of the biggest
websites in the world.

