
Four companies dominate our daily lives unlike any other in human history - imartin2k
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a15895746/bust-big-tech-silicon-valley/
======
OliverJones
The USA now evaluates monopolies based on just one thing: their ability to
control and manipulate prices charged to to household customers. Using market
power to raise prices to household customers, the way Enron did to California
electricy users, is against public policy.

The anti-trust dismantling of the tech behemoths advocated by this author
cannot happen unless public policy changes so it also discourages
monopsonmies.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony)
In other words, companies like Amazon and Walmart don't increase prices to
their customers. Instead, they have power to decrease their payments to
suppliers. But that's not against current US public policy.

Also, I wonder about the wisdom of using market cap as a measure of a
business's size. That's a peculiarly sili-valley way of measuring things, and
can be very inflated. Take Uber. It's a pirate (informal) cab company with an
excellent app. It loses money every year. Most cab companies would run out of
gas if they did that. But not Uber.

It may be better to measure company size by revenue or even, gasp, by size of
payroll or by profit.

And, the word "firm," used by this author, is jargon from the academic field
of economics. It's a tell about theoretical vs. real-world advice.

~~~
Pokepokalypse
You are correct.

The ONLY way that Amazon even GOT a fucking monopoly in the first place, was
the absolutely fucking retarded ruling that awarded them a patent on "one-
click shopping".

------
chmod775
Do they now? Out of these four the only one I really use daily is Google,
followed by Amazon.

Apple doesn't have the highest market share in any category. Samsung for
example, even if they're not quite there in terms of net income due to lower
margins, is a much larger company. Actually there are plenty of companies who
are both larger and wield considerably more power/influence.

Facebook is pretty much a dead man walking in my social circles. The last time
I opened Facebook, it was to change my relationship status roughly a month
ago. I don't know why I even bothered. People have no problem with migrating
to another social network. It happened plenty of times in various countries
(from and to facebook), and it will happen again.

Saying that these companies "dominate" (i.e. control) our daily lives is
laughable. Most are hardly more than a tool. I am not dominated by my
screwdriver just because I use it daily.

Even if it has some advertising on it.

~~~
jimnotgym
Apple engaged in a deal with its chip supplier to restrict downstream
competition[0] which was all the suppliers fault of course.

Apple had illegal tax arrangements in the Republic of Ireland[1], which was
Irelands fault of course.

Apple may just have too much clout in the music biz[2]. This one is on them

[0]
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-24/qualcomm-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-24/qualcomm-
gets-1-2-billion-eu-fine-for-apple-chip-payments)

[1][http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-16-2923_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-16-2923_en.htm)

[2][http://www.cityam.com/280169/eu-warns-apples-bid-shazam-
coul...](http://www.cityam.com/280169/eu-warns-apples-bid-shazam-could-hit-
competition-ahead)

~~~
chmod775
I don't see how any of this is even tangentially related to the article or
what I wrote. Nice anecdotes though?

~~~
jimnotgym
You seemed to be arguing that Apple were in no position to be a monopoly. I
was showing that they have had the market position to have been included in
some monopoly investigations already, and in that other part of the article
have engaged in tax avoidance where they made an illegal sweetheart agreement
with a _nation state_. I am suggesting that they have rather more dominance
than you were making out.

Now a potential merger is being investigated by competition authorities which
supports the article and directly contradicts your comment. Nice brush of
though?

------
adventured
The foundational premise of the article is false.

Standard Oil, Ford, GM and US Steel to name four, dominated American life as
much or greater than today's giants. Standard Oil essentially ruled the US
economy, literally, for a few decades at its peak. Today's tech giants are
comically weak compared to that sort of power and direct control over the
economy.

Amazon in no way is dominating American life. Their retail sales are a third
that of Walmart. They have lively competition in cloud computing, Microsoft is
actively taking market share from them there, and Google is intent on
competing aggressively (they can both afford to and have the technical chops
to do it). If Amazon is lucky, one day they'll grow up to be as powerful in
retail as Walmart was at its peak of dominance ~10 years ago.

Facebook is losing users in the US and that trend is almost guaranteed to
continue. Competitors with appealing products will slowly siphon off users,
new and old. Such platforms universally have an ebb and flow to them, they do
not maintain peak power perpetually.

Google search is quite a bit less important than it was six or seven years
ago. Their economic power is still slightly rising, their search product power
is slowly fading. Microsoft knows that feeling, re Windows.

Apple? That one is almost pure bullshit. They've botched the home AI gadget
competition. Siri is a mess. iTunes + iPod has lost its quasi monopoly. They
have no dominant position in traditional computers. The iPhone is a juggernaut
- so what. So is Boeing in airplanes and McDonalds in mediocre low priced
hamburgers and Starbucks in coffee.

~~~
lj3
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. It kind of makes you
wonder why the subject is made so damned boring in school when it would take
little effort to make it very exciting indeed.

~~~
mikulas_florek
And those who know it are doomed to repeat it too.

------
zzzeek
idiot here.

Tech is too big, OK. but why not:

* oil

* finance

* media

? is google that much more of a hoarder of billions and harmer of the public
good than ExxonMobil and BP ?

hmmm

> You could merge the world’s top five advertising agencies (WPP, Omnicom,
> Publicis, IPG, and Dentsu) with five major media companies (Disney, Time
> Warner, 21st Century Fox, CBS, and Viacom) and still need to add five major
> communications companies (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, and Dish) to get
> only 90 percent of what Google and Facebook are worth together.

well that's a Thing, I guess

~~~
greeneggs
It's political. Liberals are generally suspicious of large companies, but are
used to getting nowhere in fighting them. The conservative agenda has been
controlled by big companies for a long time.

(This is the black-and-white version. I know it is inaccurate and
oversimplified! Obviously the true story is more complicated.)

But these tech companies are big companies that are liberal to an unheard-of
extent. So when a few liberals target them, the usual opposition is strangely
missing.

------
rasengan
Why bust it up? Just don’t use something if you don’t like it. Vote with your
wallet.

More regulation means more government power. They are more powerful then all
the tech companies you listed.

Why give them more power?

~~~
KozmoNau7
In many cases, there's no choice, unless you're willing to accept a certain
level of inconvenience, or a monetary cost.

Need a phone that is reasonably modern? Google or Apple, that's your choice.

Need to stay in contact with a diverse and spread out group of friends,
without manual mailing lists? Facebook is your choice.

Sure there is actually a cost, but it is invisible to most people.

It is borderline impossible to live a reasonably connected life today, without
at least one of the big four, and probably most of them.

Big companies basically own the US government.

~~~
davidcbc
> In many cases, there's no choice, unless you're willing to accept a certain
> level of inconvenience, or a monetary cost.

Yes, choices come with tradeoffs, that doesn't mean you don't have a choice.
The big 4 are successful because they are incredibly convenient and good at
what they provide.

> Need to stay in contact with a diverse and spread out group of friends,
> without manual mailing lists? Facebook is your choice.

What was your choice before Facebook?

> It is borderline impossible to live a reasonably connected life today,
> without at least one of the big four, and probably most of them.

If you're willing to use an AOSP phone it seems like it is pretty easy to
avoid using the big 4. Don't buy things on Amazon, use DDG or another search
engine, use another email provider, don't buy Apple products, don't use
Facebook.

Sure, it is inconvenient to not use those things, but that's because they are
the best at providing what they provide. If they weren't you would already be
using something else.

~~~
LamaOfRuin
They were already too big 5 to 10 years ago, and thus bought their way into
continuing to be the best at providing what the provide (subsuming smaller
innovative companies and arguably leaving us worse off than we would have been
had they been left to innovate independently). Many of the market leaders
cited in the piece were already market leaders when they were bought by these
4 (I'd add MS to the list).

------
cheez
> Well, yes and no. The Four have so much power over our lives that most of us
> would be rocked to the core if one or more of them were to disappear.
> Imagine not being able to have an iPhone, or having to use Yahoo or Bing for
> search, or losing years’ worth of memories you’ve posted on Facebook. What
> if you could no longer order something with one click on the Amazon app and
> have it arrive tomorrow?

Uh.. I'd survive.

------
josephagoss
The article calls for the splitting up of Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon.

If the companies are not being anti competitive is it fair for a Government to
break up private enterprise that is not breaking the law?

I feel that it's going too far allowing Government to split apart corporations
acting legally just for being successful.

What are your thoughts?

~~~
loup-vaillant
"Fair" should not even be on the vocabulary when talking about what we should
do to companies. Companies aren't people. What we do to them is secondary to
whatever we do to actual people.

Now, how a split would affect the people involved, that's another story. But
if you weight the number of people in those companies, versus the number of
people they affect worldwide, well… the moral weight of the company is a
rounding error. The only thing that really counts is how stuff like a split
would affect the rest of the world. And if it means putting those four
companies out of business, well, tough luck. The greater good must prevail.
And even then, there are ways to compensate for the subsequent spike in
unemployment.

~~~
nine_k
You most certainly heard about a thing called "law". In short, it's a paper
that limits actions of everyone, including the government, to some known safe
subset.

Arbitrarily breaking the law, that is, limiting the so-called "rights" of
people, is considered bad, that very law prohibits it. You cannot just go and
prevent somebody from doing a thing not prohibited by the law, such as
carrying an iPhone, because suddenly you realize that you need to grab the
iPhone and split it to pieces to make the world as a whole a better place.

Same applies to other properties, like companies. Unless owners of these are
breaking the law, you can't grab and split their companies, because you
consider it a greater good.

Of course, there were numerous examples when people ignored law and did
arbitrary things, because "revolutionary conscience", "divine right of kings",
or just plain having a gun as an argument. While merits of these options can
be discussed, they all are incompatible with "rule of law", let alone
"democracy", that many hood dear and consider the very soil on which the
economic prosperity has grown. (We have most of Africa and Central Asia as a
control group.)

~~~
jimnotgym
All true, but please allow for the fact that certain kinds of market practices
are against the law in certain jurisdictions and some of the companies
mentioned have already been found guilty of these.

Also allow that laws may be changed.

~~~
nine_k
Yes, laws may and should eventually change.

The process of changing laws is usually relatively slow, and involves
discussing various consequences the change may have. I just wish this process
was applied in the case.

------
Paianni
Apple and Amazon should be replaced with Microsoft and Intel.

~~~
Nerdfest
I can, (and usually do) quite easily get by without Microsoft, Intel, Amazon,
and Apple. I'd love it if everyone dumped FaceBook. Google would be more
difficult, but not impossible. Part of what keeps these companies going is the
inertia and "friends" factors, but much of it is that people like how well
they work. They have to keep in mind that they're one good competitor away
from having a serious chunk of their business taken .... assuming they don't
just buy out the competitor.

------
aikinai
You might like Seattle. It's illegal to honk except for emergencies[1]. But
even if it weren't illegal, no one would do it anyway.

[1] [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/qa-honking-can-
be-...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/qa-honking-can-be-illegal-
lake-city-hazards/)

