
First, Do No Harm - i_am_not_elon
https://stratechery.com/2020/first-do-no-harm/
======
protomyth
_The first group that benefits from large tech company acquisitions is end
users. The fastest possible way for a new technology or feature to be diffused
to users broadly is for it to be incorporated by one of the large platforms or
Aggregators. Suddenly, instead of reaching a few thousand or even a few
million people, a new technology can reach billions of people. It’s difficult
to overstate how compelling this point is from a consumer welfare perspective:
banning acquisitions means denying billions of people access to a particular
technology for years, if not forever._

This really seems like a stretch. First, its assumed that the actual features
make it into a product again or the company is not simply shutdown and the
current less-than-great feature is left in place (NIH). This is the web and
great things spread, the whole last line is just really sounds like fear-
mongering.

~~~
sturgill
My interpretation of this is that this group is mostly the acquihires. He’s
looking at this specifically from the Instagram view, where the product
continues.

Obviously many projects are shuttered (“Our Wonderful Journey”) but I don’t
think that’s what he’s addressing in this point.

~~~
protomyth
I believe Instagram is the perfect counter-example to his whole thesis of
helping the users. Instagram would have been just as popular, and one could
even make the argument that they would have done better without Facebook
because of the negative feeling of association.

~~~
jacobr1
I would hazard that before the "FROM FACEBOOK" branding last year the majority
of users didn't even know it was a facebook property. And even now I bet a
large plurality don't know and the majority of the rest don't care.

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lifeisstillgood
My first thoughts were similar to Thompson's- investigating small acquisitions
will chill the market (a market each of us dreams of being in :-)

But then, I started thinking like an entrepreneur- "Hey, Zuckerberg, I know
you are only offering 7M for my awesome iphone app, but if you buy at this
price it might look to the FTC you are hiding something.

Now if you upped your price to 94.1M and reported the deal, everyone will be
happy!

I remain hopeful.

More seriously, pretty much everything certain "systemically
important"'companies do (Utilities, banks etc) in the M&A space is reviewed
and regulated - Big Tech is just going to face more and more of that in more
and more countries.

I should think they could get ahead of the curve - start embracing things like
GDPR and lobby _for_ it. Get (bribe? lobby?) regulators in different
jurisdictions to choose similar compatible rules - forget about trying to keep
regulators off your backs while making money, if Thompson is right and these
companies are in place for the next century their strategic goals should be
sane, coherent and transparent regulation globally - that global regulation is
coming is inevitable - that it is sane and coherent and transparent is far
from not.

~~~
strbean
Unfortunately, I think the more strategic approach is to lobby for insane,
incoherent, opaque regulation that varies wildly across jurisdictions. Then
FAANG will be the only organizations large enough to handle compliance, and
competitors will be shut out by the barrier to entry.

This is pretty much how most well-established industries are regulated today.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Maybe.

Well, probably based on thousands of years experience.

But ... imagine _coding_ that shit.

It's ok to have country heads who manipulate and hide the illegal moves and
regulatory shifts, but what if you want your web scale architecture to just
work with simple configuration - not rewrite that shot in ten or twenty
countries.

who has enough good web scale engineers who can fuck up a great design to meet
country specific needs but still keep it running?

Imagine wifi being regulated in different ways in different countries? or GSM
signals.

I think we are about to see a clash between the power of simple engineering
and the wants of local regulations

Maybe

~~~
strbean
Here's hoping!

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Absolutely :-)

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throwaway713
Ok, totally unrelated to the article, but what on earth is up with the same
creepy dead comment that is visible on what seems like every article lately
(posted by beeschlenker this time). This has been appearing for months now and
the user still doesn’t seem to be blocked from HN. I’m a bit perturbed that
the text in his comment is even being loaded into my web browser, and while I
generally like to show the dead comments, I think I’m going to have to turn
them off.

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jka
Taking the article title and the author's own recommendation, it's best to
gather information first and then develop an informed opinion - then once
you're ready you take action if required.

That's what the FTC will do; their responsibility is to determine whether
consumers are being protected against unfair or misleading practices, as
stated in their about page[0].

Once no harm has been done and information has been collected for a sufficient
period of time, then they might need to enforce laws against the tech
companies involved - or they might not - depending on the investigation's
outcome.

[0] - [https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/what-we-do](https://www.ftc.gov/about-
ftc/what-we-do)

