
Elizabeth Warren Came Up with a Plan to Break Up Big Tech - Elof
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-elizabeth-warren-came-up-with-a-plan-to-break-up-big-tech
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> The plan she released consists of several parts. Companies with revenue of
> twenty-five billion dollars or more that provide an online marketplace would
> be designated as “platform utilities” and would not be allowed to both own
> the marketplace and participate on it. Right from the start, Warren says,
> Amazon would have to separate its “Basics” business, which sells products
> under a house brand, from the rest of Amazon, and Google’s advertising
> business and its search business would have to be split apart. Secondly, she
> pledged to “empower” federal regulators to undo many of the tech-industry
> mergers that have already happened, such as Amazon’s acquisition of Whole
> Foods and Zappos; Facebook’s takeover of Whatsapp and Instagram; and
> Google’s purchase of Waze, Nest, and DoubleClick.

This would really change the landscape if implemented. On thing that it would
do is force the companies to innovate themselves, knowing that they can't just
acquire every innovative company that challenges their dominance.

~~~
threeseed
So it's okay for supermarkets and brick/mortar retailers to offer house brands
but not online retailers. Pretty arbitrary line.

And this would equally apply to Apple and Google who have a number of apps on
their app stores. This would then lead to even more bundled apps on the phone
e.g. Garageband which would decrease competition.

Most of these policies are really not well thought out.

~~~
RugnirViking
The line is not 'you are not allowed to ever do this' but 'this particular
instance is hurting competition'.

If the vast majority of people shopped at one supermarket, and that
supermarket's most popular products were largely it's own brand products, and
most industries that competed with such products had largely shrunk to
providing specialty alternatives or cheap knockoffs because it was so hard to
compete, then there might be a case for breaking that supermarket up.

~~~
mal10c
So not really a leading question, just curious... why shouldn't I be OK with
buying the cheap mega-supermarket brand product? As the consumer, I just want
a cheap price - I personally don't really care where the money is going. If
small companies can't produce a less expensive alternative, then won't
breaking up the larger company just increase costs to the consumer? Thanks for
your thoughts.

~~~
rapind
Ultimately if all those other brands go out of business, the _cheaper_ option
may no longer be that cheap.

~~~
bduerst
This comes up with predatory pricing antitrust claims, which are complex in
themselves, but you shouldn't punish someone or an organization for behavior
that they only have the potential to do, but have not done.

~~~
rapind
I think it's destined to happen when there is less competition. I don't think
of it as punishment, but as prevention. Even if we assume a company was
altruistic and kept prices artificially low, the lack of competition would at
least prevent a product from getting cheaper faster due to less players
innovating... and we wouldn't even be able to measure what we're missing out
on.

------
umanwizard
> The companies make money by monitoring their customers’ online activity and
> selling the data, largely to advertisers.

Not true. They make money by monitoring their customers' online activity and
using the data to target ads, which they sell to advertisers.

I can't take anyone's reporting or opinion on FB and Google seriously if they
don't understand this extremely important distinction.

~~~
danpalmer
While this distinction is accurate, I'm not sure it's useful?

If you can target with enough granularity, which is fairly typical of these
modern ad networks like Facebook/Google, then you have the data about those
users who click through by the fact that they saw that targeting. It may not
be perfect data, but it's close enough to be incredibly valuable to companies.

I can't buy an email list from Facebook with salaries attached, but I can
target those who have a salary in the range I'm interested in and see who I
get through.

You're right that this is a distinction, but I think it has very similar
outcomes.

~~~
bduerst
It's an important distinction because without it, it implies some human being
is reviewing information linked to your name somewhere, when in reality the
information is being anonymously evaluated by algorithms to target ads.

~~~
mostlysimilar
Disagree. The important point isn't whether or not an actual human is "spying"
on my activity, it's that the platforms providing the targeted ads are not
behaving responsibly with regards to the content being shown.

I don't care about being shown ads for products I might buy. I care about
targeted disinformation being fed to "persuadables" in order to affect massive
political upheaval (current political breakdown in the United States, Brexit
in the UK, other instances all across the globe in smaller nations.)

The only important thing here is that e.g. Facebook has the data and sells
access to nefarious actors. Selling the data "directly" or not isn't the
point.

------
threeseed
I actually think this would just make things worse.

If you were strip Google to just search and Facebook to just Facebook then
they would have to more aggressively go after advertising dollars to ensure
they are growing revenue. And since they would've already been broken up they
would surely do this by invading privacy even more.

Surely the smarter move is to focus on heavily regulating their ability to
track users. And make approaches like Apple did with WebKit mandatory.

~~~
derefr
They would still have business relationships with the other entities they were
split from; they'd just be _only_ business relationships, done in public and
appearing on the balance sheets, and able to be regulated "between."

An example of the type of business relationship Warren probably wants to
encourage: the way Google pays Mozilla to keep Google Search as Firefox's
default search provider.

So, if Google were split up into Google-the-search-engine and Google-the-ad-
agency, Google Search's main source of revenue would still be from ads—but
it'd be via the separate company of Google Ads, paying Google Search for ad
placement.

~~~
dcolkitt
> Google Search's main source of revenue would still be from ads—but it'd be
> via the separate company of Google Ads, paying Google Search for ad
> placement.

This would almost certainly lead to less privacy. Google Search, instead of
just sourcing ads from Google Ads would have to open bidding to a wide variety
of ad networks.

That means your personal search history wouldn't just be accessed by Google,
it would be publicly available to any upstart ad network that wanted to bid
for Search ad placement.

~~~
derefr
Yes, by default. But opening that interface exposes that previously company-
internal leak of information to the government-as-regulator to step in and
clamp down on. If they say both that Google must not run its own ads but must
rely on a third-party for ad placement, _and_ that Google isn't allowed to
show its search data to third-parties, then that has a meaningful impact on
how Google operates as a business.

~~~
utopian3
I don’t have as much faith in the system as you. And I wouldn’t want to wait a
decade for it to be fixed.

------
dmoy
Only online marketplace? Why not physical too?

Walmart?

Then why not telecom? By the same logic shouldn't Comcast no longer be allowed
to own NBCUniversal?

Or for media - would Disney not be allowed to launch their new video platform
thing? Does Newscorp also have to be broken up? Certainly they have platforms
for distributing media, but also a staggeringly large amount of content being
generated.

~~~
davinic
Walmart doesn't have a physical marketplace. A marketplace implies multiple
sellers, and Walmart is the only seller at their B&M locations.

~~~
dmoy
Ah sorry for walmart I meant their online marketplace. I guess my first reply
was sort of incoherent, I was thinking along three separate lines:

1\. why only online, and not also physical? (Are there just not large enough
physical marketplaces?)

2\. What about walmart (in the context of online) - would they need to divest
their online marketplace too?

3\. What about telecom/media industries? Would they need to be broken up as
well?

------
whatshisface
> _The companies make money by monitoring their customers’ online activity and
> selling the data, largely to advertisers._

I can't buy reams of data from Google. There are data brokers out there, but
big adtech companies won't sell me the source of their ad success. Most of the
data market is composed of smaller companies which don't run ad networks and
wouldn't even come close to the eye of an antitrust program.

~~~
ehsankia
It's also not like physical stores don't do it either. They all have
membership cards that track your purchases and visit data.

~~~
bduerst
Reciprocity with credit cards is a thing too. It's how Amazon was able to re-
target me with a product carousel for something I impulse bought at a Macy's.

I'm not really complaining but even tech savvy people can underestimate just
how much of their information is out there.

------
jjtheblunt
As an engineer with a math degree, this all seems like unnecessary complexity,
imposed by a pro-complexity politician in the interest of preventing feigned-
natural-selection of markets from evolving a proper fit solution.

What am i missing?

~~~
smacktoward
The part where 20 years of natural selection by markets has resulted in a few
ginormous companies owning the Net?

~~~
fbonetti
Yahoo "owned" the net not that long ago, now they're completely irrelevant.
Microsoft "owned" the browser market with Internet Explorer not that long ago,
now people cringe when they have to use IE. MySpace was at one time the most
visited social media site in the world, now it's merely a quirky bit of
internet history.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. do not "own" anything. They are businesses that
exist in a fiercely competitive environment in which consumers have zero
loyalty and will gladly switch to the next hot thing at the drop of a hat.
These businesses are successful because they continually innovate and deliver
products that people want. There's no guarantee that any of these companies
will still be around in a decade, much less "own" the market they operate in.

~~~
cguess
> Microsoft "owned" the browser market with Internet Explorer not that long
> ago

And monopoly regulation put an end to that and allowed Netscape to come in and
make it a competition.

~~~
pb7
Where is Netscape now?

~~~
jjtheblunt
Mozilla is its offspring, isn't it?

------
thwythwy
Most people here will seize on Better Markets' phrasing rather than addressing
the merits of this part of what Warren proposes: (1) "Right from the start . .
. Amazon would have to separate its 'Basics' business, which sells products
under a house brand, from the rest of Amazon," (2) Google’s advertising
business and its search business would have to be split apart. (3) regulators
can "undo many of the tech-industry mergers that have already happened, such
as Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and Zappos; Facebook’s takeover of
Whatsapp and Instagram; and Google’s purchase of Waze, Nest, and DoubleClick."

Friendly reminder that (1) through (3) are the actual stakes of the policy,
not what Vaheesan says to the reporter about forcing companies to "behave in
more socially responsible ways." That editorializing will never, ever become
law, and it is entirely secondary to the actual debate here.

------
DuskStar
How about splitting the cable companies between content production and
connectivity?

~~~
pb7
Or how about even the portions of the companies working on infrastructure and
the portion that interface/provide service to customers? Why can’t we have
Comcast Infrastructure build out using those billions of tax payer dollars
donated to them and then have an array of smaller players providing
competitive service leasing out that infrastructure?

~~~
asr
This is basically how Texas sells electricity.[1] I'm not an expert on it but
it makes a ton of sense.

Of course, it may be easier to do this for electricity, where the fundamental
technology doesn't change quickly anymore (as far as I know), than for
internet connectivity, where we are still undergoing fairly rapid
technological change, relatively speaking.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_elec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_electricity_market)

------
caymanjim
How exactly is Big Tech depressing wages? Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google,
Microsoft all pay more than almost any other companies, regardless of role.
Amazon pays all its employees at least $15 and offers far better benefits than
any other large employer to those lowest on the totem pole. Compare Amazon to
Walmart and then tell me who the bad guy is. Google and others have raised the
median wages for tech workers through the roof, to the point that a career
that barely existed 20 years ago is now one of the best-paying jobs you can
get. Tech employs millions of people making six figure starting salaries, many
of them self-taught or with very affordable educations. Tech has created the
largest crop of millionaires in generations.

I'm not saying there aren't problems with large companies, tech or otherwise,
but how exactly are they depressing wages? Who's getting screwed?

~~~
turtlecloud
you are. you should actually be getting paid much more. Just because you are
getting paid more than everyone else doesn't mean that you still aren't
getting underpaid.

That is the scarcity mindset. Instead, engineers should be getting million+
salaries instead of the measly 150k+.

~~~
caymanjim
Well, none of this applies to me personally, since I'm not working at all, and
would never work for one of the big tech companies. Most people I see making
six figures aren't actually all that productive. I don't believe in the 10X
engineer, but I may believe in the -10X engineer.

~~~
taffer
> I don't believe in the 10X engineer, but I may believe in the -10X engineer.

I think you mean a X/10 Engineer. A -10X engineer would have to work
backwards.

~~~
caymanjim
That is what I meant. I've worked with a lot of expensive engineers who
created net negative value, drained the resources of everyone around them, and
would have created a more productive team simply by departing and being
replaced with no one.

------
kart23
Warren and Sanders have made it clear that they dont understand economics or
the constitution. They have just resorted to making promises and elaborate
plans to capture media attention, and gain voters.

~~~
mattnewton
What part of this is unconstitutional? Progressives breaking up big companies
has a long and (mostly) celebrated history in the US.

~~~
kart23
Sorry, I was referring to Warren's planned wealth tax, which is
unconstitutional under the 16th Amendment. I support antitrust laws, and they
have done a lot of good for America.

[https://taxfoundation.org/warren-wealth-tax-
constitutionalit...](https://taxfoundation.org/warren-wealth-tax-
constitutionality/)

~~~
raldi
The 16th Amendment doesn't prohibit anything; it only allows things.

You could argue that the preceding parts of the constitution prohibit a wealth
tax, though, and that the 16th doesn't carve out space for one.

~~~
kart23
Yes, and if something is not allowed in the constitution, then the federal
government does not have the power to do it. The states could do it, but I
find the likelihood of all 50 states adopting a wealth tax to be extremely
unlikely.

[https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-
constitution/amen...](https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-
constitution/amendments/amendment-x)

~~~
raldi
If it's popular enough to get through the House and Senate, it would have to
be drawing widespread public support across the political spectrum.

At that point, there would be a lot of pressure on state legislatures to
ratify an amendment. Anyone who voted against it would be putting a target on
their back in the next election.

------
rvn1045
The anti tech sentiment amongst candidates like warren and sanders is a bit
annoying. if you rank order the problems we need to solve as a nation this
issue wouldnt even make it in the top 10. its getting more attention than it
should. i think a part of the reason is just this deep seated feeling within
people that if some group of people became really really successful (and
especially really really fast) there must be something unfair or fishy about
it. that they don't really deserve it or somehow cheated. atleast this is the
feeling i get when i hear warren or sanders.

~~~
chillacy
I think that's the psychology of it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo)

(video of monkey getting a grape and the other monkey getting a cucumber)

------
mrnobody_67
So Costco doesn't have to spin off the Kirkland brand even though they operate
an online marketplace (Costco.com), but Amazon does with AmazonBasics? So many
things wrong with that.

~~~
bratbag
Does costco have a web platform for selling goods? Does it exceed the revenue
limit? Does it sell own brand goods through its web platform?

Yes to all three, so it would be caught by this law as it is stated here.

~~~
DuskStar
I think Costco might actually not have a web platform as described, if there
are no third-party merchants there. Presumably all the products on their site
go through them, just like the products in their physical stores.

------
every1isbias
I'm just here waiting for a plan to break up Big Government.

~~~
metamet
On that note, one of Elizabeth Warren's primary focuses seems to be the
concept of who the government works for. To that end, the boogieman of "big
government" can either be positioned as something that fights for its citizens
or fights for special interests and corporations.

I think the idea of "Big Government" is amorphous, in that is calls into
question the purpose of a governing body.

Who, or what, should be the governments number one priority? It seems
universal that keeping its citizens safe (military, police) and supplying
fundamental services (roads, fire departments) are accepted by all but the
most jetpacky libertarians. Do we believe that we have the capacity to extend
other foundations of wellbeing to be rights as well? This is the crossroads
we're at with healthcare, protecting the environment (by investing in clean
technologies and slowing down the harm we're inflicting through other
practices), and living wages?

That's what I see as the crux of this conversation. Who does the government
work for? And who SHOULD it be working for?

~~~
malandrew
> And who SHOULD it be working for?

The people that employ them: taxpayers.

~~~
metamet
I completely agree with you.

~~~
malandrew
Honestly, I look at what we can measure and monitor at big tech companies
today and there's nothing I want more than metrics driven legislation.

There is no reason that we should be passing any legislation today without
attached measurable criteria for success and criteria of measurable side
effects that might be impacted. If the legislation does actually measurably
improve something or causes unwanted side effects, it should be removed
automatically. In 2019, we absolutely have the technology to run the
government the exact same way as tech companies.

So many of the services the government provides could easily be metered and we
charge citizens directly based on what they individually consume instead of
indiscriminately taxing people to pay for those services.

------
bitxbit
The prospect of Warren alone could crash the market as we draw closer to 2020.
The first leg will be health care then the rest. I am actually not against her
ideas but deeply concerned about implementation.

~~~
dlp211
Just like the market crashed in 2012 with the re-election of President Obama
and the market crashed in 2016 with the election of President Trump?

------
WalterBright
Amazon, Google, etc. are global companies. Every other country wishes that
those companies were theirs. They're major drivers of prosperity in the US -
armies of well-paid engineers and lower prices for consumers. Planning to
wreck them seems terribly shortsighted.

------
jdavis703
Something interesting is when Warren came to Silicon Valley (well technically
the East Bay), people cheered when she talked about breaking up big tech. I
can't imagine what would have happened if a candidate went to West Virginia
and talked about regulating coal, went to Iowa and talked about removig corn
subsidies or went to Detroit and talked about phasing out ICE vehicles. I
think a lot of people here see the problems that the FAANGs are creating and
want to fix it.

------
gregjotau
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

~~~
icebraining
And the road to mediocrity is paved with thought-terminating clichés.

------
gist
> Bork’s consumer-based theory had many flaws. One of the most obvious was
> that it did not anticipate the rise of online companies such as Facebook and
> Google, which offer their products to consumers for free.

Not entirely true [1]. For one thing there were close and similar models at
that time. For example yellow pages were given out for free and advertising
was sold. Second there were (and still are) many local newspapers that make
money solely off of advertising. And along those lines I would argue that even
paid newspapers are close. Why? They give a great deal of value for the small
amount that is paid in exchange for viewing advertising. Ditto for tv
broadcasts the content is free (as long as you have a tv set) and they make
money off advertising.

[1] And I wouldn't call something that in no way could have anticipated the
future in the way it rolled out 'a flaw' anyway.

~~~
asr
Not only is this not "entirely" true--it's not at all true. The author is
disguising a (hotly contested) opinion/minority position as a well-accepted
fact.

The mainstream position in the antitrust world, even among liberals (at least
until recently), is that Bork's theory is generally right. (For example,
Barack Obama's antitrust appointees would generally have agreed with it.)

What Bork did was bring economic models (i.e. math) to bear in antitrust
analysis. Before Bork, antitrust law was basically run on judges' intuition
about whether business practices were good or bad. After Bork, there is more
structure to the analysis--if we are trying to figure out whether things are
good or bad for consumer prices, there's an economic framework we can use so
that we're not just making random guesses.

You can quibble with the math, but it seems crazy to go back to a world where
we just say "big mergers are bad." _Some_ mergers are bad, sure. But some are
not. For example, I have yet to hear anyone explain why Amazon's purchase of
Whole Foods is bad for anyone other than other grocery stores (who have to try
to compete as Amazon figures out grocery delivery).

------
xwdv
No one who works in tech should be supporting these kind of initiatives or the
people that come up with them. Yet looking around, it seems many people in
tech don’t really understand what’s at stake.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Or they understand exactly what’s at stake, and that’s why they support plans
like these.

~~~
xwdv
If they just want to watch the world burn and slow our tech progress for
decades, sure.

~~~
fspear
I guess for you the end justifies the means?

------
partiallypro
My main problem with the idea of breaking up big tech, is that foreign
companies are just going to pick up the pieces. China for instance will use
the weakness to use their mega partially-state owned companies to crush
everyone. I just don't see how that's a positive. We live in a global economy
now, we have to think of the consequences of our corporate laws globally as
well.

------
daenz
I'm typically a smaller government type of person, but I'm actually ok with
the specifics of her plan. One power that I think should never be stripped
from the government is the ability to regulate parts where the free market
becomes dysfunctional. I think her plan encourages competition and makes the
markets healthier, so thumbs up from me.

------
spaethnl
I've been thinking that a natural way to split up many large corporations that
are anti-consumer would be to require:

1\. Hardware manufacturers be separated from software manufactures

2\. All hardware sold must have available appropriate documentation to write
software for it.

3\. Hardware and software be purchasable piecemeal, even when also available
as a pre-configured bundle.

For example, for Google to sell a Google Home device they would:

1\. Have to have a company, Google Home:Hardware, that produces the physical
device and it's documentation

2\. Have a company, Google Home:Software, that implements the software for
that device, and perhaps bundles it.

3\. These companies can collaborate, e.g., through support contracts, but any
documentation made available to Google Home:Software must also be made
available to purchasers of the physical device, separate from Google
Home:Software.

 _Advantages of this approach:_

1\. This supports the "Right To Repair" movement.

2\. Production of hardware has a very high cost-of-entry relative to software,
making it prohibitively expensive for new entrants to compete. This allows
smaller entrepreneurs to build software on existing hardware designs, bringing
new features to consumers.

3\. New competition will help to naturally break the anti-consumer monopolies
and oligopolies currently existing, because they will have to compete with
features that they currently refuse to implement, fix issues they currently
refuse to acknowledge.

4\. As a re-iteration of 3, would provide more consumer choice. Where as right
now an individual may like the hardware features of one television set, they
may dislike the software features if it (privacy invasion and phoning home?).
Consumers could mix and match.

Although I've focused on tech with Google, this is applicable to many
industries: smart phones, TVs, smart home devices, farming equipment,
vehicles, robotic vacuums...

~~~
chillacy
That's sort of how it works in the automotive industry: one company makes the
parts, one company assembles the car, one company sells the car and anyone can
provide service.

The only downside is that there's a lot of overhead (imagine if a software
project you worked on needed this amount of formality every time you talked to
a UI designer or database engineer).

------
olivermarks
There are dozens of politician plans and manifestos to reorganize 'big tech'.
Interesting that the New Yorker chose to feature the Warren team plan so
prominently. A more rounded comparison of plans would be useful at this point
in the candidate beauty contest.

------
WalterBright
Breaking apart large US tech companies will open the door for foreign large
companies to fill that niche. This doesn't sound like a smart move for the US
government.

------
mattferderer
Could one get around this by owning large percentages of multiple companies &
just directing that they work together & buy services from each other?

In essence something companies already do since they're split up into separate
sections/departments/groups.

Maybe they even split services such as HR into a consulting services
organization that they all rely on.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That actually is why anti-monopoly laws are called "anti-trust". "Trust" in
this case was an entity that controlled a number of companies.

------
zepto
If this means that google would have to stop operating the play store and
Apple would have to stop operating the App store, it would simply fragment the
marketplace, and consumer risk and make it even more expensive to be an
independent developer or producer.

This is not the way to foster innovation. It’s a way to produce a bunch of
meaningless middlemen.

------
RickJWagner
Interesting the article mentions Robert Bork.

Bork was the first Supreme Court nominee to earn his own eponymous verb. Bork
was put through a ringer similar to the one Judge Kavanaugh went through
recently.

Per Google, the verb 'bork' means "obstruct (someone, especially a candidate
for public office) through systematic defamation or vilification."

------
cletus
The USA has such a terrible track record when it comes to breaking up
companies. Not what companies but break up but how to do it. Look at AT&T. The
solution for one national monopoly? Why a collection of regional monopolies of
course! I mean that's what the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) were.

So whenever I hear about some kneejerk proposal to break up tech I expect to
hear someone propose that Facebook should be broken up into two companies: one
for surnames A-M and another for N-Z.

I think the only tech company where you could make any case for being
anticompetitive right now is Amazon. Fedex and UPS exist largely at the whim
of Amazon. Any online retailer is now at a severe disadvantage to Amazon
itself as well as Amazon marketplace sellers.

Second place are the two app stores.

We're living in an era where China's tech giants are tools of statecraft and
not subject to the same level of scrutiny as US companies. The Chinese market
is artificially restricted from competition. By any measure of government
intervention China cheats here. It doesn't really seem like the right time for
the US to kill the golden geese.

~~~
malandrew
> The solution for one national monopoly? Why a collection of regional
> monopolies of course!

Regional monopolies are far less of a threat to politicians operating at the
national scale. So much of what we are observing comes down to people and
institutions vying for power and trying to neuter those people and
institutions in competition for that power.

This is Silicon Valley (big tech) versus Washington D.C. (big government)
versus NYC (big finance).

------
cftorres
We need to stop how big companies are growing. It's not sustainable. If we
don't implement new strategies we are going to live in a well known distopic
future. You all have seen the results of a company that dominates an specific
market without limits.

~~~
simplecomplex
Yeah, its so terrible being able to search the whole Internet for free, carry
a computer in your pocket, and order anything delivered to your door.

------
dawhizkid
Really curious what happens to the stock price of these companies if a
progressive dem like Warren or Sanders wins. I mean, on election day will the
price of these stocks drop double digits? Doesn't seem like these risks have
been priced in at all.

~~~
jakebol
usually original investors get stock in the split-up companies correct? In the
long run the aggregate value of the split up / smaller basket of independent
companies could be larger than the original quasi monopoly.

------
shmerl
MS is not included? How about breaking up many other monopolies as well?

------
simplecomplex
Elizabeth Warren is an idiot, and her ignorance is destructive and a threat to
a productive and free society. Arbitrarily destroying businesses doesn't make
anyone richer.

------
blisterpeanuts
It reminds me of the late 1980s-early 1990s era calls to split Microsoft off
into separate companies: OS and Office. A credulous judge was quoted saying
"Microsoft can just take other people's products and incorporate them into
Windows!"

Today, the notion of Microsoft as a threat to the world seems quaint and
laughable, though at the time it was deadly serious business.

In my opinion, the FAANG monopolies will pass, just as the MS-IBM hegemony
passed. Something new will emerge - a 5G-based tech, maybe, or a Chinese AI or
quantum machine - that will render the current tech giants irrelevant.
Warren's plan is pointless and probably would be counter-productive.

~~~
smileysteve
> Today, the notion of Microsoft as a threat to the world seems quaint and
> laughable,

Interesting considering they are the most valuable company in the world by
market cap.

Addendum: Currently, MSFT's market cap is higher than Facebook, Google, Apple,
and AMZN.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
It fluctuates; recently, Apple was the highest, then Amazon.

The point is that few are talking about Microsoft as a monopolistic threat
anymore; alternative technologies (Linux, MacOS, iOS, Android) have come along
and knocked them off their once-dominant position.

------
AlexDragusin
Welcome to Costco, I love you! [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zNsUTWsOc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zNsUTWsOc)

------
turtlecloud
will this hurt or help her chances at winning the California democratic
primaries? if the tech industry does not want her then what are the other
options out there?

------
tayo42
There seems to be a blame everything on tech thing recently in the news (what
is "tech" for even?)

Why not break up other industries, like some of the giant food and household
companies and the shit they're practically poisoning us with. It feels like
pandering to go after "big tech" constantly.

These industries are just hard to break into. Who is going to compete with
Google at search at this point? We watched Microsoft throw money at and fail
miserably. Social media comes and goes, Facebook the website is dieing,
Facebook the company is will be around by running other social media, opinions
of Facebook specifically aside why is that a bad thing?

We need politicians that are younger and in touch with the world. But still,
anything but Trump at this point unfortunately.

~~~
pessimizer
> Why not break up other industries

Are you actually asking this question, or is it like when Trump says that he
won't pass gun restrictions because the real problem is mental health, but
also won't raise the budget for mental health?

I think it's easier to make the (internet) tech case because they tend towards
pure rent-seeking models rather than production or innovation. Warren isn't
proposing breaking up hardware companies, car companies, or companies that
make consumer appliances; "tech" is a shorthand for internet rent-seekers.

~~~
malandrew
> they tend towards pure rent-seeking models rather than production or
> innovation.

I don't know how anyone can make the case that there isn't innovation and
production isn't the end all be all of a functioning market. You can't buy
goods and services that you aren't aware of and even if you are aware of them,
you need a way to buy them.

25 years ago I couldn't type something into a box, discover a product that
satisfies a need/want related to that query, buy it and have it delivered to
my home in 24-48 hours all from the comfort of my home while I sit in my
underwear.

Once upon a time you had to pick up a big yellow book, hunt around by
category, find some businesses that may or not be related to what you're
looking for if you find any business at all, make some phone calls, eventually
get in your car, drive there, taking out cash from the bank along the way. The
alternative was catalog companies if you knew that a company existed and had a
copy of their catalog (or you had to wait for a catalog to be delivered).

And even long before that the only option was to go down to the local market
and buy whatever was produced locally. If it wasn't produced locally, then you
had to produce it yourself or you were SOL.

------
pastor_elm
My problem with Warren is she thinks that a plan or law can solve everything.
If there were only a law that said, 'It's illegal to be evil,' then there
wouldn't be any evil left in the world.

------
uniformlyrandom
I am horrified by an idea that eventually, I will have to vote for Donald
Trump.

------
jsnider3
Does she have a plan to win the Senate?

------
buboard
by the time she would be elected some of the big tech will have bigger
problems.

------
apo
Warren's blog uses the Microsoft antitrust case as a precedent:

> In the 1990s, Microsoft — the tech giant of its time — was trying to parlay
> its dominance in computer operating systems into dominance in the new area
> of web browsing. The federal government sued Microsoft for violating anti-
> monopoly laws and eventually reached a settlement. The government’s
> antitrust case against Microsoft helped clear a path for Internet companies
> like Google and Facebook to emerge.

[https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-
big...](https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-
tech-9ad9e0da324c)

And then goes on to confuse the Web browser with search:

> .. Aren’t we all glad that now we have the option of using Google instead of
> being stuck with Bing?

There are three reasons I'd avoid this comparison as a selling point:

1\. Little of substance came from the Microsoft case:

> On November 2, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle
> the case. The proposed settlement required Microsoft to share its
> application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a
> panel of three people who would have full access to Microsoft's systems,
> records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance.[30]
> However, the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor
> prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp).

2\. The market handed Microsoft its richly-deserved smack upside the head with
the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. There's no reason to believe that
Google, Amazon, or Facebook will be immune to this process of marketplace
disruption.

3\. The AT&T Anititrust case seems more applicable in that it deals with a
network. After the successful breakup, long distance rate fell.

> The breakup led to a surge of competition in the long distance
> telecommunications market by companies such as Sprint and MCI.[5] ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System)

From Warren's blog again:

> First, by passing legislation that requires large tech platforms to be
> designated as “Platform Utilities” and broken apart from any participant on
> that platform.

This raises the question: what's actually new here? What about the named
companies is so different from previous monopolies that new laws are required?

The discussion in the New Yorker doesn't seem to address this issue. There are
antitrust laws on the books. They have been used in the past. What
specifically prevents them from being applied today, other than political
will?

------
ianamartin
Warren is a really frustrating candidate. She's the kind of candidate I want
to like. At least by the way she brands herself as a thinking person--a
serious wonk. A nerd. All in ways that are good to me. She wants to say,
"Look, I'm doing the hard work of figuring out good solutions to all these
complex and difficult problems so that you don't have to. You can trust me and
read all about it here."

But when you do read her policies, you can see she hasn't thought about these
problems at all. She's basically just doing what the loudest, most ignorant
complainers and pundits are saying to do.

She doesn't seem to understand that Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon
present incredibly _different_ problems. Beating them all up with the same
stick is pointless and won't fix any of the problems.

The fact that they are big isn't really the worst of the problems they cause.
In incredibly simplistic terms, Facebook is bad because of what they do with
_your_ data. Google is bad because of what it does with all the rest of the
data on the _internet_. Apple is bad because of what they _won 't_ let people
do. And Amazon is bad because of what they will let _anyone_ do.

Chopping them up into smaller entities won't solve any of those problems. None
of it addresses any of the problems at all. But in a time where doing anything
is far more important to people than doing something useful, it gets traction.
She also clearly does not understand section 230 of the CDA, and would like to
get rid of that, which will do nothing but ensure that _only_ the big
companies--even broken up--will ever be able to compete.

The same kind of thing applies to the wealth tax idea. It's just a base appeal
to class animosity. There's no nuance, and even if it did happen, it wouldn't
make that much difference in our overall tax revenues. Certainly not enough to
fund the kinds of programs she wants to fund. If you want to fix taxes, you
have to shut down loopholes for wealthy people _and_ corporations. The latter
will make much more of an impact than the former.

I'm certainly on board with higher taxes to a certain extent. But this is just
pandering to angry people who don't think the world is fair, and that's not
healthy for society.

All of this really makes me question her bona fides on topics I really don't
know anything about. Is it more of the same shallow pandering? I haven't
really heard any _good policy_ ideas from her so far, and as much as I want to
like her as my kind of candidate, I just don't have any reason to believe
she'll do anything worthwhile if she does get elected aside from not being
Trump. Which is valuable to me, I admit. But . . . is a huge swath of awful
social, tax, economic, and tech policy actually better than having to deal
with the buffoonery we have right now? I hope we don't have to find out. I
suspect that many people will not like that choice and keep things as they
are.

------
lettergram
Shouldn’t this be senators job, not really the presidents?

Also, it’s policy proposals like these that are going to push Trump to win in
2020. All the Democrats are suggesting more and more socialist policies, while
popular with their base.. is pretty detached from the middle and right side
ideologically. People want cheaper products, more money and stability. Focus
on that.

~~~
pessimizer
You overestimate the public's opinion of large tech companies, and forget that
Trump ran to the left of the rest of the Republican primary candidates, not to
the right of them.

The only voters that are going to move from voting Democrat to voting Trump
over the breakup of big tech are people who work in big tech.

------
ycombonator
What about breaking free from “Native American Heritage” ?

------
oneepic
Ok... but what about big _____ (anything else)?

~~~
thwythwy
There's no way you're paying attn to the news and believe she doesn't have
plans specific to other industries.

~~~
TuringNYC
Yes, but it seems intellectually dishonest to go after big tech (where, often,
the "product" is free) yet avoid going after -- say -- big telco or big cable
or big pharma -- where you come out of a retail store feeling disgusting
because you got ripped off so badly.

By ripped off, I dont mean, I over-spent, but rather I was forced into buying
something due to having only a single choice, while not even knowing the
ultimate price I will pay.

Where I live in the US -- there is ONE and only ONE broadband provider. If you
ask for the price, they give you the three month promotion price. If you press
them really hard, you get the ultimate non-promotional price. Then you get the
bill and there is a "wire fee", "regulatory recovery fee", "line charge" and
all manner of all surprise charges that you didn't agree to except in some
blank-check-fine-print fashion.

Say what you might about privacy etc, but my immediate, acute pains are with
real monopolies like my broadband provider -- _not with which free photo
sharing app I need to use_

~~~
thwythwy
She put out her broadband plan last week. The lack of competition in your area
of the U.S. must have prevented you from loading this webpage:
[https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-warren-unveils-plan-
ex...](https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-warren-unveils-plan-expand-
broadband-access/)

~~~
TuringNYC
I read the entire wired article, the article is about _expanding_ broadband
access to areas which dont have broadband. A worthy exercise...but that is
different from:

1\. Applying her [awesome] CFPB approach to telco where you cant just spring
mystery charges post-hoc and hang customers on a contract they didn't agree
to.

2\. Allowing _multiple_ broadband providers to compete

~~~
thwythwy
She also proposes to strike down state laws that prohibit municipal broadband
options, and I'm shocked at this point that you're standing by your original
comment that she's only regulating Big Tech.
[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbmjja/elizabeth-
warren-p...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbmjja/elizabeth-warren-
promises-to-kill-state-laws-that-ban-locally-owned-isps)

