
CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google prepare their antitrust defense - thg
https://www.techspot.com/news/86160-ceos-amazon-apple-facebook-google-preparing-their-defense.html
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technoplato
> Ultimately, the hearing won't reveal any surprising facts about these
> companies and will likely feature some theatrics, as is often the case with
> antitrust hearings.

The article says it best at the very end.

Wherever you lie on the spectrum of blaming these tech companies for doing
obvious things to continue to drive the bottom line to their investors, the
problem here is that this is just a show. And everyone involved knows it.

There are no mechanisms in place for making competent adjustments at this
scale, ESPECIALLY in the United States government. If you’ve ever tried to
watch any of these, it’s clear the legislatures either aren’t competent enough
in the field to challenge these prepared talking points.

There’s more of a chance of legitimate, competent discussion in a forum like
Joe Rogans podcast where he gets people like [1] Jack Dorsey and Tim Pool in a
room (albeit with the babysitter counsel) to have a back and forth.

I think the key to moving forward as a decision making body of any kind is to
merge the two. Clearly, nothing can come of the Joe Rogan show of note, but
imagine: what if it could? What if there could be more transparency and
accountability for these huge companies and we could objectively examine what
they actually do rather than just hear their talking points and move on?

I guess I’ll end my rant here. It’s just very discouraging that, despite the
fact that this hearing is occurring, there’s a next to nothing chance that
anything useful for the advancement of our country’s liberties will come.

1 [https://youtu.be/DZCBRHOg3PQ](https://youtu.be/DZCBRHOg3PQ)

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SaltyBackendGuy
> There are no mechanisms in place for making competent adjustments at this
> scale, ESPECIALLY in the United States government. If you’ve ever tried to
> watch any of these, it’s clear the legislatures either aren’t competent
> enough in the field to challenge these prepared talking points.

IMO this is the root cause. If our legislatures can't even login to said
website then how could they possibly understand the depth of the power these
companies wield? If there is a lack of understanding then there is no way a
real solution can be derived from these hearings.

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pyentropy
IMHO, I'm glad Microsoft is not part of this. It's not about profits, it's
about data monopoly.

Writing a modern OS is almost impossible from scratch, but there's nothing
preventing you from hiring enough people and making Windows or Azure.

But the problem with Facebook and Google is that they started by scraping
stuff for free and without limitations, but if you try to do the same thing
with them they bite you with Terms of service, paid data graphs and API
quotas. How do you build a index of businesses/venues and people? No matter
how many people you hire you cannot achieve the same snowball / network
effect.

Instead of breaking them up, make them release open data.

~~~
scarface74
Facebook did not “scrape stuff for free”. People willingly gave FB their
information.

~~~
wegs2
People gave Facebook my stuff for free.

RMS explains this much more eloquently than I do. He doesn't have a Facebook
account, but he's all over Facebook, without any control, desire, or
influence.

Many people set up Facebook accounts to have some control over this. Without
an account, I can have nasty things about me on Facebook. To have controls
over that, I need to agree to a contract with Facebook which gives away other
stuff.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I've seen his explanation, but I don't follow the concept of data ownership
being expressed. I can be in my friends' conversations, my company's
management discussions, even the newspaper without consenting to it - why is
Facebook different?

~~~
fsflover
Because it’s for-profit?

~~~
Nasrudith
The newspaper is also for profit and while commerical speech may have more
restrictions (truth in advertising) they aren't barred from those areas. Not a
fan of Facebook but the objection appears to be pure novelty bias because it
hasn't been as normalized as the old ways.

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NoOneNew
Seeing that chart of the 5 largest companies in 2010 vs 2020 blew my mind a
bit.

The idea that Facebook is bigger than Exxon was back in 2010 (even with the
rate of inflation), when electric cars were still a wet dream, crazy. Even
more, the amount of "usefulness" as well. I'm not arguing that we should keep
oil as a fuel source, but you have to admit, right now, if a big player (like
Exxon) in the field just vanished, it would have a painful impact. At least
fuel supply would be a bit crazy for a while until the competitors can ramp up
to meet demand depending on reserve supplies being used. If Facebook just
suddenly disappeared... meh. I mean, second and third order consequences...
meh. Small business ads would need a new place, but that's not crazy bad. More
inconvenience. Advertising companies would need a new supplier, but no really
likes them anyways. Well, a lot of job openings, that's a problem. But I'm
thinking beyond that, because no matter what the industry, a large player just
folding suddenly causes a significant job shortage. That's a common
denominator. But a hampering access to fuel supply vs. a social media wall for
the general publish... one is more important than the other. At the very
least, the other Faang companies have... useful significance?

Edit: I'm aware of the limits to market cap. There's no perfect way of
figuring out the size of a company. My point, there's a large level of
monetary value in these companies and a difference in how they are significant
in daily livelihood for the everyday person. It's just interesting how large
Facebook is by a metric but how incredibly useless it is compared to another
company using the same metric. It's the same how theres an interesting
difference between the market cap of Tesla and Ford. Tesla is larger but they
make a fraction of the amount of sellable goods. It's one thing to know this,
but to see significant numbers, that makes it more interesting.

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ChrisLomont
Market cap is a weird metric to measure company size or influence.

For example, by revenue, it's Walmart with 500B, Amazon at 280B, Exxon 264B,
Apple 260B, CVS 256B, ... Alphabet 161B at 11th, Microsoft at 21st with 125B,
...

By employees it's Walmart at 2.2M, Amazon at 800K, ...., Microsoft in 21st
place with 144K, ....

By profits, it's Berkshire Hathaway at 81B (massive growth), Apple at 55B
(shrinking), MS 39B, Chase 36B, Alphabet 34B, BoA, Intel, Wells Fargo,
Citigroup, .... FB 11th at 18B, .... Amazon 22nd at 11B....

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

[https://fortune.com/fortune500/2020/search/?f500_profits=des...](https://fortune.com/fortune500/2020/search/?f500_profits=desc)

~~~
quicklime
I would argue that revenue is a weird metric to measure company size too.

Doubly so when comparing companies like Exxon and Facebook, which have very
different operating costs.

~~~
dmwallin
Revenue tells you roughly how much value you are creating for other actors in
the economy.

~~~
quicklime
It does that in a one-sided way though. Do car dealers create value for car
makers, or the other way around? The way revenue is measured seems to imply
that retailers are the ones who create value for manufacturers, but not vice
versa.

In that sense, revenue is more of a measure of “how long and costly is your
supply chain, and how close are you to the customer facing side of it?”

~~~
ChrisLomont
>Do car dealers create value for car makers

Both - read about consumer and producer surplus in econ.

> The way revenue is measured seems to imply ....

Revenue estimates how much buyers were willing to pay for the product, but
each buyer retains their surplus, so revenue undercounts the value to the
buyers. But it's a decent representation of value added.

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robbick
Has there been evidence given why these 4 and not Microsoft are at these
hearings? I understand each case is subtly different but it seems conspicuous
in it's absence. In terms of Big Tech companies potentially violating anti-
trust feels odd to include companies 1,3,4,5 but not 2? (Not actually sure
what the current comparative values are)

~~~
Kednicma
Presumably Microsoft, having been convicted once already, is not going to be
given such benefit of the doubt as to be invited to a hearing; instead, folks
may well decide to bring suit against them without bothering to drag them
before Congress as a pretext.

Moreover, Microsoft doesn't have a flagship product which they're using to
abuse their monopoly position. The other four do: Apple has its app store,
Google has its search+ads vertical _and_ its app store, Amazon has its
delivery service, and Facebook has its social+ads vertical.

~~~
scarface74
And only if you redefine “monopoly” as “only one company gets to sell its own
products”. Why not drag the console makers in too?

~~~
im3w1l
Neither console game developers nor console game players are complaining. I
think it's really that simple.

EDIT: And I think I know the reason why. Imagine your kid has a birthday party
and invites Alice, Bob and Charlie from school. All is fine. Imagine now that
he invites everyone from his grade. Everyone except David. That is bound to
piss David off a lot.

Oh and I think game deals are cleared in advance, while app removals happen
after you've already done the work.

~~~
smileybarry
It's mostly understandable because, historically, video game exclusives were
either developed or published by the console manufacturer. Some people might
get annoyed that this cool game isn't coming to their platform of choice, but
as soon as they saw "published by Sony", they understood.

They've also helped pay for the console with hardware sold at a loss (near-
loss nowadays after the PS3 loss mess). So it was seen as a necessary "evil"
by most.

The one being seen nowadays as bad -- which answers your "everyone except
David" metaphor -- is Epic Games buying "everyone except Steam" exclusivity
deals. But that topic is too deep to go into here.

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kanobo
How many people at a company are typically involved in writing those CEO
prepared statements to the House? If anybody has done it before, I'm very
curious to learn the process.

~~~
Icathian
I have helped support such statements in an unrelated field. My role was as a
SME in specific data arenas. The general process was that our Marketing
department would try and coordinate all the best available talking points.
Anything we'd put out to the press over the last couple years that they felt
would be compelling. Once that particular menu was constructed, they reached
out to the relevant SMEs across the business to drop what they were doing and
pull together any data possible to reinforce the selected talking points. Our
results were handed back up the chain for marketing to integrate and polish.
In my case the executive actually speaking to Congress then met with us to
dive into the provided data and make sure they were able to speak to it
reasonably well if pressed.

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d0gbread
In case anyone hasn't read Warren's policy recommendations, it's worth the
read to get a sense of possible steps beyond questions on CSPAN:

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

------
yumraj
Google, FB and Amazon I understand and absolutely agree that they're
monopolies and need to be regulated.

But why Apple? Android has a very substantial market share and provides a good
hedge against Apple iOS, same for the MacOS/Windows market.

~~~
Nasrudith
The closest thing is calling their app-store practices anti-competitive but it
is essentially an industry standard for better or worse regardless of how they
choose to curate.

The real answer to why is that it is a grandstanding joker jury and all of
their reasons are stupid and dishonest.

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mas3god
None of these companies have monopolies

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bfieidhbrjr
Is there a way to watch this online today? cspan wants a tv provider account
and I don't have one.

~~~
mv4
Link here
[https://judiciary.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Documen...](https://judiciary.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3114)

... or directly on YouTube
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVvv3JRCVQAl6ovogDum4hA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVvv3JRCVQAl6ovogDum4hA)

~~~
bfieidhbrjr
Thanks!

