
As Tech Goliaths Face a Reckoning, Small Businesses Say They Finally Feel Heard - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/technology/big-tech-antitrust-scrutiny.html
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zsgoldberg
When people here read these articles, is the platforms-vs-publishers
relationship top of mind for you?

I don't really know what headspace I should be in when I open these articles.
I generally want to understand the underlying motivations of the publishers.
How are y'all feeling?

Let's not limit it to antitrust issues since it's usually been about privacy,
free speech, the rest

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mncharity
> is the platforms-vs-publishers relationship top of mind for you?

More that the press does narratives, which are often the creation of, or
strongly influenced by, long-term PR campaigns.

My very fuzzy understanding is, atleast after the Microsoft-Google
nonaggression pact some years ago, the largest interest pushing the anti-
BigTech narrative has been Hollywood, wishing to regulate the lawless internet
and reduce tech industry influence.

One thing that's puzzled me, and I'd appreciate any insight, is how Microsoft
got dropped from the Big Tech set.

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marssaxman
I have wondered the same thing - Netflix is an obvious outlier among the Big
5, and Microsoft an equally obvious omission. Apparently the "FAANG" idea is a
Wall Street thing, a grouping based on financial rather than technical impact.

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rchaud
"BRICS" was a Goldman Sachs invented acronym, coined in 2002, and was
frequently used by policymakers and press for at least a decade, despite
nobody ever seeing common threads between the economic structures and
populations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

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pryce
What planet is this from where Tech Goliaths face any kind of "reckoning"?
What they are facing is a man-child who feels as though they don't fawn over
him enough, who is making noise to injure share prices to compel them to do
what he wants, while simultaneously making clear that -should he be sated- he
will make his 'concerns' over monopolistic business practices swiftly
evaporate.

Neither party here is guided by principles about monopolistic business
practices.

Regulating monopolistic business practices is incredibly difficult to achieve
in even a stable regulatory climate by genuinely interested lawmakers and
regulators. In a White House environment driven primarily through personal
animus, this shares vastly more in common with a shake-down than with small-
business emancipation.

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jaggednad
While I agree with you re trump’s motivations, it’s also true that the leading
democrats are making similar statements about regulating/breaking up big tech
(for better reasons). It seems that, in this time of hyper partisan
polarization, one of the few things the two major parties agree on is a hatred
of big tech. That’s a bad place for big tech to be in. While agree big tech,
especially Facebook, are no angels, it’s tragic that big tech is catching so
much flack while the big banks and hedge funds, whose crimes are far, far
worse, seem to be forgotten.

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dmitrygr
> _The shop’s Google listing is how most customers find his restaurant, yet,
> he said, he has no control over how his business is represented. There is no
> way for him to get rid of the ad next to the Google listing._

So he wants the free traffic but not to pay for it in any way?

Ah, the "i want my cake and to eat it too" argument. A classic

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will_brown
>There is no way for him to get rid of the ad next to the Google listing. >So
he wants the free traffic but not to pay for it in any way?

If people are specifically looking for his business he doesn’t want the
competitors business to be able to buy an ad that pops up before the user
searching for his business.

That has nothing to do with wanting free traffic for nothing. This guy has
likely already built a website that is optimized for google search, likely
uses paid gmail/google apps, probably registered all his info in google
maps...that’s a lot of free data entry for google so their product is better
and some of those business services are paid.

So now that you use their paid services and probably paid for web
development/SEO up to Google’s lastest standards, your business comes up #1 on
google searches...and they sell an ad before your result.

There is no great real world example, but imagine you have a brick and mortar
and sign a commercial lease in a shopping center, then the landlord rents
signage in front of your sign to a competitor. Of course he’d always be happy
to rent you the 2nd signage if you beat your competitors bid.

~~~
CPLX
There’s actually a pretty good real world metaphor when you realize that
Google is a telecommunications company.

Imagine if when people called your restaurant to make a reservation the phone
company had someone else answer the phone first and suggest you try a
different restaurant.

No metaphor is perfect but that’s pretty reasonable. Conceptually Google is
some kind of an amalgamation of a common carrier and natural regulated
monopoly at this point and should be treated as such.

~~~
ohithereyou
A similar issue with a phone company lead to the first creation of an
automatic telephone exchange[1]:

>Strowger, an undertaker, was motivated to invent an automatic telephone
exchange after having difficulties with the local telephone operators, one of
whom was the wife of a competitor. He was said to be convinced that she, as
one of the manual telephone exchange operators, was sending calls "to the
undertaker" to her husband.

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

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
Ever been so pissed at a dude's wife, you invented a major telecom technology
that took over the world and lead to better stuff?

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frequentnapper
It's fresh of Yelp to complain about anti-competitive behaviour whilst using
their well-documented, mafia-like tactics to extort money from small business
owners.

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v7p1Qbt1im
This. Has Stoppelman done anything other than rant about his unfair situation
for the last 10 years?

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mojuba
(Off-topic: so The New York Times is no longer available in private mode. How
do they detect it?)

~~~
espeed
It is if you open it incognito from a SERP.

Re: "how do they detect it?" \-- without investigating it, I would suspect
browser fingerprinting within a window time slice.

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heymijo
SERP = Search Engine Results Page

For anyone else who didn't know.

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fredgrott
Really, what reckoning?

Any antitrust movement has a play out of over ten years.

The current g20 progress towards closing tax loopholes via digital tax is also
a ten year process..

The Reckoning has not occured yet...not even close...

