
Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big? - happy-go-lucky
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39875417
======
jondubois
I agree they should be regulated. The world is a better place with lots of
smaller companies.

These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the
wealthy.

If you were to analyze Facebook as if it were a country, the wealth gap among
employees would be atrocious - The top 1% would own maybe 99% of the wealth of
the country and everyone else would earn a minuscule fraction of the total
value that they produced.

If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to
mirror the economies within these large corporations.

What's worse is that the social aspects will also be mirrored. We will
gradually lose freedom of speech, in the same way that employees of large
corporations don't have the freedom to say what they really think to their
bosses.

Many who have worked for a big corporation will know how suppressing the
environment can be. I'm really glad that I live in a time when there are still
alternatives.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Disclaimer: I work at Google

> The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies.

[citation needed]

A lot of things Google does -- a lot of the things people actually like about
Google -- are possible only because it's a huge monolith. Divorce the ad-
making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that
are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android,
translate, youtube, drive, waze, where do you think the money for this stuff
all comes from?

Of course, if you're one of the uber technerds that thinks that Google is
unabashedly evil and Linux is going to take over the desktop any day now, that
probably sounds great to you. I just think the average consumer would have a
different take on it.

~~~
mothers
Suppose there was an organization, "Creation", that did mass surveillance on
everyone on the planet. They don't disclose what they do with this data.

Let's say as a result of Creation's sharing of this data with local
governments, crime is nonexistent.

Based on only what we've said is that a good or bad deal? Also, all of your
examples were either purchased or have alternatives, so, yeah.

~~~
openfuture
How do you know that Creation has the right definition of "crime" or that such
a definition even exists.

------
tyingq
Feels like it's getting worse too. For example, things like Google Home and
Alexa discourage choice. "Order me a pizza" means they are now either
kingmakers in the space, or incented to open their own pizza business.

I'm not a fan of big government, but at some point depending solely on their
goodwill seems dangerous.

~~~
mstolpm
In general, I agree with your warning that Alexa and co. could limit choice.
But is really anyone ordering just "a pizza" or "a lightning cable" by voice
without further specification? Isn't customer satisfaction key for using the
assistant in the future again?

If using a virtual assistant for ordering, I'd instruct Alexa (or Google or
Siri) to order a specific pizza in a specific size from a specific pizza
delivery. And if not satisfied with the result of a request, I'd want to be
able to specify: "Never order again from the delivery you used last." \- or
I'd never use the assistant for this task again.

But most likely, I'd just order by hand or phone (instead of voice assistant)
as long as I can't tell the voice assistant to just order "my standard pizza"
based on my order history.

~~~
hjnilsson
But Alexa extracting a 5-10% (or even 30%) fee on all pizza places through
that access definitely hurts all pizza businesses, anywhere. And those that
opt out will miss that business.

~~~
dgudkov
How is it _definitely_? It may hurt or may not. Credit card systems also
charge a commission and yet every pizza place prefers to pay it rather than
accept only cash, because of the benefits credit cards provide.

~~~
skummetmaelk
Justeat is an online pizza ordering service from Denmark which also requires
pizza shops to sign up for it and pay a fairly large fee. This started out
very well, but when it gained massive traction they ramped up the fees and
pizza joints started complaining that it was killing them. Of course it was
too late to opt out since all the consumers had gotten used to going to the
website.

The fee started out at 10% and went up in steps up to 20%. At several points
pizza shops tried banding together and staging mass "walkouts", but it never
worked.

~~~
dgudkov
They should increase prices then. If customers like ordering through a voice
assistant then make them pay for it. Any supplier for a pizza place can raise
prices at any moment -- ingredients, rent, utilities. It's just business,
nothing new. As long as it's not a monopoly it won't hurt businesses.

------
marcoperaza
I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from
advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of
online advertising is massively inflated.

Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape
at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services
to real end users.

Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in particular, as well as a
hypothetical alliance/merger of supermarket chains, are well positioned to
break Amazon's dominance of e-commerce. But they will need the ambition and
ruthlessness that has served Bezos so well. Few large American corporations
still have the vigor and virility of Bezos's Amazon.

Microsoft (full disclosure: my former employer) too is strong but not
unbeatable. All of their products are facing tough competition from Apple (in
OS and hardware sales), Google (in online services), and multiple others (in
business software). Microsoft's wins are hard fought and fair, and the
competition never lags too much.

~~~
supremesaboteur
> Microsoft's wins are hard fought and fair

Was giving Internet Explorer away for free along with Windows and bankrupting
Netscape fair ?

~~~
mciancia
Yes.

~~~
chinathrow
Why? Also, that's not the view of the court within the EU antitrust case
against MS.

------
jimnotgym
RE Amazon: I think it is problematic that they are now one of the biggest
marketplaces, as well as being a trader. Put simply this allows them to watch
other peoples sales, and if they look pretty good on a certain product,
undercut them. This could be solved by divesting, hiding the transactions
nature from Amazon, or more radically, having the data in the open so everyone
can use it

Re Apple: Technology comes and goes, but the iphone was a good one. The
troubling thing for me is the amount of cash they are hording. If this is
intended to underwrite Applepay as a new bank, then firstly they must allow
open access to all technology platforms to use Applepay. You can't have a new
dollar that works better at Walmart than Tesco.

Re Google and Facebook: These companies are advertisers. I have no problem
with their size or structure at present. I do have a problem with using their
easy cross border presence to avoid taxation. You cannot have the biggest
revenue generators for advertising paying no tax, when everyone else has to.
In the UK Google is headquartered in Ireland so the UK receives no tax from
the billions of revenue. This is unsustainable for the country.

My real problems with Google and Facebook is they regard everything about us
as their to do what they want with.

------
codefined
It does concern me when people say that the internet should be unregulated,
especially given the recent vote in the US and the likely upcoming votes in
the UK.

Monopolies are very easy to form on the internet, and in the interest of
improving everyone's use, we need to try to avoid them. Walled gardens
currently trap people into one service and limit the ability to swap between
them, similar to "forcing" you to use just one company for your construction
work, no matter the price.

I haven't heard a great answer to this problem yet, if one even exists. Is
there a way to attempt to prevent these from forming which can be practically
implemented?

~~~
nine_k
China, Turkey, Russia, etc control the way the internet is seen by their
populaces.

Would you enjoy your internet being controlled the same way?

~~~
codefined
I'm talking about regulation, not control.

Companies are regulated already to stop monopolies and we're not living in
North Korea.

------
gigatexal
Regulation only makes the largest companies that much more untouchable. Why
not invest what would have been spent on regulation instead on education? That
way the next pioneer could be fostered. Or invest in subsidies for health and
wellness and food programs so the next Zuckerberg doesn't go hungry and can
have the luxury to innovate (terrible analogy since he came from a middle
class family but still). Or if you don't want to do that what about allowing
foreign nationals with an idea but without capital and a safe and business
friendly government to come to the States to create their businesses?

------
cmurf
Regulating them ultimately doesn't work very well because a.) it's reactive
rather than proactive, so there's regulatory lag b.) it injects politics, and
political wind c.) because of a and b we get inconsistency, changes in policy,
this isn't good for either consumers or employees or investors.

I'm not sure what the work around is, but for sure we (Americans) do not apply
anti-trust / competition law as aggressively as we should. It just seems wrong
to me to allow these big companies to buy up smaller companies and then just
obliterate them into nothing, not use their technologies, just destroy them by
putting the patents into a vault and sue anyone who infringes but not letting
anyone benefit either. They all do this to varying degrees.

It's like at a certain market value as a percentage of either global or maybe
national wealth, companies should be disallowed from mergers of any kind. And
at another level of size, they are required to break themselves up into
pieces.

Edit: Maybe disallow hoarding patents. If after X years you're not using a
patent, it either auto-expires and is relegated to public domain, or it's
compulsory to sell it. Use it or lose it!

~~~
bigleagueposter
Why would you want force companies to use their patents.

------
unityByFreedom
If you don't like their services, you have plenty of other options, one of
them being that you don't need to use them at all.

On the other hand, you're locked in with your broadband ISP. If I'm going to
decry some internet business, I will first point the finger at Comcast and
their ilk.

------
Asdfbla
I'm surprised the EU hasn't acted against Google already. Remember when they
(rightfully) went after Microsoft and forced them to offer a browser choice?
And that wasn't even the peak of the Internet Explorer monopoly.

And yet it's allowed that like 80% smartphones sold in Europe come with
Android versions that basically lock the user into the Google ecosystem, else
you can't use the default store.

~~~
paglia_s
It looks like a multibilion fine for Google is coming
[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/google-eu-
fi...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/google-eu-fine-
search-9-billion-search-results-rigging-alphabet-shopping-
service-a7768621.html)

~~~
Bakary
As usual it will be pocket change for the company, and essentially part of the
cost of doing business.

------
sangnoir
If I didn't know better, I would say this is a reaction to "nouveau riche"
companies. When was the last time that the BBC proposed reining-in banks or
oil companies despite clear consumer antipathy? Even after LIBOR, the 2008
crisis, Deepwater Horizon and HSBC cartel laundering, no one suggested these
companies were to big, outside of the phrase "too big to fail". They were
punished by being bailed out or given a nominal fine, but these uppity tech
companies ought to be broken up.

Perhaps they are "too big", but only because they isn't a revolving door
between tech companies and the corridors of power (yet?)

------
BenoitEssiambre
I'm not usually very pro corporate taxes. I think (with some caveats) that it
is generally better to tax the owners of businesses than the businesses
themselves. However, in order to counter the unfair advantages of overly large
companies and promote competition (in tech, in finance or elsewhere) wouldn't
it make sense to make corporate taxes slightly progressive where the larger a
business is (by revenues), the higher the tax rate?

Is there an obvious flaw to this approach? Why don't I see anyone ever
suggesting it?

~~~
Eridrus
It's not really obvious that we should prefer small companies to large
companies.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Notably, it's potentially easier to hold large companies to account compared
to a bunch of small ones equivalent in total size.

For example, bad news about Uber discourages people using Uber all over the
world. Bad news about some taxi's behavior only discourages using taxis (or a
particular taxi provider) for that one city, usually.

In other words, large companies are more susceptible to reputational threat,
which is is why, for example, they tend to be more careful about what their
employees say online. If an employee of a random 10-man startup says something
racist online, that's nowhere near as big of a deal as if an identified
Googler says something really racist online.

------
someSven
If some gov dosn't like the power of those companies then the should feel free
to support free software. The same goes for competitors and consumers.
Regulation only in rare cases please.

------
sr2
Things like Mastodon[0] and IPFS[1] are always worth checking out, if you want
to get a sense of control over your data. With regards to the argument that
these companies are so entrenched in our society that they are very difficult
to remove, almost like barnacles, then I agree that something has to be done.
The real problem exists when there is no other choice for people. For example,
the default search engine on Android phones is most certainly Google and not
DuckDuckGo. Another example of terrible monopolistic practice is that Android
phones are so fragmented. It seems kind of odd that in order to have the most
secure Android installation, that I also have to have the latest hardware. I
find it very unfair that legacy devices are locked to a single Android install
and can't upgrade properly. These things should be future proof and be able to
respond to threat landscapes. I feel very uneasy communicating on legacy
devices because there is the uneasy feeling that the device has been infected
by either low-level attackers, or nation states.

[0] [https://mastodon.social/about](https://mastodon.social/about)

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

------
whyenot
What is interesting to me is that according to the article, the five largest
companies in the world (by market cap) are all now companies headquartered on
the west coast of the US. What a remarkable shift in the world from the way it
was just a few decades ago. We are in the midst, of a massive power shift, a
revolution. I think it's hard to predict what the results of any regulation
would actually be -- everything is changing too quickly.

------
seattle_spring
From the perspective of a software engineer, I would also say "yes." It's
frustrating that 80% of the available positions, even in a tech center like
Seattle, are at the huge mega-corporations.

~~~
TulliusCicero
IIRC Seattle actually has an unusually lopsided ratio in terms of megacorp
openings vs startup openings, I think it's substantially better in SF/SV, NYC,
and Boston.

------
jrnichols
Apple & Amazon and the others, probably not. They have their own markets and
they're just doing well in them. Google might be a little different in that
what they've done in some areas affects so many others, especially in small
business communications and now into education. I'm just thinking about how
kids are unaware that there is even another email provider out there because
all they know is Gmail. To me, that's where things have tipped over into "kind
of a problem." The Googleverse is massive, and we don't even know how much
data they've collected.

------
benevol
Well, that was pretty clear more than a decade ago.

Proprietary technology has a monopolizing effect in capitalism.

Since technology by definition has an exponential growth rate of efficiency,
the monopolizing effect grows with it.

~~~
patrickaljord
Yeah like IBM in the 80's and Microsoft in the 90's, no, wait...

~~~
MichaelGG
Microsoft and IBM never had the penetration Google has as far as individuals
depending on it for individual ideas and decisions, minute by minute. Nor were
the network effects of Microsoft's products, however strong for
interop/compat, anything close to what Facebook has.

Many companies now only publish their information on Facebook. It's becoming
harder and harder to even find a phone number for a business without hitting
Facebook. Sometimes FB even requires a login before letting me see details
(perhaps the business misconfigured their page?) If FB ever bans me (the
person) for using a fake account, it'd be very difficult to do many "normal"
things.

If we get anti-net-neutrality markets going, like FB is already doing in some
countries (I see "free WhatsApp/FB with any SIM card" offers all the time),
this lockin will become even more powerful

Also, MS still has a ton of power. But imagine how much worse it'd be if MS
was sevrice-only. What if they decide to ban your company? It might be very
difficult to remain in business if they could revoke all your Windows licenses
(say, if you're in medical, or need MS compat for another reason). IBM perhaps
less-so, since it's more real back-end systems.

------
Mendenhall
Anything "big" causes me to pause and count the concerns. The bigger any
entity is the more damage they can cause. I tend to support "small" things as
best I can.

------
redm
When I look at these monoliths, I can't help but think about the fabled Sci-Fi
Mega Corporations of the future that seem to be anything other than positive.
[1] [2] [3]

There are of course real life examples from the past.. [4][5][6]

[1]
[http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Umbrella_Corporation](http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Umbrella_Corporation)

[2] [http://alienfilmspedia.wikia.com/wiki/Weyland-
Yutani](http://alienfilmspedia.wikia.com/wiki/Weyland-Yutani)

[3]
[http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Tyrell_Corporation](http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Tyrell_Corporation)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System)

[6]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil)

------
rdlecler1
The problem here is that only one or two of their business lines actually make
money. Everything else simply strengthens network effects and gives them
optionality for new businesses. It would be hard to break up Google and say:
you get to provide search for the US and another company has to do it for
Europe. While that may be in the interest of Europe, it's of less interest to
the US.

------
therobotking
On one hand I absolutely love Google's ecosystem and have an Android phone,
use Gmail, have an nVidia Shield TV, use Android Pay, travel using Google Maps
for transit every day, use Docs for work, Drive for all cloud storage needs
and YouTube is YouTube.

On the other, being so reliant on one company for so much is bound to cause
problems at some point.

~~~
stronsay
How about switching to reasonable alternatives when you can (and use the
Google product as a fallback)? For example, OSM is fine for daily navigation,
there are plenty of cloud storage solutions and email providers. Obviously
there's going to be some cost to pay for not being in Google's walled garden,
but using the alternatives (and donating to them) stimulates their
development.

------
therealmarv
Two words: too late.

~~~
Piccollo
One word: yes.

~~~
cwyers
The avalanche has already begun, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

------
jorblumesea
What's to stop the most powerful companies from using regulation to squash
business competitors? Almost every industry has abused this to a certain
extent. Regulatory capture is a thing, at least here in the US.

Regulations are a double edged sword and it's often used to stifle new
business and crush possible competition.

------
strin
I highly recommend the book "Master Switch" by Tim Wu on this topic.
([https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-
Empire...](https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-
Empires/dp/0307390993)).

It argues that every information networks in the history- telegraph,
telephone, radio, cable - follow the pattern of consolidation and
disintegration. The new inventions always had the chance to disrupt the old
industry, but our modern network - the Internet - might be an exception.
Because the Internet is the master switch of all things digitized.

------
notadoc
Remember in the 90s when Microsoft was the subject of an antitrust case over
bundling a web browser?

------
yalogin
Are the existing laws enough to regulate them though? The anti competition
laws don't apply here as all of them are competing in the same space and all
of them are huge.

------
ilaksh
Integrating technologies for both decentralization and common platforms are
the answer, not more traditional government or more capitalism or more
communism.

------
TheRealmccoy
yet again, one of those posts. all those people who have the ability to do
something, discuss and post detailed comments and then wait for next such
article, and then rinse and repeat.

what is the point of discussion, if we nothing concrete, other than rhetoric
can be done?

------
esturk
No. This MAGA (Microsoft, Apple, Goggle, Amazon), is actually making American
tech great.

------
anth1988
> In 2013, the European Commission fined Microsoft for giving preferential
> treatment to its own browser, Internet Explorer.

I don't understand why Microsoft gets fined, but Google gets a pass when they
used their other products to push Chrome to a dominant position.

~~~
dredmorbius
The EU have in large part shifted their attention to Google (and Facebook) at
this point.

Microsoft still takes occasional scruitiny as well, though not nearly as much
AFAIR.

------
blairanderson
"Too big to control?" Uhhhhmmm I don't want to be controlled. No control
necessary. Just guidance.

~~~
nsaslideface
Can you name a government since the Roman Republic that has not had antitrust
law?

