
Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon - chadmhorner
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-amazon.html
======
psadauskas
How about going after Comcast and Verizon first, the actual tech _monopolies_?
I already don’t use Facebook, I buy things online from places other than
Amazon, and have email accounts that aren’t hosted by Google. However, all of
that goes over Comcast’s network because that’s my only viable choice for
Internet service. Also, while FAANG occasionally do things I don’t approve of,
they don’t _actively lobby congress_ for things that will make my use of the
internet objectively worse (NN, SOPA, etc...).

But no, because Comcast has -bribed- donated to way more congresspeople than
Google, because they’re better at playing that game.

~~~
will_brown
>But no, because Comcast has -bribed- donated to way more congresspeople than
Google...

Lobbying is tracked and google spent over 33% more than Comcast - in your own
words - bribing members of Congress.

The bulk of Google’s lobbying expenditure was for immigration, tax reform and
antitrust. I’d say Google’s far better “at playing the game” after all no one
is randomly sticking up for Comcast.

~~~
psadauskas
You're right, I should have checked the facts before speculating on which
company spent more on lobbying. However, the things they are lobbying
for/against also matter. As a recent example, Net Neutrality involved massive
amounts of lobbing and had very clear "pro-consumer" and "anti-consumer"
sides.

From
[https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/net_neutrality/](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/net_neutrality/)

> Not only was Google the pro-net neutrality organization that spent the most
> on lobbying in 2014 — $16.8 million in 2014 — it was the 10th biggest
> spender on federal lobbying that year. Impressive as that sounds, however,
> it still ranked behind both Comcast and the National Cable and
> Telecommunications Association.

And it seems like every dollar that Comcast spends lobbying is directed
towards efforts that will have a negative impact on my life, and the lives of
everyone not on Comcast's board of directors. At least with Google, sometimes
our incentives align, so that's another point in favor of attempting to break
up the Comcast monopoly before the Google one.

~~~
giggles_giggles
>As a recent example, Net Neutrality involved massive amounts of lobbing and
had very clear "pro-consumer" and "anti-consumer" sides

This isn't as uncontroversial of an opinion as it might appear to be in a
place like HN. What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast
should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is
fine because they lobby for things you do.

~~~
psadauskas
No, you're putting words in my mouth, or misunderstanding my point.

> you think Comcast should be broken up

I think efforts to break up tech monopolies should first be focused on
telecommunication companies.

> because they lobby for things you don't like,

Not just me, but are objectively harmful to 99% of the people they would
affect

> but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.

I'm mostly focusing on Google here, and yes, they at least occasionally lobby
for things I like because sometimes their interests and the interests of the
public in general happen to align.

With Comcast (and other ISPs), you have only one choice, and they spend tons
of money and effort making sure you only have that one choice, and continue to
have only that one choice. Comcast recently spent nearly $1M to prevent Fort
Collins from creating a municipal ISP[1]. That is actively anti-competitive
and monopolistic by definition.

[1]: [https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-
spends-9...](https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-
spends-900k-fort-collins-election)

~~~
rayiner
> With Comcast (and other ISPs), you have only one choice, and they spend tons
> of money and effort making sure you only have that one choice, and continue
> to have only that one choice. Comcast recently spent nearly $1M to prevent
> Fort Collins from creating a municipal ISP[1]. That is actively anti-
> competitive and monopolistic by definition.

I'm sure if the U.S. government was proposing to sell public bonds to build a
search engine or ride-sharing service, you'd see a lot of lobbying from
Silicon Valley. It's not "actively anti-competitive and monopolistic by
definition" to oppose _government backed and funded_ competition in your
industry.

~~~
brmgb
Search engine and ride-sharing don't seem to be natural monopolies however.
Communication infrastructure in most part of the USA clearly is.

Still I agree breaking up Comcast is not the solution. You will just end up
with smaller more localized monopolies. That's pretty much what happened with
Bell after all.

The solution would be either nationalizing the infrastructure and leasing it
to operators or forcing existing operators to rent their infrastructure to
their competitors for a set price. The later is actually working quite well in
France. Short of that you will never get competition. It's simply not
profitable.

~~~
rayiner
It's working terribly in France. France has some of the slowest broadband in
the OECD: [https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-
of-t...](https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-
internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf). Just 18% of
French households have connections faster than 15 mbps, versus 48% of American
households.

~~~
brmgb
That's mostly because France never used copper cable as a TV distribution
system and is going straight to fiber. Deployment is admittedly slower than it
should be especially in the countryside where it will never be profitable due
to low density. Meanwhile, people are stuck with ADSL and VDSL which give
connections closer to 10mbps than 15.

Cost wise however, you can't even compare the USA and France. In France, a
full speed FTTH subscription with no data cap cost 25 euros and you can pay 20
more to get a cell phone plan with unlimited call and unlimited data. If you
are ready to switch provider yearly, you can bring that down to 25 euros all
included.

~~~
rayiner
According to the December 2017 OECD data, France and the U.S. are basically
tied in terms of fiber deployment (12-13% of total broadband connections):
[https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.10-PctFibreToTotalBroad...](https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.10-PctFibreToTotalBroadband-2017-12.xls).
Which is pretty remarkable because in the U.S., fiber is a relatively smaller
upgrade, because fast cable alternatives are available in almost every fiber
market. (Just 1/3 of people who can get FiOS actually subscribe, for example.
Google fiber has struggled to break 40% too.)

And how quickly is France's number going to grow given that France's second
largest ISP recently cancelled its plans to deploy fiber?
[https://www.reuters.com/article/altice-sfr-france/altice-
aba...](https://www.reuters.com/article/altice-sfr-france/altice-abandons-
effort-to-lay-its-own-fibre-technology-across-france-idUSL8N1OD2O5).

Also note that the French deployment is being heavily subsidized by the
government (to the tune of $24 billion). Except for a small amount during the
post-2008 economic stimulus, broadband deployment in the U.S. is not
subsidized. Whereas the French government is paying a direct subsidy to build
fiber in rural areas, in the U.S. rural deployment is financed by a cross
subsidy (taxing ISPs in urban areas to subsidize ISPs in rural ones).

~~~
sovnade
Wasn't Verizon given billions in subsidies for FTTH (which they installed on
the east and west coast, the most profitable areas) and then sold off vast
areas they didn't touch to companies like Frontier?

~~~
rayiner
They certainly weren’t given cash like the french government is doing. The
most you can say is that Bell Atlantic, Verizon’s predecessor, was allowed to
accelerate depreciation of their copper network more quickly than under the
previous tax rules.[1] Whether that amounted to a subsidy depends on how
quickly the value of the copper plant decreased after fiber was built. The
accelerated depreciation was based on the quite reasonable assumption that the
value of the copper network depreciated more quickly after fiber was built.
I’ve never seen a calculation refuting that premise.

[1] When you build an income-producing capital asset like copper wire in the
ground, you can’t deduct the cost from your revenues immediately for tax
purposes, like you can with say employee salaries. Instead, you gradually
deduct the capital cost over the income-producing life of the asset. If the
government allowes you to depreciate an asset faster than the value of the
asset actually drops, that nets you some tax benefit due to the time value of
money. On the other hand, if the accelerated depreciation reflects the fact
that certain types of assets depreciate quicker, then it will result in the
correct amount of taxes being paid. For example IT equipment in data centers
can generally be written off immediately—unlike wires in the the ground it’s
pretty much worthless after a few years.

------
mabbo
There's precedent to this in the USA. The US Government once passed
regulations that caused one of the largest companies in America to break up
into three smaller companies. Today those, three companies are entirely
independent, employ over 400,000 people combined, and have a combined net work
of over $400B.

Those companies are Boeing Aircraft (153k employees, $244B market value),
United Technologies (202k employees, $148B market value), and United Airlines
(88k employees, $33B market value).[0]

What most people perceive as a threat to the market is when one company takes
over an entire single market. And that is a problem, no doubt. But in the case
of Boeing, the problem was that one company had such an advantage vertically-
lose money on planes in order to make money on shipping, or vice versa, as
needed. It meant it could win in whichever market it wanted to and slowly come
to dominate all of those markets. The synergies of doing it all internally
meant it could win at everything.

If one uses that situation as a precedent, one can start to see the parallels
in many of the FAANG companies today.

[0] "The Air Mail Act of 1934 prohibited airlines and manufacturers from being
under the same corporate umbrella, so the company split into three smaller
companies – Boeing Airplane Company, United Airlines, and United Aircraft
Corporation, the precursor to United Technologies."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing)

~~~
lotu
The problem is this type of vertical splitting doesn't solve the problem of
large tech companies. It's like treating a burst appendix with a kidney
transplant.

The problem of Amazon is that it is effectively the only online shopping
place, and thus can act as a Monopsony in hiring it's workers for warehouses,
splitting AWS out of that doesn't fix that problem. Maybe you could require
that distribution centers be owned by separate companies. This might work but
locally each Center would still be a Monopsony and thus cause the same
problem. Maybe if you capped the size of distribution center you could force
lots of smaller ones to be built, but at this point I worry that you are going
to end up making shipping slower and more expensive.

The problem of Google is they are very dominate in the Ads space splitting out
the Ads portion into another company would not solve that. Facebook's problems
is everyone has put their data in Facebook has friends in Facebook and feel
compelled to keep using it. I don't see how splitting up the company into,
Instagram, What's App, and Facebook solves the network effects of those apps.

Splitting up tech companies is not a punishment to make the CEO feel bad or
change their ways. It is a technique to change how we need the market works to
benefit the large population. As such we need to think about how to split
them, the effects, and most importantly if the effect achieves the intended
result.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
If we had a progressive corporate tax, I think all the problems would sort
themselves out.

You want to build a trillion dollar company? Fine. Corporate tax rate of 50%.
You're a small business with less than $1M in revenue. Cool. Corporate tax
rate of 0%.

Big companies will break up to take advantage of the tax code. Problem solved.

Instead, the bigger you are, the harder you can lobby for tax breaks.
Currently, if you're a $1M company, that sucks. You pay 20%+. If you're
Amazon, you pay $0.

~~~
jamroom
I agree 100% and have long felt this is the right approach. Basically the
bigger you get, the harder it gets to keep getting bigger.

~~~
taurath
I feel like all that will create is "partnership contracts" where a large
company will be split into the "ideal" size tax-wise while still being run by
an "advisory board". Compensation gets interesting at that point though, so
many its an interesting idea.

~~~
patcon
a constellation of partnerships happening through more tangible corporate
boundaries sounds much better. right now it seems to happen in unclear ways,
and I assume is much less observable from outside forces (e.g. Sidewalk Labs &
Google & Intersection, etc.)

------
untog
Comparisons will be made to Microsoft and Internet Explorer but to me the
really crucial part of this isn't market dominance in the "what app are you
using" sense, it's data.

Facebook, Google and Amazon really do have an unprecedented amount of data on
us. And keep vacuuming up more and more of it. Facebook should never have been
allowed to buy WhatsApp (and maybe not Instagram though I'm less concerned
about that one). Google should never have been allowed to buy DoubleClick.

Question is how you'd effectively roll that back now. I'm concerned that the
government doesn't have enough people with the technical knowledge to really
tackle the data question, but I'm still glad Warren is starting the
conversation. And she's got some interesting ideas:

> Companies with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or more and that
> offer to the public an online marketplace, an exchange, or a platform for
> connecting third parties would be designated as “platform utilities.”

> These companies would be prohibited from owning both the platform utility
> and any participants on that platform. Platform utilities would be required
> to meet a standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with
> users. Platform utilities would not be allowed to transfer or share data
> with third parties.

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

~~~
all2
> Companies with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or more ...

Hiding revenue is something multi-national corporations do really well.

If I ran a company that had a platform as described, and we were approaching
the 25bn mark, I'd find ways to make sure we never crossed that line.

Losing IP to what would become a 'public utility' would discourage me from
ever trying to develop beyond the 24.9bn mark.

~~~
wongarsu
That works to some degree, but there's some point at where it is more
beneficial to just spin the platform into its own company and let it be
regulated while all your other services can operate freely without having to
hide most of their revenue.

Sure, some of your IP moves to a new company that is more restricted in how it
can operate. But at least your marketplace doesn't hold back everything else
your company is doing.

------
sleepysysadmin
To what end? "illegally undermine competition?"

She is inferring that Google/Amazon/Facebook are committing anti-trust crimes?
What proof does she have?

>Companies would be barred from transferring or sharing users’ data with third
parties.

That can be done without breaking them up. I don't think she realizes that
splitting up amazon and amazon basics will do little to nothing.

There are other things that can be done. You could require freedom of speech
apply to industry leaders for example. However I suspect the democrats would
never propose that because it would be bad for them.

~~~
will_brown
>I don't think she realizes that splitting up amazon and amazon basics will do
little to nothing.

I think amazon : amazon basics is a great example of antitrust/unfair monopoly
the same as google search : almost all consumer facing google products.

Both amazon and google search are the dominate online market leaders in their
respective categories. In amazons case they unfairly use their market position
to begin offering amazon private label products on their platform. They know
what users are looking for, spend the most on, and they can give their own
products dominate positions in the UI. In the case of google they too unfairly
use their position as a market leader against their own customers
(advertisers), so say you are a hotel booking platform and spend $x with
google, google knows the market (searches, clicks, etc...) so google launches
their own hotel booking, gives their in-house service priority in search
results over existing market incumbents and self bids on google search
advertising for key industry terms to drive up costs of advertisers to keep in
business.

It’s kind of like standard oil buying up the railroads so they owned the
supply chain and no other oil could be moved. It’s unfairly using your market
position, not to compete, but to be anti competitive to the detriment of
consumers.

I’d like to see the tech giants prevented from unfairly using their market
dominance to stifle competition. As we saw with the break up of standard
oil...competition is good for consumers.

~~~
JackFr
> In amazons case they unfairly use their market position to begin offering
> amazon private label products on their platform. They know what users are
> looking for, spend the most on, and they can give their own products
> dominate positions in the UI.

1) How is that different than a department store? If you go into housewares at
Macy's you'll see their own branded stuff along with other brands. So at issue
is not the practice itself, but rather that the digital marketplace makes it
easier and more efficient.

2) The consumer (along with Amazon) is a beneficiary here. The losers are
brands trying to sell commodity items at a markup. The play is not to undercut
all the power strip sellers (to take an example) and once they are out of
business, jack up the price. The play is to take the margin due to marketing
and brand equity from the sellers and split it between the consumer and Jeff
Bezos, so rather than being harmed, the consumer benefits from this.

~~~
pdabbadabba
> 1) How is that different than a department store? If you go into housewares
> at Macy's you'll see their own branded stuff along with other brands. So at
> issue is not the practice itself, but rather that the digital marketplace
> makes it easier and more efficient.

The difference would be Amazon's [alleged] monopoly power.

> 2) The consumer (along with Amazon) is a beneficiary here. The losers are
> brands trying to sell commodity items at a markup. The play is not to
> undercut all the power strip sellers (to take an example) and once they are
> out of business, jack up the price. The play is to take the margin due to
> marketing and brand equity from the sellers and split it between the
> consumer and Jeff Bezos, so rather than being harmed, the consumer benefits
> from this.

That seems like a very charitable way of describing the situation, and even if
accurate may only remain true in the short term. Whether undercutting branded
sellers is the goal or not, that's exactly what's happening--even as you
charitably describe it. What happens ten years down the road when those brands
are gone due to Amazon's allegedly benevolent undercutting?

I'm not sure about the ultimate merits here (in fact, I'm a bit skeptical of
the claim that Amazon has all of the market power that some say it does). But
I think you may be dismissing this all a bit too quickly.

~~~
wvenable
> The difference would be Amazon's [alleged] monopoly power.

I don't see Amazon as being particularly more of a monopoly than Walmart. If
Amazon was a traditional brick and mortar business, would we even be having
this conversation?

~~~
Nasrudith
I think the difference is that they are better at pissing people off
essentially by transgressing status quo norms. Most tech companies are too
right for the left and too left for the right in addition to their "upsetting
their perceptions of the natural order" aspects.

A big chain consumes the market and puts others our of businesses and it is
just how things are. A new internet company goes from niche to cannot be
ignored and it is scary change despite the impact being essentially the same.

Combine that with openly envious old media and their selective condemnation. I
honestly suspect the real reason is that tech companies don't buy enough TV
ads for their liking given the softball treatment of ones that do frequently
like cable.

------
ChrisAntaki
> The key components of the Warren plan include passing legislation that would
> designate companies with annual global revenue above $25 billion that
> provide marketplace, exchange, or third-party connectivity as “platform
> utilities” and prohibit those companies from owning participants on their
> platforms.

As a Googler, speaking for myself, this seems like an interesting idea that
could positively impact the tech scene.

~~~
devoply
I also see Elizabeth Warren has created a set of powerful enemies way too
early that will do much to stop her from becoming America's first woman
president. If you wanna do something like this wait until you are in office.
These are not issues that your average American cares about.

~~~
ascendantlogic
Unfortunately I agree. Since Silicon Valley leans left so heavily this is the
sort of thing you sit on until much later in the process. I personally feel
that Google, Facebook, et al are too big and powerful now, this is going to
immediately set those companies against her so she's kneecapping her campaign
before it even gets started.

~~~
harrumph
> Since Silicon Valley leans left so heavily

I really believe it doesn't. No serious concentration of wealth ever does.
Yes, personal attitudes in SV are often liberal, but the economic outlook most
common in the place is akin to Andrew Carnegie with a git repo. It's this
economic outlook where her proposal targets.

------
andrewla
Does anyone actually believe that the US government's interventions against
Microsoft made the slightest bit of difference, as opposed to huge shifts in
the internet and mobile landscape?

You could argue that the emergence of Firefox and Chrome was only made
possible by the ability to assign a "default" non-IE browser in Windows, but
that ability pre-dated any of the anti-trust stuff anyway; all you got out of
that was a mandatory pop-up when you installed Windows asking you if you
wanted to use a different browser.

The emergence of Firefox was by itself a huge shift, and Chrome another one,
against Microsoft's browser monopoly. Its OS monopoly got broken (insofar as
it is broken) by a combination of the rise of mobile and Apples re-emergence
as a viable platform. Its office application monopoly got broken (insofar as
it is broken) by a combination of online email systems (especially gmail) and
the increased availability of online alternatives.

All the justice department did was waste their time; they could have just sat
by the river and waited for the body of their enemy to float by instead.

~~~
e1ven
I apolgoize that I don't have any references available at the moment, but I've
read in several books that Microsoft insiders said it made an enormous
difference.

Having the government essentially watching their every move caused them to
moderate their actions, and make sure they were on the right side of the law.

They were much more conservative than they otherwise would have been. It was
described as a large cultural shift in the company and their way of thinking.

~~~
bhl
Here’s an alternative source:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-
against...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-
google.html)

“Anyone who said that the 1990s prosecution of Microsoft didn’t accomplish
anything — that it was companies like Google, rather than government lawyers,
that humbled Microsoft — didn’t know what they were talking about, Reback
said. In fact, he argued, the opposite was true: The antitrust attacks on
Microsoft made all the difference. Condemning Microsoft as a monopoly is why
Google exists today, he said.”

------
travisoneill1
What is the alleged anti-competitive behavior? The article doesn't mention it.
It sounds like she is calling for their breakup merely for being big and
powerful, and if that were cause enough to break up an entity we would
logically start with the government.

~~~
jsutton
For starters, Amazon provided a marketplace platform for third parties to sell
goods. They then gathered data on which items sold the best, created their own
line of products based off this data, and crushed their customers-turned-
competitors using their massive advantage in economies of scale.

~~~
nck4222
FWIW, while I agree this a problem, large box retailers (Whole Foods before
the Amazon acquisition, Walmart, etc) are well known for doing this as well.

So if that's the line you draw, it extends further than just tech giants.

~~~
sct202
It's a little bit different though, because Amazon has 2 streams of how they
get products: Amazon can buy branded from vendor and control price and
selection, or those same vendors could list directly on Amazon (as FBA) and
the vendor controls price and selection.

Pop sockets got in a fight recently with Amazon, because they wanted to stay
FBA in order to have better control of selection and pricing, but Amazon was
trying to force them into a more traditional vendor role.

~~~
jhall1468
Right, and Walmart only allows products in its store under their terms which
is far more restrictive, so I'm failing to understand how this model is
_worse_ for competition than Walmart's.

And what happened with PopSockets didn't quite work that way. They were
already a vendor on Amazon, and they wanted to remove themselves as a direct
vendor and designate a single reseller as their "approved" FBA on Amazon.

So they wanted to change the terms of the agreement, Amazon said no, and that
was that.

------
wybiral
Google/Facebook/Amazon have the power to push any startup competition out of
the market in ways that are hard to even enumerate. Think about all of the
services, devices, and standards that they control.

Watching the fanboys defend their favorite tech giant is incredible. These
companies are not behaving in the markets or people's best interest and they
are way too big, at a scale that dwarfs most of the worlds organizations.

~~~
jhall1468
> Watching the fanboys defend their favorite tech giant is incredible. These
> companies are not behaving in the markets or people's best interest and they
> are way too big, at a scale that dwarfs most of the worlds organizations.

It's not illegal to be big, it's illegal to use your influence to prevent
competition in a way that's illegal. There's zero evidence of that, which is
why she's talking about a new law.

And please refrain from calling those that disagree with you "fanboys". It
diminishes every single point you're attempting to make, because you sound
like a jaded teenager rather than an adult that wants to have a conversation.

~~~
dbmikus
Google was hit with a big antitrust violation fine in the EU in 2017 for
demoting rival shopping services: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/google-
fined-e2-42bn-for-e...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/google-
fined-e2-42bn-for-eu-antitrust-violations-over-shopping-searches/)

~~~
fortenforge
The FTC looked into the same issue and ruled in 2013 that Google did not
violate US antitrust laws:
[https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/public_sta...](https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/public_statements/statement-
commission-regarding-googles-search-practices/130103brillgooglesearchstmt.pdf)

------
mal10c
I ran across two quotes by Warren that caught my attention:

> "unwind tech mergers that illegally undermine competition"

> "I want a government that makes sure everybody — even the biggest and most
> powerful companies in America — plays by the rules"

The word "illegally" in the first quote really set off my alarm bells. What
have large companies like Amazon, Google, FB, etc. done that is considered
illegal in this regard?

The "by the rules" in the second quote is confusing too. What does that mean?
Which rules are being broken?

The way I see it: Isn't it the goal of entrepreneurs to be as successful as
possible? Let's say I found a way to grow a business to that of the size of
some of the bigger ones (which would be awesome). To grow a business that big,
consumers obviously like what I'm selling/producing. I get the impression that
Warren is saying she doesn't like big businesses because they snuff out the
little ones. And maybe that's true, but why is that a concern of the
government? There's nothing stopping a smaller company (or even an individual)
from coming up with a really good idea and trying that idea out in something
like his garage, and then reshaping the next generation... kinda like Amazon
did in comparison to Sears. Or Microsoft did with IBM.

I'm sure there's going to be plenty of disagreements on my stance, but I guess
I'm just not seeing this problem in the same light as Warren.

~~~
prickledpear
It's a little hard to tell if you're asking "are there laws against
monopolies?" or "should there be laws against monopolies?".

The answer to the first is a certain yes. There are laws against businesses
forming monopolies in the United States. You can read up on the Sherman and
Clayton antitrust acts from the 1890s and 1910s to start with. There is also
considerable case law stemming from this legislation.

The answer to "should there be laws against monopolies" is a little more open.
One theoretical justification for breaking up monopolies, is that in some
cases monopolies cause economic inefficiencies. Look up "deadweight loss from
monopoly pricing".

It's very complicated to measure any efficiencies or inefficiencies from tech
monopolies, so I don't think there's a clear answer.

It's also not generally agreed upon that economic efficiency should be the
goal of government, so there is a lot of room for debate on that question.

~~~
mal10c
Those are great points. I didn't break my main thoughts into those two smaller
thoughts. And I also appreciate this comment:

> It's also not generally agreed upon that economic efficiency should be the
> goal of government

I think you managed to sum up my thoughts much better than I did.

------
the_trapper
I think breaking up the ISPs and media conglomerates would be much more
impactful.

I can't think of a single market segment where Google and Amazon lack
effective competition. Facebook is already bleeding users, and how would you
break up a social media company in an impactful way anyhow? Facebook's
ventures outside of social media aren't even close to being monopolies.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Yeah, they are not monopolies in the classical sense, so the regulatory
position has to be much more nuanced.

But there are issues:

\+ Amazon uses profits from AWS to dump in other sectors, selling goods and
services below market value. The weird situation could mean Amazon pumps many
billion dollars a year into pushing major grocers (who operate on thin
margins) out of business. This is not good for anyone - but it's not a case of
'monopoly' so much.

\+ Google is dumping in adjacent areas of tech - giving away Android for free,
for example.

There should be some regulatory tweaks here, but it's going to be tricky.

As you point out - a much easier win would be to break up value chain
consolidation over all.

Carriers, tech providers, content creators, content distributors - might
benefit from being separate entities.

I don't think there are any net benefits to society from these entities being
consolidated. There are no economies of scale, no proper synergies. There are
however, huge incentives for investors to have AT&T own content creation and
distribution obviously, so they can subsidize their own assets and not others.
There's no long win for consumers so it makes sense to keep them separate.

Finally - there might be an opportunity on platforms. I think that the Apple
store may be an anti-competitive issue - the notion that you don't control/own
the $1K device you just bought is getting ridiculous. I would require platform
makers to at allow open access to the platform. Same would apply to mobile
phones being 'locked' onto a network - that should just not happen.

~~~
wvenable
> Amazon uses profits from AWS to dump in other sectors, selling goods and
> services below market value.

There is big competition in cloud computing so AWS is priced according to
market rates. I seriously doubt AWS profit is significant enough to influence
the rest of Amazon in way that would be considered monopoly abuse. Amazon's
purchase of Whole Foods did not result in WF reducing prices (as was expected)
to uncut other grocers in that market.

> Google is dumping in adjacent areas of tech - giving away Android for free,
> for example.

That ship has sailed; Google effectively eliminated the market for mobile
operating systems and Microsoft could basically no longer sell Windows Mobile.
But the open-sourcing of Android has led to direct competition as well --
Amazon runs a completely Google-free version of Android on their products.

~~~
mywittyname
AWS is 10% of sales but 58% of operating income. Margins on AWS are hovering
around 30% and growth has been double-digit every quarter for several years
now.

AWS profits were worth a few hundred billion over the past seven years. As
Amazon only as $40 billion in cash on hand, it's hard to argue they haven't
put that money to good use.

~~~
mrep
You are off by an order of magnitude. AWS had an operating income of $7.296
Billion USD in the 12 months ending in 2018 [0] and has been growing at about
45% YOY for many years. Extrapolating those numbers gives them about $21.765
billion USD of operating income in the past 7 years.

[0]: [https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-
detail...](https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-
details/amazoncom-announces-fourth-quarter-sales-20-724-billion)

------
sct202
I think we should also consider that even if you do break up a large company
like that, you'd need to make sure they don't pull an AT&T and start merging
with each other to basically re-create their previous structure.

~~~
c0nducktr
Yeah, I'm still amazed that when AT&T was split up, there wasn't anything in
the ruling preventing them from just joining the parts back together again.

~~~
ropeladder
Yeah it seems ridiculous in hindsight. I think what enabled the mergers though
was less someone with a brilliant idea that they could just recombine, and
more the drastic change in the government's conception and enforcement of
antcompetitiveness laws. That is, they wouldn't have tried to merge back
together if the they didn't think the government might let them. The
government can and does does block mergers, still, and it makes sense that
that they wouldn't just want to ban a specific company from a specific market
share for all eternity.

~~~
elliekelly
This is the exact issue. The DOJ's Antitrust Criminal Enforcement Division
breaks up the companies by making an argument that's then directly
contradicted by the DOJ's Merger Enforcement Division's (very outdated) policy
on approving mergers. From the Merger Enforcement Guidelines[1] (last updated
in 1997):

> By definition, non-horizontal mergers involve firms that do not operate in
> the same market. It necessarily follows that such mergers produce no
> immediate change in the level of concentration in any relevant market as
> defined in Section 2 of these Guidelines.

The Merger Enforcement Division's assumption may have been true in 1997 but
it's difficult to argue that simply because Google and Amazon don't operate in
the "same market" as their primary businesses that their combination would
"produce no immediate change in the level of concentration" of the market for
both online advertising and computing services. Yet, under these guidelines,
if a Google + Amazon merger were proposed it wouldn't present any immediate
issue for the Antitrust Division to oppose it.

[1][https://www.justice.gov/atr/non-horizontal-merger-
guidelines](https://www.justice.gov/atr/non-horizontal-merger-guidelines)

~~~
nickodell
Amazon and Google do operate in several of the same markets. Amazon sells
Kindle/Fire devices. Google sells Android phones. Amazon does product search.
Google has a product search engine.

~~~
elliekelly
Antitrust enforcement focuses on the "primary market" of the entities.
Google's primary market is advertising and Amazon's primary market is retail
products. The DOJ does consider the potential anti-competitive impact on
tertiary markets the two entities operate in but it wouldn't be a barrier to
the hypothetical merger because those markets have plenty of other
competitors.

------
andrewla
From Warren's blog post:

> ... Google’s ad exchange and businesses on the exchange would be split
> apart. Google Search would have to be spun off as well.

I think maybe her team needs to do a little more research on what Google's
business is. Splitting off Android/Play or GCP at least creates potentially
viable businesses. Splitting up search and ads creates two non-viable
businesses.

~~~
tantalor
> two non-viable businesses

1\. Search company earns money by selling ad spots to ads company.

2\. Ads company earns money by selling ads to merchants.

~~~
andrewla
The problem is that 1. is better known as "Search + ads".

To put it differently, how does GSearch decide what and whether to show ads
for a given search? Well, they could sell keywords by auction to parties
interested in placing ads, and then use clicks and other user feedback to
decide how relevant they are (that is, how much UX is lost by placing ads
nobody clicks on top of results that users want). Whether they're selling to
GAd or directly to merchants, or to SEM companies that act as middlemen in the
current world does not seem like the important issue.

You could in theory separate search engine ads from site ads, but I don't
think anyone is really complaining about the fact that Google owns so much of
that business.

------
Permit
> The parallel she uses to make her case is the breakup of Microsoft, which
> she weirdly calls “the tech giant of its time” (Microsoft is still a tech
> giant), and holds as perhaps the last example when government went toe to
> toe with the technology industry.

> “The government’s antitrust case against Microsoft helped clear a path for
> Internet companies like Google and Facebook to emerge,” Warren writes.

In what way was Microsoft 'broken up'? The outcome[1] from that antitrust case
seems to be that Microsoft had to publicly expose all of Windows' APIs to
developers (no secret APIs).

If anything, the outcome of the Microsoft case seems to support non-
intervention as AppGoogBook all flourished despite no serious breakup of
Microsoft.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.#Settlement)

~~~
pradn
It's funny how Microsoft isn't mentioned in the same breath as FAANG
companies. It's in the top 3 companies by market cap, has a dozen billion-
dollar businesses, does really well in enterprise, is aggressive in the cloud
and hardware, has a large seat at the open-source table these days, and has a
large set of older products that keep generating billions. If Apple is in
there, why not Microsoft? Both are heavily concentrated in one area, pay
similarly, have similar prestige. Is it simply because we don't know where to
put the M in FAANG? Or is it because they aren't as big in the consumer space?

~~~
Bhilai
Microsoft is pretty big in consumer space as well - Xbox, Skype, Bing ...I
think its Silicon Valley vs not in Silicon Valley thing. Microsoft is counted
out because of not being physically located in SV. Thats my theory.

~~~
djrogers
Amazon isn't located in SV either.

------
rubinelli
Planet Money looks prescient again, with a three-part series on how antitrust
rules evolved in the US, and how they are changing in response to Big Tech:

* [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/15/695131832/anti...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/15/695131832/antitrust-1-standard-oil)

* [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/20/696342011/anti...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/20/696342011/antitrust-2-the-paradox)

* [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/anti...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-tech)

------
king_panic
Even if it were beneficial (argument in itself), Big Government is unequipped
to handle the break-up of these companies in way that protects their value to
consumers.

------
yaacov
Nitpicking here, but in Warren’s post she writes:

> Google couldn’t smother competitors by demoting their products on Google
> Search.

Isn’t this already illegal?

~~~
acdha
What about AMP, where failure to publish your content using their proprietary
toolkit meant that you wouldn’t be featured at the top of the search results?

------
jcriddle4
Preventing those companies from buying out others and using their incredible
size and resources to quashing competition I can support. Splitting into
pieces can make sense as well. It looks like Warren's definition of "Fair Use"
is more in the context of selling widgets and does not appear to be tied to
free speech issues. I guess that Elizabeth Warren isn't supporting a
definition of "fair use" of these platforms that matches the United States
Supreme court definition of free speech.

------
samlevine
There's zero net benefit in breaking up large companies that are driving
innovation and improving consumer experiences.

If you don't like the economic result, redistribute some of the growth.
Walmart doesn't deserve to be saved by splitting up Amazon if they can't
compete.

~~~
jonahb
The thought, clearly expressed in Elizabeth Warren's post, is that Amazon et
al are stifling innovation by discouraging entrants and using dominant
positions in adjacent industries to crowd out competitors. This isn't a new
idea—it's one of the pillars of antitrust.

~~~
samlevine
They're not stifling innovation. Their successes have had massive spillover
effects helping other companies to innovate. The Golden Goose is still laying
eggs.

This isn't Standard Oil. It's not Ma Bell. When they stop innovating and start
extracting rents we can have a reasonable conversation about breaking them up.

~~~
jonahb
All I can say is that a lot of people disagree with you. If you're interested
in that perspective, a good book is "World Without Mind" by Franklin Foer.

------
bko
> The story demonstrates why promoting competition is so important: it allows
> new, groundbreaking companies to grow and thrive — which pushes everyone in
> the marketplace to offer better products and services. Aren’t we all glad
> that now we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with
> Bing?

It's dishonest to suggest that the outcome of the US vs Microsoft somehow
paved the way for Google. I would argue it was pretty non-consequential but
looms in the public conscious.

From wikipedia:

> 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.[29]
> 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 ... >
> Law professor Eben Moglen noted that the way Microsoft was required to
> disclose its APIs and protocols was useful only for “interoperating with a
> Windows Operating System Product”, not for implementing support of those
> APIs and protocols in any competing operating system.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's been discussed in multiple articles that Microsoft had considered moves
it could make to kill Google, but didn't because of it's recent antitrust
settlement.

> As the government sued, Microsoft executives became so anxious and gun-shy
> that they essentially undermined their own monopoly out of terror they might
> be pilloried again. It wasn’t the consent decrees or court decisions that
> made the difference, according to multiple current and former Microsoft
> employees. It was “the constant scrutiny and being in the newspaper all the
> time,” said Gene Burrus, a former Microsoft lawyer. “People started second-
> guessing themselves. No one wanted to test the regulators anymore.”

> There had been informal conjectures about reprogramming Microsoft’s web
> browser, the popular Internet Explorer, so that anytime people typed in
> “Google,” they would be redirected to MSN Search, according to company
> insiders.

> Microsoft was so powerful, and Google so new, that the young search engine
> could have been killed off, some insiders at both companies believe. “But
> there was a new culture of compliance, and we didn’t want to get in trouble
> again, so nothing happened,” Burrus said. The myth that Google humbled
> Microsoft on its own is wrong. The government’s antitrust lawsuit is one
> reason that Google was eventually able to break Microsoft’s monopoly.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-
against...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-
google.html)

[http://archive.is/abGMG](http://archive.is/abGMG)

------
vlangber
I think the most obvious candidate is to split Google and Youtube.

~~~
dekhn
which would be very interesting, as youtube is 100% dependent on Google
infrastructure to work (everything from machine learning to data delivery).

~~~
wernercd
And Windows was dependent in Internet Explorer to operate.

And that dependence was both created artificially and then abused.

Why can't YouTube switch to, say, Azure? Or Oracle Cloud? or whatever other
magic exists?

Infrastructure exists outside of Google - as did the ability to decouple
Internet Explorer from Windows.

~~~
dekhn
windows was never dependent on internet explorer to operate. MS put a simple
DLL with HTML and other web tech in the OS, making it easier to serve up help
and other content. What they did (IMHO) was completely reasonable in terms of
OS integration. Look at ChromeOS today- it's the same idea, taken to its
logical conclusion.

People often misrepresent the MS trial.

------
partingshots
To my knowledge, American monopoly laws focus more on the welfare of the
consumer and whether customers are being negatively affected rather than the
companies themselves. There’s nothing wrong with having a monopoly, but where
issues arise is when consumers start to be hurt.

In this context, how do Elizabeth Warren’s comments mesh out?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Monopolies are inherently harmful to consumers, as reduced competition means
less parties can compete for the best offering, or push to create a better
product. The myth that a monopoly "isn't hurting anyone" is nonsense. It's
existence is enough, and yes, impacting other competitors negatively directly
harms consumers. There has been an outdated focus on _price_ specifically,
which is why many free services have evaded the law for so long.

That being said, Warren directly states something tech companies should be
competing on: Privacy. An issue with direct consumer impact, that due to
monopoly status, these companies have largely not set as a priority.

------
tolstoy77
This gets me very excited. As a bay area resident, we've seen the income
stratification from these companies ruin our way of life. It's just untenable.

Warren has my vote.

------
chiefalchemist
I'd like to say this is just politics but I'm not even sure it's good
politics. How many people are really concerned about the size of Amazon,
Facebook, Google, etc. If people are that concerned, why do so many people I
know have Prime?

The fossil fuel industry continues to run rampant. As does the Military
Industrial Complex. The former is a key player in the degradation of the
planet; the latter is a money sucking Hover that is sucking the life out of
infrastructure, education, etc.

The environment and peace are much bigger issues than taking down and busting
up the tech giants.

Editorial: I want to like Liz Warren. I can related to some of her ideals.
Unfortunately, as a politician she too often comes off as inexperienced, out
of touch and/or naive. This is another one of those times.

~~~
igravious
> I'd like to say this is just politics but I'm not even sure it's good
> politics. How many people are really concerned about the size of Amazon,
> Facebook, Google, etc

Oh, lots and lots.

> If people are that concerned, why do so many people I know have Prime?

The reason so many of the people you know have Prime is _because_ of Amazon's
dominant market position.

> The fossil fuel industry continues to run rampant. As does the Military
> Industrial Complex. The former is a key player in the degradation of the
> planet; the latter is a money sucking Hover that is sucking the life out of
> infrastructure, education, etc.

> The environment and peace are much bigger issues than taking down and
> busting up the tech giants.

Good points, but can we not do all three of these things? (1) Shrink the
Defense budget and (2) Invest in renewables including nuclear tech, (3) Tackle
Facebook and Google's dominance of net advertising and search and social media
and Amazon's of e-commerce and so on …

> Editorial: I want to like Liz Warren. I can related to some of her ideals.
> Unfortunately, as a politician she too often comes off as inexperienced, out
> of touch and/or naive. This is another one of those times.

?

“Elizabeth Ann Warren (née Herring; born June 22, 1949) is an American
politician and academic serving as the senior United States Senator from
Massachusetts since 2013. Warren was formerly a prominent scholar specializing
in bankruptcy law. A noted progressive leader, Warren has focused on consumer
protection, economic opportunity, and the social safety net while in the
Senate. Some commentators describe her position as left-wing
populism.[2][3][4]

Warren is a graduate of the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School. She
taught law at several universities, including the University of Houston, the
University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard
University.

Warren's initial foray into public policy began in 1995 when she worked to
oppose what eventually became a 2005 act restricting bankruptcy access for
individuals. Her profile rose due to her forceful stances in favor of more
stringent banking regulations following the 2007–2008 financial crisis. She
served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset
Relief Program and was instrumental in the creation of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, for which she served as the first Special Advisor.”

~~~
chiefalchemist
> I'd like to say this is just politics but I'm not even sure it's good
> politics. How many people are really concerned about the size of Amazon,
> Facebook, Google, etc

Oh, lots and lots.

> If people are that concerned, why do so many people I know have Prime?

The reason so many of the people you know have Prime is because of Amazon's
dominant market position.

Yes. But if they are THAT concerned they would be dropping Prime and shopping
elsewhere.

The "lots and lots" \- if they exist (you added no link) - are likely to be
the Coastal Elites. The same minds who were so out of touch we got DJT.
Regardless, to think that Middle America is going to go from "build a wall" to
"break up Facebook" is, at best, a stretch. As politics goes, this is a non-
issue.

p.a. After the crash of 2008 we were told by many a political "leader"
(including the POTUS at the time) how there was too much power concentrated on
Wall Street. Liz W was one of those "leaders". Yet there were no breakups,
etc. While I wouldn't put SV in the same class as WS, it's hard to imagine
anything changing.

~~~
igravious
> Yes. But if they are THAT concerned they would be dropping Prime and
> shopping elsewhere.

You know and I know that that's not true. People stick with things because of
inertia, convenience, network effects, … To use a tech analogy, many people
back in the day hated Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop and server
operating system market but very few initially changed to MacOS or Linux. To
_this_ day Microsoft still has a stranglehold on the consumer desktop market,
the difference being that smartphones and tablets and chromebooks (browser
appliances) have given people alternatives.

No, for me (a European) lots and lots refers to the many people outside of the
US that would like to see non-US companies taking a bigger slice of the tech
pie. Of course Americans are going to have less of a problem with US companies
dominating the web.

I hold no firm political allegiance other than it is clear the establishment
is happy with the status quo, anybody who promises to tackle concentrations of
power in either big media, big tech, big finance, big _you name it_ , gets my
approval. If we spent some time talking about concrete issues and policies I
bet we'd agree on a lot of things!

------
thr_w
Is breaking them up really a priority? What benefit would that have that we
couldn't achieve via properly taxing and regulating them in the first place?

~~~
logicchains
It would help give China a fairer chance in the AI race. Due to economies of
scale and the sheer amount of resources they command, Facebook and Google are
able to conduct research that would otherwise be incredibly expensive (e.g.
training AlphaZero), and offer incredibly high salaries to lure in
researchers. Apparently 80% of all machine learning engineers work at Google
or Facebook! Breaking this concentration of machine learning research power
would give companies like Baidu, Bytedance and Tencent, which were not broken
up and which enjoy strong government support, the chance to catch up and maybe
even overtake the remnants of Google/Facebook.

~~~
dnissley
It would also give other companies in the US a better shot at the same goal.
The focus on China seems unwarranted.

~~~
justaman
I don't think its fair to underestimate China. Breaking up Amazon or Google
would benefit China more than the west. Sure Amazon and Google are possibly
too large, but their Chinese counter parts are equally as large and direct
competitors. The idea behind breaking these companies up is to encourage
market competition but that competition already exists and will not be broken
up in China. Somehow Warren always has the wrong solutions but is generally
correct in identifying a problem.

~~~
craftyguy
> Breaking up Amazon or Google would benefit China more than the west

China doesn't seem to be having any problems competing, and winning, against
Google and Amazon. Baidu and Alibaba are _huge_.

------
elamje
I don’t see how Amazon is such an threat to consumers?

Genuine question, can someone explain how they are bad? I might give pushback
to help get to understanding other people, but I’m not trying to start a war
on here:)

------
hugh4life
The tech giants are too big, but there are geopolitical consequences for
breaking them up. Countries like Russia and China can target smaller companies
much easier than the Goliaths.

------
amelius
Reminds me of this post by Richard Stallman, [1].

> Amazon has so much market share that its sheer size distorts the market.

> We should not allow a company to have a share over around 10% of any market.
> If in a certain field a single dominant company is beneficial for society,
> that means it is a natural monopoly, and should be served by a regulated
> utility.

[1] [https://stallman.org/amazon.html](https://stallman.org/amazon.html)

------
cromwellian
Amazon is eroding brick and mortar mom and pop stores, but it isn't doing that
because it's a monopoly (it has 5% of retail sales), it's doing it because
people prefer shopping online compared with physical stores. If you broke up
Amazon into 5 competing e-commerce sites, strip malls across America would
still be closing, and you'd just have 5 Bezos billionaires instead of 1.

And it will do nothing to help the millions of American retail workers who are
going to be out of a job, nor the logistics workers who are going to be
automated out of jobs.

This is populist demagoguery and scapegoating and not looking at real
solutions, like strengthening the social safety net by increasing taxes on
these businesses. At least Medical for All, Free College, or UBI have
tangible, immediate benefits to people suffering.

Or writing laws on Data Privacy can directly address that issue.

But simply busting up companies? It won't address the underlying economic
disruption happening, and if anything, it is likely to simply increase the
amount of entities tracking you and risk of hacks.

------
geofft
This is an excellent goal, and Paul Graham has articulated the reasoning
pretty clearly:
[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/886953410356011008](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/886953410356011008)

> _Here 's how to explain to people the distinction between fighting poverty
> and fighting economic inequality. If you're fighting poverty, you might say
> "Let's have universal health care." If you're fighting economic inequality,
> you have to say "Let's have universal health care. And Larry, please don't
> start Google." Otherwise Larry's going to mess up your numbers big time._

Since reading that, I've realized that a major part of my political beliefs is
that future Larrys should be _unable_ to start future Googles in their current
form, and in particular that I don't believe it's a just use of the powers of
government to enable the creation of future Googles.

~~~
pmcollins
So if a very capable, a hard working, effective person is able to increase
their wealth by 20x, and in so doing increases my wealth by 2x without my
doing anything, you'd be in favor of using the power of the state to prevent
this from happening because it would increase inequality?

~~~
quadrangle
If you think the debate is purely about relative wealth, you are
misunderstanding most of it.

But even still: relative wealth distribution getting too extremely unequal has
negative ramifications for any society, regardless of the absolute wealth. But
again: that is NOT the issue in this case.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/anti...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-
tech) for more perspective, a bunch of discussion about antitrust issues in
big tech and NONE, ZERO, NADA of it is about wealth and money in itself.

~~~
StreamBright
>>> relative wealth distribution getting too extremely unequal has negative
ramifications for any society, regardless of the absolute wealth

Like what exactly?

I do not understand why people are upset over extreme wealth. I think Jeff
Bezos deserves to be a billionaire and I would not want to live in a society
that does not allow people like him succeed and accumulate this sort of money.
The quetion is what happens with his wealth in the second and third
generation. Historically in fedualism this was passed down to the next
generation and the family would keep it until end of the feudalism era. In a
capitalistic society it deisappears within 2-3 egenerations, especially with
people like Bill Gates. Not sure what is the problem here.

~~~
quadrangle
I don't have time to answer your specific claim about why _relative_ wealth
inequality is a problem even if the poor aren't miserably poor. It's a complex
and deep subject. There's resources out there if you are curious. And yes,
there's a good share of BAD arguments against wealth inequity (lots of people
who are just resentful and superficial and believe even factually wrong
things) — so you could spend your time convincing yourself that everyone you
disagree with is an idiot. There's no shortage of idiocy. But you can also
find the real stuff from smart and expressive people discussing these things
better, and that's what you should try to find. Sorry for not picking out
citations, I'm already procrastinating too much by writing this.

Now, Jeff Bezos is absolutely a remarkable and unique person who worked very
hard and intelligently to get to where he is. But on just the pure matter of
"deserve" it's so much more complex than the way you are looking at it. We
don't live in a fair world. Look up "just world fallacy". In a world that is
quite out of alignment from what we'd have if everyone got what they
"deserve", it's simplistic to look at select cases like Bezos and judge from
there.

But that's not what this is about AT ALL.

The concept of anti-trust and of managing this stuff is about power. The
question is whether it's okay for Bezos and the whole company really to not
only be wealthy but have monopoly-like power in the market. I have no reason
to believe you checked out the link I posted earlier because you went on and
repeated arguments about wealth — and this is NOT about that, not
philosophically or legally. It's not even about taking away Bezos' wealth!
Anti-trust is not about wealth redistribution, it's _only_ about stopping
anti-competitive threats to market competition.

> In a capitalistic society it deisappears within 2-3 generations

Well, that's just factually wrong. Capitalism doesn't just automatically do
that, and the evidence doesn't support that claim either. And we don't have
any sort of "pure" capitalism in existence to even study anyway. You need to
get beyond these superficial specious ideas if you want to understand the
reality. Start by treating your presumptions as _hypotheses_ and figure out
what evidence would be scientifically strong enough to validate or invalidate
them and see how they hold up.

~~~
StreamBright
> In a capitalistic society it disappears within 2-3 generations

>>> Well, that's just factually wrong.

Really?

[http://money.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-
wealth/](http://money.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/)

[https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/the-real-reason-
bil...](https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/the-real-reason-bill-gates-
children-wont-inherit-much-of-his-fortune.html/)

~~~
quadrangle
Not sure what to make of that first link. The first one is a bunch of quotes
about wealthy people worrying that their kids are irresponsible and this one
uncited sentence aligned with the headline:

> Indeed, 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation,
> and a stunning 90% by the third, according to the Williams Group wealth
> consultancy.

What is that? Sounds like a marketing claim by a company catering services to
the wealthy about how to keep their family wealth. I can't just accept it
blindly.

I agree that in the (unusual) case of Gates, he's obviously not just hoarding
and passing on his wealth directly, but the upbringing and advantages his kids
are getting plus $10 million leaves them still really wealthy compared to
nearly anyone else on the planet regardless of the fact that it's a miniscule
fraction of Gates' current wealth.

------
jimmy1
I disagree with these proposals, and think the sights should be aimed at
companies like Verizon and Comcast, but at least Warren's proposals tend to be
coherent. Although, it isn't too hard to be a "policy pacesetter" on the
democratic side these days -- they lack any semblance of unified vision, and
so far we have been given 3 magical proposals for legislation for fixing all
the worlds problem lacking any coherent way to pay for them other than a bunch
of magic handwaving and "let's just tax millionaires and billionaires more"
\-- the most atrocious of them being the "New Green Deal", and the second most
atrocious is the "Medicaid for all"

Given recently how AOC and her cohorts were flat out embarrassed by the NY
state budget director and given a lesson in basic financial literacy and
economics, I think the freshman and sophomore democrats should probably lay
low for a while and learn a thing or two from the adults in the room.

------
abalone
What's interesting about this proposal is it goes after "proprietary
marketplaces".[1] Anti-trust has historically focused on breaking up huge
companies that have acquired/merged with their competition. She's recognizing
that another lever of power in the world: owning the platform.

Lots of tech "monopoly" power comes from network effects. Once you're Google
or Amazon you don't necessarily need to buy up all the other search engines or
ecommerce platforms. They can't even get off the ground.

Also interesting: she doesn't mention Apple at all. Yet they run one of the
biggest platforms, and their cut (which they call "service revenue") is one of
the highest growth categories for them.

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

------
EGreg
This is 2019. We have come up with so many correct tech solutions to problems,
like inventing the Internet Protocol Suite and so on, where we once needed
government. We have email instead of the post office. Desktop printing instead
of the printing press. Xerox copiers were a game changer back in the day.

Why do we need government’s help to break up these monopolies? When AOL
literally was the place everyone went to just be ONLINE, it semed unstoppable.
Then came the Web, with its permissionless nature, and over time it completely
took over, and led to trillions of dollars of new value. The Web is the
plarform on which Google, Amazon, Facebook, built their businesses, companies
that would never get permission do that on top of AOL.

Now we need something similar to disrupt Google, Facebook, Amazon. I believe
Wordpress was an early start, and indeed powers 30% of all websites today. But
you need four things:

1) Open source and permissionless platform

2) A unified Social Operating System with well designed components for user
accounts, permissions, realtime notifications, payments etc. like the
graphical OSes had windows, menus and so on. A well-designed cathedral
architecture like BSD.

3) A permissionless plugin system and marketplace where anyone could develop
their own components and package them into plugins and apps, and sell them to
communities.

4) A layer where you could go between many different domains and have a
seamless social experience. This is key.

I am really passionate about this. I have put my money where my mouth is - my
company Qbix has reinvested half a million dollars over the last seven years
to build a platform to do just that.

What I said is just the surface. Please watch this video to understand in
depthwhat I mean:

[https://youtu.be/OzXnVSZbvAw](https://youtu.be/OzXnVSZbvAw)

Would love to hear your thoughts.

------
mikefivedeuce
I don't have any insight into the rationale behind the HQ2 search beyond what
was reported in the media, but I've long thought that planning for a potential
government-forced break up was part of it. A preemptive segregation of
business units will help their case if/when this gains some steam.

------
hello_tyler
This seems like a terrible thing to campaign on. There are plenty of other
more important issues to deal with. Maybe not everyone, but most people I talk
to absolutely love Amazon and the convenience it offers them. Definitely not
going to win in the court of public opinion.

------
alexandernst
Just my 2 cents: Apple currently offers a great user experience in terms of
app quality, stability, design, etc... That's because they have a total
control over what can and what can't be uploaded to their app store. They run
extensive analysis over each one of the apps that are being submitted to the
app store and they reserve their right to reject an app even if the slightest
bug occurs. That, at the end of the day, turns into a very positive user
experience. My question is: Would it be actually good for the end user if
Apple is forced to lose control over the app store?

------
0815test
Enforcing the use of open, federated, interoperable standards when they're
technically feasible would be a lot more productive than the crude approach of
simply breaking up the companies. To the extent that there is a competition
concern it's due to network effects, and open, interoperable standards would
go a long way towards resolving these. Even for Amazon, it's only the
"UX"-related company that needs to be broken away from the rest. That company
would then face an incentive to interoperate will all sorts of suppliers on an
equitable basis.

~~~
helen___keller
This would require a level of vision & planning we're not likely to see from
political leaders, but I agree this is the best take here.

If the goal of antitrust action is to keep the free market competitive, I
think a better way to achieve this than enforcing a breakup of big companies
is by legally requiring standards for open protocols that allow for
competitors to interface with each other and compete on their _service
quality_ rather than their _network size_.

How this would be done is a hard question without an easy answer. But breaking
apart Facebook from Whatsapp isn't going to make it any easier for a new
social network or a new messaging app to break into the space. Typically new
social products can only enter a saturated market by targeting a niche and
then expanding (e.g. Signal on a privacy/security focus or Discord on a gaming
focus). Enforcing some level of open protocol makes it possible to try a new
product without customers giving up because "oh but my friends aren't on here"

------
blisterpeanuts
Companies do get spun off all the time, if it's determined to benefit
shareholders. Why should the government take on this role? It's doubtful they
would make decisions that are in the best fiduciary interest of the stock
holders, the employees, and the customers. Generally it's best to let market
forces play out. Amazon, Facebook & the Goog are pretty massive _right now_ ,
but things change quickly. Ten years from now, there may be new behemoths that
dwarf these companies even as these companies now dwarf former titans like
Microsoft and IBM.

------
notjesse
I’m curious what people think this would mean for hiring? If all of a sudden
there a 8 or 9 smaller, but still quite large, giants competing for talent, I
could imagine competing for talent would hit fever pitch.

------
class4behavior
You shouldn't be resolving such issues after the fact. If the FTC or the DOJ
AD weren't diminished into such seemingly titular existences, we wouldn't have
this problem in the first place.

------
dragonwriter
She complains that the problem is lax enforcement of existing antitrust laws
and her solution is, instead of enforcement of existing antitrust laws,
radical new antitrust laws that do not focus on conduct or evidence of
consumer harm?

Not only do I think the particular policy is ill-conceived, but the preference
for legislation when the entire premise is an assessment that existing law is
unenforced rather than defective is even more worrying. And I say that as
someone who has up to this point seen Warren as probably the strongest 2020
candidate.

------
debatem1
The more I think about this the more I focus on the Amazon case.

Amazon's core competency is logistics. They would not exist at anything like
their current scale if they couldn't do 2-day delivery. That's what really
gives them a leg up vs doing a Google search, finding a small e-commerce ship
that sells what you want, and getting the product.

Breaking that into an independent service-- if it's possible at all-- would
have far more impact, and possibly more positive impact, than anything
involving house brands or an ec2 split.

------
deegles
I used to work at Amazon and the idea of spinning out Marketplace just seems
unworkable. It's like saying that Microsoft should spin out Xbox... they are
100% dependent on each other.

~~~
giarc
The easiest target would be for Amazon to spin out AWS.

~~~
twoodfin
If it were up to Bezos I bet he’d spin off the retail aspect of Amazon but
keep AWS, the inventory/shipping logistics, and all the other infrastructure.

------
chmielewski
I choose not to use Amazon. I choose not to use Facebook.

Very difficult to not interact with Google...

I choose not to use Verizon... however COMCAST is TERRRIBLE and along with
Verizon, they have shut down every mom-and-pop ISP and are responsible for the
wholesale elimination of robust, in-place copper from the consumer and
business markets.

Senator Warren, please add Comcast\Verizon to this list. That would get my
vote... either that or slapping Ajit Pai for me next time you see him. Thanks.

~~~
908087
Do you somehow choose to avoid everything hosted on AWS? How do you avoid the
wider societal effects of Facebook, and how do you avoid their collection of
data on you via third parties?

~~~
chmielewski
No I don't (can't) avoid everything hosted on AWS. That's RMS-level
commitment. I just don't use them in my work or for projects, and I don't use
their marketplace.

I don't avoid the "societal effects" of facebook, I just don't/won't/haven't
had a profile. It's not like I would boycott an event if their only
RSVP/invite/info page is on facebook, more like voting with my feet when it
comes to signing up for and/or utilizing their platform.

------
quantummkv
The real problem here is the culture that the current crop of entrepreneurs
grew up in. No one one wan't to take time to build and grow a company anymore
as it is unglamorous. Most of them are just looking to generate hype and sell
to any Big Tech corp that throws cash at them as soon as possible.

As long as this culture remains in place, breaking big tech companies won't
work. New ones will crop up and everything will continue.

------
gremlinsinc
This is one reason I still support Bernie over Warren, his ideas are more
sound, and he has a purpose. I feel like Warren can come off fringe on a lot
of things, and is really just trying to make herself appear progressive, she
tosses out ideas into the progressive ether to see which ones will 'stick' per
se and drops others. Some days she sounds on point and very intelligent, and
some days she does shit like this and feels completely out of touch.

She's also very self-serving and has no sense of loyalty to other left-leaning
politicians - else she might've backed Bernie from day one in 2016, instead of
play things 'safe'. Her playing safe hurt her career more than anything else
ever will in my opinion.

That aside, I don't think breaking up google, fb, amazon will do much...if I
were to break them up, I think the only thing I'd do is perhaps have them
split their cloud services from their other offerings, and maybe media
services -- youtube | amazon prime video, but it's small potatoes.

I think a MUCH bigger issue is media consolodation -- when 1-2 CEO's control
80% of the media and thus the 'message' that people see, that's a much scarier
proposition.

For example Sinclair Broadcasting I think owns something like 90% of local
broadcasting stations now - and they send talking points and control what
newscasters say in order to get political messages out - it's basically
propaganda that they control, and it's very powerful esp in the wrong hands.

Comcast/nbc/hulu, att/time warner, disney/fox/espn/etc are all companies that
probably are more dangerous than google/fb/amazon (w/ the exception that FB
really needs to get it's privacy shit together or just die...), and if you're
going after big tech why not Apple/Microsoft, Microsoft is as big if not
bigger than it was when they had their antitrust case, Apple is the biggest
company in the world ? Maybe we should also have a 25BN = auto-breakup for
banks, since banks caused the last great recession, and are obviously
dangerous when they get too big to fail.

Or maybe instead of breaking up companies we just figure out ways to tax them
better -- esp. on speculation and at the investment layer, so that the money
they make that 'you - the politician' feel they shouldn't be making is used
for the benefit of society as well as enrichment of the CEO and their ilk.

------
CivBase
You might be able to divide Amazon into two distinct pieces (retail and cloud
services), but I don't know how you'd even start with a company like Google or
Facebook. Most of the services offered by those two are only justified by the
amount of data they provide for ad targeting. You can't take away those
services without ruining their ad-revenue model.

------
ArtDev
Amazon is a "marketplace". Like "Google Play" or iTunes. This seems very
different situation.

As a progressive, I really want to support Warren but her policies need to
solid. I am concerned the left is running off the rails with anti-vaxx, anti-
GMO, anti-technology, extreme feminist wackadoodle ideas.

Can't just Bernie just dye his hair and wear a proper suit that fits?

------
proxygeek
Just wondering how weird would it be if someone at the UN proposed to break up
"monopolies" like China it the USA itself. And yet, I suppose a good parallel
case can be built in support of this.

NOTE: I'm not dissing the monopolies act and understand the dangers. This is
just a thought pointing out different yardsticks for corporations and
countries.

------
darawk
> The story demonstrates why promoting competition is so important: it allows
> new, groundbreaking companies to grow and thrive — which pushes everyone in
> the marketplace to offer better products and services. Aren’t we all glad
> that now we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with
> Bing?

Erm. Should we tell her that Google came before Bing?

------
refurb
The $25B revenue cut off seems really arbitrary and ignore different types of
businesses. Some business (like Walmart) have super high revenues, but
relatively small profits. While others are smaller revenue, but super high
profits.

I know this proposal is just for tech companies, but it seems like it will
create as many problems as it solves.

------
SketchySeaBeast
I know that Facebook has instagram and whatsapp, but wouldn't breaking
Facebook up leave the still monolithic but waning Facebook proper together?
I'm not saying WhatsApp and Instagram aren't massive, but am I wrong in
assuming that Facebook is still a monolith regardless if it loses it
subsidiaries?

~~~
seaborn63
Just off the top of my head, maybe FB Markeplace and Messenger get split out
into their own companies? Maybe their Live feature get's split off into it's
own thing too.

That makes me think that Amazon might have to give up Twitch too

------
and-er-son
Why is Apple not part of this? The most valuable company!! What apple does
with integration of software, hardware, dongle, accessory and walled garden is
nothing but a monopoly! The killing of iMessage if you switch etc. Maybe
Amazon, Google, FB didn't pay enough money to Warren's election fund.

------
petey283
This is great because it starts a conversation about monopoly power that's
long been needed.

This I think is one of the understated values of primaries and presidential
elections. Even if Warren is elected and unable to get legislation passed, she
has moved this particular conversation forward.

------
eevilspock
Warren's original post, _Here’s how we can break up Big Tech_ :

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

------
sgjohnson
While I agree that we should break apart giant companies (and not just Amazon,
telecoms too), the first large entity that we should break apart, is the
government.

The only way to stop monopolies from forming is by getting rid of legislation
that heavily benefits large businesses.

~~~
all2
> ... the first large entity that we should break apart, is the government.

If you're talking about the United States of America, it _is_ already broken
apart. By design we have three distinct branches, due process, _and_ free
speech/press.

~~~
occamrazor
Not to mention 50 constituent states, each of which has in turn legislative,
executive, and judiciary branches.

------
SCAQTony
Of the three I would say Facebook is the most destructive. I don't see
articles on Live Science or Science Daily decrying the mental health effects
of Amazon or Google, just unfair monopoly implications at Bloomberg and other
business sites.

~~~
908087
Youtube is Google.

------
drallison
“Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our
economy, our society, and our democracy,” Warren said in a statement. “They’ve
bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the
playing field against everyone else.”

True. On the other hand, big tech companies are the only agencies that are
taking on big problems, social and technical. Break up big tech and many
things won't get done. No ubiquitous high speed networks, no practical general
purpose artificial intelligence, no indexed access to the world's knowledge,
no voice interface minions, and so forth. Government seems unable and
unwilling to do the sort of things Big Tech does.

Breaking up big tech seems to be the wrong approach and is likely to be more
difficult and more destructive than it would appear at first glance. Better to
enlist big tech to cooperate and make the world a better place.

------
sempron64
I'm on the fence about antitrust action in general, but here's an assertion
from the article that I think is completely untrue:

"Venture capitalists are now hesitant to fund new startups to compete with
these big tech companies because it’s so easy for the big companies to either
snap up growing competitors or drive them out of business."

The possibility of being "snapped up" is very good money for venture
capitalists instead of waiting a decade for an IPO. So regulating acquisitions
by the big players may have a chilling effect on capital and, thereby, tech
innovation.

In addition, the first mover effect is very powerful and should not be
discounted. For example, the competition between Snapchat and Facebook was not
as skewed as the outcome would have you believe. Snapchat had and has a large
userbase, and is losing because of mistakes (including not agreeing to very
good acquisition offers). I can't personally think of too many other examples
of megatitans successfully squashing innovative smaller companies with an
equivalent product.

------
BryantD
This is a really interesting conversation but I really want to read the full
proposal. As many have noted, what about AWS? Does Apple's App Store count as
a platform? What does the data clause mean? Etc.

------
eanzenberg
The US govt has some of the biggest waste I’ve ever seen. Tens to hundreds of
millions on failed research thrusts that were extreme long-shots from the
beginning. Govt employees that “rest and vest” to extremes, working 20 actual
hrs a week at a FTE position and getting pension at 55. It puts to shame
actual hardworking Americans who are outside the elitist bubble.

It’s hard to argue when the same side benefitting from big govt wants to print
money to “solve” all their problems and shut down opposing virwpoints with
such vitrol. One side is actively extatic by shutting down tens of thousands
of prospective jobs while not getting that funding and revenue of their
projects comes from those jobs.

------
wtmt
Will there be enough political will to get this done even if she becomes
president? It seems unlikely that such severe measures would be able to pass
unless the named companies help dig themselves deeper by not caring about the
distrust and deep disappointment in them (Facebook for one doesn’t seem to
care in the sense of really doing something better).

> He (Szabo) added that he also felt Ms. Warren is “wrong in her assertion
> that tech markets lack competition.”

That’s got to be one of those jokes that go viral. Most of the consumer facing
services are heavily concentrated among less than a handful (considering
specific areas, and not in general).

It’s time at least some of what she calls for gets done!

------
ilaksh
This topic is strongly connected with decentralization technologies since they
are the most viable way that we will be able to replace the large networks of
the technopolies.

------
throw2016
This thread defines 'whataboutism'. It's supposed to be about Warren's new 3
page tech regulation bill but has more than 600 comments rehashing telecom
regulation issues discussed thousands of times, without engaging a single
point raised by Warren. This looks like a derail.

There are urgent issues with Google and monopoly, search, chrome, amp, android
and youtube and once you combine that with Facebook a toxic predatory
surveillance capitalism model based on harvesting and collating private data
to build dossiers that is ominous for any free society.

But for the tech community on the frontlines of this project the old issues of
Comcast and Verizon unresolved inspite of decades of heated debate are more
urgent. If anyone doubted Upton Sinclars famous insight here is the evidence.

------
Bhilai
> "as well as legislation that would prohibit platforms from both offering a
> marketplace for commerce and participating in that marketplace."

This sounds very fair to me, India has passed a similar law recently -
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/technology/india-
amazon-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/technology/india-amazon-
walmart-online-retail.html)

------
Bhilai
What about closing Tax loopholes, such that Apple and Amazon pay their fair
share and Netflix does not pay zero tax ?

~~~
e1ven
There are a million other things which should also be done.

Saying "What about these other things?" isn't particularly constructive to the
discussion of this proposal.

There's nothing in it which precludes changes to the tax structure as a
separate proposal.

~~~
Bhilai
To clarify, what I mean here is that there may be other things that should
probably be prioritized over splitting tech giants. There is usually limited
political capital a POTUS has and if Warren had the votes, in my opinion
fixing tax structure should higher on her list.

------
zer0faith
The problem isn't the tech giants but how we are seen as cash cows of
information and not as people.

------
ngcc_hk
Miss the whole point. The world largest is not American firm. Not even in IT.

Break yours and let others do it.

------
plandis
What monopoly do these companies have? What customer harm is resultant from
their monopolies?

------
pooya13
Most people are on the same page about ISPs so I will skip that. Social
networks should be public utility companies or else heavily regulated and
treansparent to avoid censorship or what is referred to as surveillance
capitalism. Networks should be open for third parties in a regulated manner
after a certain size threshold. This would for example prevent Amazon from
creating a massive delivery network in a competition free environment and then
use it to squash any new competition for decades and decades. People might
have a choice now to use Amazon or not but as delivery prices decline the
options shrink to the point that you might not have any realistic alternative
depivery channel. However with current US political system that has money
interest and regulations tied in a biased way towards concentrated capital
these will likely not happen.

------
cm2012
She's lost my support with this - too far off the rails.

------
gjmacd
Breaking AWS away from Amazon might not be a bad thing.

------
ryanmarsh
Honest question, not trying to make a statement...

Is this really a left/liberal/progressive/dem position and if so why?

I'm mainly on the right and so I don't have a lot of insight into why Sen.
Warren would be taking this position. To be frank I kinda would have expected
something like this from Trump, not from her. Tech companies like Amazon seem
to be left leaning (just looking at Bezos and his investment in WaPo).
Wouldn't Warren want strong left leaning tech companies? Why would she want to
go up against them?

Again I'm not trying to trigger anyone or make any political assertions. I
generally don't understand and would love the input of others for familiar
with Sen. Warren's platform.

------
cowl
So Democrats are sticking to their guns with their belief that their problem
was not going Left enough instead of realising to be more pragmatic and listen
to people instead of ideologies.

~~~
pickle-wizard
Yep, she just lost my vote.

------
thatgerhard
if you're going to break them up, it's going to be a lot tougher to keep track
of their "anti consumer" behaviour

------
DSingularity
I like Warren. Also, I believe something needs to be done about these tech
companies enormous influence over information flow. I don't think the solution
is breaking them up.

------
nutellalover
Does legislature like this actually have a chance at passing? Or is this just
bombastic liberal rhetoric to ignite the campaign trail?

------
matthewfelgate
Why is Microsoft never mentioned?!

------
simonebrunozzi
If you came here to read the HN comments about this topic, I very highly
recommend listening to this podcast that I've enjoyed yesterday [0], it's
economist Russell Roberts interviewing Michael Munger; the topic is "crony
capitalism".

[0]: [http://www.econtalk.org/michael-munger-on-crony-
capitalism/](http://www.econtalk.org/michael-munger-on-crony-capitalism/)

------
dahdum
Seems like Democratic candidates are clamoring over each other to be further
left, and I don't quite understand it. I supported Bernie in 2016, and even he
is now too far left for my tastes.

Democrats lost the centrist vote in 2016, not the left, and if they don't take
a hard right turn after the nomination we'll have 4 more years of Trump.

~~~
danans
> Democrats lost the centrist vote in 2016, not the left

They lost huge numbers of working class manufacturing industry workers in the
Midwest, who perceived HC as a tool of Wall Street, and rightly or wrongly,
instrumental in the secular economic decline of their jobs and communities.
This was literally reflected in a schism of working class vs professional
class counties in the midwest, with the former going for DJT and the latter
going to HC [1]

Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin didn't swing to DJT because centrist's
didn't have a candidate that spoke to their concerns - that candidate was
definitely HC. Even many centrist Republicans who couldn't bring themselves to
vote for DJT voted for her.

Those states swung because DJT at least spoke to the working class' economic
concerns in a way that at the time seemed authentic, while also invoking their
repressed cultural anxieties about demographic and social changes.

Democrats should stay the heck away from the racism and xenophobia that
motivated part of his coalition, but they would be fools to ignore the
economically-left sentiment that put him in office.

And since DJT's actual economic policy has turned out to be the same
Republican trickle down, tax cuts for the wealthy approach, the Democrats have
an opportunity to expose that and run against it.

[1]
[https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/2016/11/macomb_county_cou...](https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/2016/11/macomb_county_could_represent.html)
[https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/elections/20...](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/11/09/trump-
won-michigan/93551192/)

~~~
petey283
This. There's great opportunity ahead and calls for the Dems to lead with
anything other than bold policies don't make sense.

Running on strengthening healthcare was primary among many reasons for their
success in the Midterms.

------
buboard
if they are going to break up amazon why dont spin out AWS?

------
dznodes
2008, Financial Collapse, Too Big To Fail, Banks Got Bigger 2018, Facebook
Helps Trump, Too Influential, Break Up Facebook?

------
andrewla
Posted below, but this just paywallspam for Elizabeth Warren's own blog post
on the subject:
[https://medium.com/@teamwarren/9ad9e0da324c](https://medium.com/@teamwarren/9ad9e0da324c)

------
JabavuAdams
Whoops. Guess she won't be winning then...

~~~
neuronic
If, as usual, people are voting heavily against their own interests and more
according to the lobbyist propaganda fed by economics 101 professors, then you
are likely on point.

~~~
sj3k
what lobbyists are lobbying to break up big tech companies? Not everything is
propaganda.

~~~
jklinger410
Telco, Walmart, any company that would rather have a big brand with name
association on the hot seat instead of them.

------
ratling
This will go exactly nowhere. I want Cheeto out as much as anyone else but if
the democrats put up Warren in 2020 I'm not going to be happy.

------
fxfan
I don't exactly like her but this is a very valid point. Not like she will get
the necessary support in a bought out congress (both sides)

------
skookumchuck
Big businesses are the drivers of the American economy. Breaking them up will
imperil the economy.

------
EGreg
Why do we need the government’s help to break up Amazon? We need open source
alternatives, line OpenStreetMap to break up Google Maps monopoly.

------
KorematsuFred
If you did not build it, you gont get to break it. How about we split Pentagon
into 5 pieces instead ?

~~~
noblethrasher
Conversely, if you didn't build the Internet, you don't get to break it.

------
BurningFrog
If we're worried about concentration of power, invasions of privacy, and
collection of private data, the by far biggest problem is Warren's own
employer.

Once we've broken up the federal government, we can start worrying about these
much smaller and less powerful entities!

------
throwaway-1283
I'd have to see the details, but I'm pro something like breaks up the _talent_
monopoly that FAANGs have, especially in the Bay Area.

Early stage startups can't compete for talent in the Bay Area. If breaking up
giants creates more competition for talent, then I'm supportive.

------
MagicPropmaker
Microsoft is now worth more than Apple, and it used to be in the target of
government regulators. What has it done right?

~~~
peeters
I'm not sure Apple can claim a monopoly the same way those other three can.
How would you "break up" Apple when their business is largely focused to one
market that has strong competition?

~~~
panda88888
I would argue that the iOS platform (HW/SW and app store) certainly meets the
>25 billion annual revenue specified by Warren and should be split from other
Apple services, such as Apple Music and rumored upcoming Apple streaming
service.

For example, Spotify would have to pay 15-30% of its monthly subscription fee
if user paid it through the IAP (which is why Spotify doesn't offer that
option), whereas Apple music can do so without the 15-30% fee. Also, Spotify
is not allowed to include a link to its website to pay for subscription,
because it's against the Apple app store rules. The same applies to Netflix
and other digital content/service providers. Apple either gets the 15-30%
price advantage, or it gets the added convenience of In-App purchase for the
service.

------
mindcrime
Just say "no" to more government manipulation of the market. In fact, we need
to rollback a lot of the ways government distorts markets today. See, for
example: regulatory capture[1] and patent evergreening[2].

Too often it's government intervention which _creates_ the very "problems"
that they then turn around and claim to be trying to solve.

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

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening)

------
shereadsthenews
Anyone who thinks Google is out there demoting Yelp results is a moron. The
much simpler explanation that Yelp is a cancer that everyone hates is more
likely. It's sad that Warren falls for FUD like this and we shouldn't forget
that these memes originate from Microsoft-funded AstroTurf campaigns designed
to mislead European regulators, which worked because eurocrats are gullible.
The last thing we need in this election are people without the critical
thinking skills needed to see through a disinformation campaign. We need a
candidate who can clearly see that Google owning a small thermostat maker is
not one of the country's main issues.

------
endofcapital
Here we go, buckle up. With the amount of power democrats are likely to
consolidate in the next few elections there could be some serious movement on
this if it becomes a priority for the party.

I think the big three are way too powerful and need to be broken up, but doing
so intelligently is a tricky problem that I don't have much faith in
government tackling.

Zuckerberg integrating all the services yesterday seems to be a transparent
attempt to short circuit splitting the company along these service lines, he
knows this is coming. I'll bet $100 he'll soon be talking about how it's
impossible to split out insta from facebook because of database keys and
integrated AI or whatever.

~~~
sct202
I don't think it'll be a priority because I'm not really sure if this is a
real thing that Warren believes or if she's just throwing this out there to
see if it has legs.

~~~
keeganjw
If someone other than Warren gets elected, it could very well get put on the
back burner. But this is defintely what Warren believes. When she was a
professor at Harvard or the head of the CFPB, cracking down on very large,
very powerful corporations was always her focus, whether via anti-trust or
other means.

------
fowkswe
If there has ever been a monopoly, those 3 companies are it.

I wont speak for social media and search, but Amazon has a complete
stranglehold on retail in the United States. People keep saying 'retail is
dead', thats bullshit, Amazon has a monopolistic stranglehold on the selling
of all goods. If that weren't the case, small shop brick and mortar shopping
would still be a thing.

~~~
systematical
Yeah no one cares about monopolies anymore. But how exactly do you split up a
search engine for instance?

~~~
moate
You silo the search engine segment of the business as one company, the
advertising segment as a separate business, etc etc. Alphabet is more than
just the Google search engine at this point.

~~~
pnloyd
Wouldn't the loss of close integration between Google's ads business and
services decrease their respective values though?

~~~
mechagodzilla
Ideally it would directly and immediately decrease their values by the amount
they were effectively extracting due to their monopoly position.

