
Examining the dominance of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple - partingshots
https://judiciary.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3114
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three_seagrass
Worth noting that these are the house members of the committee overhearing
testimony:

David Cicilline, RI (D), Hank Johnson, GA (D), Jamie Raskin, MD (D), Pramila
Jayapal, WA (D), Val Demings, FL (D), Mary Gay Scanlon, PA (D), Joe Neguse, CO
(D), Lucy McBath, GA (D), Jim Sensenbrenner, WI (R), Matt Gaetz, FL (R), Ken
Buck, CO (R), Kelly Armstrong, NE (R), Greg Steube, FL (R)

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fataliss
Care to elaborate?

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pbk1
I interpreted the inclusion of party affiliation in parentheses as indicating
this has bipartisan interest

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three_seagrass
Yep. Also FL is over represented for some reason.

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ocdtrekkie
It's still irritating that Larry Page has never successfully been brought
before Congress for questioning. It's arguable that the entire Alphabet/Google
structure was done in part to begin the process of isolating the founders from
having to testify[1], despite being the key decisionmakers in much of Google's
operations over the past decade, and still technically being in control today.
Every time he's been asked for, we get someone like Pichai, or even more
insultingly, Kent Walker[2].

Our nation has _asked_ Larry Page to testify many times before, it's about
time we start ordering him to.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1202294177444302849](https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1202294177444302849)
[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-04/google-
to...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-04/google-touts-
election-steps-as-senate-panel-rejects-its-witness)

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Kednicma
You might be disappointed. Larry Page has vocal cord paralysis on both sides,
and as a result, his in-person presence is not very satisfying.

Moreover, Page would not have substantially more interesting testimony. For
any Googler at the top, the answer to the question of "Why is Google so
dominant?" is "Google's services are free and high-quality," and there's not
really any extra thinking that goes into that line of thought.

We shouldn't expect that Page, nor any other executive, would say something
like "Yes, Doubleclick was operating fraudulently," or "Yes, we agreed with
Apple to fix salaries and avoid poaching," or "Yes, we developed tools to help
China commit human-rights abuses," or "Yes, we knew about Eric Schmidt's trip
to see Julian Assange," or "Yes, we successfully avoided tax burdens in
multiple jurisdictions." It's one thing to have strong circumstantial evidence
and informally-recognized smoking guns, and another thing to expect a top
executive to directly and nonchalantly incriminate themselves in front of
Congress.

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ocdtrekkie
Obviously one would need to make any accessibility accommodations necessary
including potentially a translator/someone to vocalize his words written in
front of him. But we should be hearing from the man himself, present in the
room, not his PR people.

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mercer
I'm aware that this is not a comment that contributes much, but nonetheless: I
agree. Get him present in a hearing!

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rafaelturk
I'm puzzled why Microsoft is not on the list

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jasonv
Per the post, the investigation is about "the dominance of a small number of
digital platforms".

Which digital platform is Microsoft dominant in?

I don't see an answer that's on the level of the ways the other 4 are dominant
these days (AWS, social, appstore/search/Youtube, app store).

My suspicion -- offered without supporting evidence -- is Microsoft had their
say, and has had no small role in supporting this investigation.

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TrueDuality
I suspect Amazon is not in hot water for AWS, there are major competing
platforms and AFAIK no sketchy anti-competitive behaviour there. I'd have to
guess its for their "market" business.

They've been using pricing data from third parties and their own in house
brands to take business from those third parties. There is also rampant
illegitimate reprinting of independent book publishers.

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jasonv
Yes, good point. That makes sense.

EDIT: I thought it, but I think AWS might at least get mentioned. To your
point, I also spent some time writing external pricing engines for an
e-commerce channel push up to some of the marketplaces. We optimized pricing
for buy box participation, but it'd be easy to write the whole thing off as
unbalanced by disparate forces, Amazon itself being the most obvious. We re-
priced based on the data we extracted from Amazon.

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actuator
Apple and Amazon seem to have ways through which they can be proven to abuse
their position and can get decoupled through an investigation.

What would be the play on FB? They own three large data silos but do they
leverage one to gain competitive advantage on other? I just use WhatsApp these
days, so I am not sure of this. AFAIK, they allow you to export your data like
photos out of FB, so that can't be proven to lock in your data as well. So,
will this investigation be limited to their algortihmic ranking for posts or
matching for ads?

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amelius
Isn't the network effect sufficient?

I mean back in the days when telephony was starting, companies had to open up
their networks to each other.

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actuator
Can't FB just point to a newcomer like Tiktok and give a counter example for
network effect not being something that stops a new competitor?

Also, how do you imagine a network opening up? I doubt FB and Instagram can be
converted to a standard.

Messaging/Chat might be converted to a standard. XMPP was that but now we have
clusters of messaging apps doing their own things.

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amelius
You might have a point but FB also owns WhatsApp.

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actuator
Yeah, that's where it would be interesting to see compatibility. Like using
your favorite messaging app to talk to your friends without being limited by
app/platform choice.

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dang
Since this is just an event announcement, we should probably wait until the
actual event.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22no%20harm%20in%20waiting%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

