There was a point at which Facebook and Google were engaged in a death match (for example, Facebook built Connect as a pre-emptive action against a planned Google initiative that had leaked to them). And then suddenly, at some point, the rivalry just sort of ... disappeared.
I wonder how close the relationship really is. This ad deal seems like just one component of something more complex.
As we stray further away from true market competition, this sort of behavior for those at the top to collude against the market versus compete for it is going to be too great for them to resist.
When our economy was less concentrated. Basically anytime before now.
The proportion income tax returns reporting "self employed" drops every year. The average number of internet service providers a household has to choose from drops every year. This has been going on for 30-40 years now, at various rates of speed.
Things were much worse at the turn of the century. Then we got Teddy Roosevelt and an era of trust-busting. It's time for history to rhyme a bit better.
>The average number of internet service providers a household has to choose from drops every year.
In the US, there's always been only 2 companies with wires going to people's houses, the phone company and the cable company. And for 99% of people, the choice is shitty DSL at 3Mbps which doesn't really count as broadband, or okay-ish cable internet with no upload capacity.
In constrat, in the UK, we unbundled our ADSL monopoly, and forced them to sell access to the cables wholesale. And then let competitors put their own hardware in the local exchanges too.
It still needs more work as everyone seems to have to charge a fixed line fee. There are though plenty of providers with varying prices and qualities. Plus cable (fibre) too.
Competition and capitalism only function if a state heavily regulates the market to be an actual market.
> People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
The parent was questioning I think whether Google+ failing was a result of something like Google and Facebook dividing up the market and agreeing to stop competing. As crazy as it sounds, it makes as much sense as Google making so, so many bad decisions around Google+ that it eventually had to be put out of its misery.
I wonder how close the relationship really is. This ad deal seems like just one component of something more complex.