Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches?
The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.
We need to get away from this nationalist perspective. All of these companies are global companies, both in where their products are designed/developed, as well as where there users are.
You wouldn't pit one state against the other and say "we need to keep California founded monopolies in place or else Oklahoma might end up replacing them".
We're all in this world together. Yes there are cultural differences, but we need to shift our mentality to a global one.
Recognition on my part there are other issues to consider in China and many other countries, which is why we're looking to Philippines, Sri Lanka, Mexico and other location for our company. Legislation is slow, action is faster.
> You wouldn't pit one state against the other and say "we need to keep California founded monopolies in place or else Oklahoma might end up replacing them".
That’s totally something my local leaders would say. States compete for business here.
Practically speaking, my vote influences how US companies operate more than it influences how foreign companies operate. Therefore, all else being equal and since monopoly implies no other choices, I’m more invested in the companies I interact with being American rather than, say, Chinese.
That's a really interesting perspective, but does your vote really influence how companies operate? On what level?
For us, and we're about to start producing hardware, we think our purchasing power is more influential than our vote. That's why we're avoiding China for manufacturing.
I'm highly skeptical of that prediction. The EU are hardly slouches with respect to anti-monopoly actions. Chinese and Russian companies are subject to intense fear-mongering (not that every criticism is invalid) and are unlikely to take the place of FAANG. And I don't foresee other Asian, African, Middle-Eastern, or companies from UK or the Americas achieving huge monopolies before actions could be taken against them.
Chinese entities seem to be treated like a special case / emerging market/industry, by even the most senior E.U. member states. This is in contrast to the U.S. / U.S. entities, which are viewed / treated as a mature (i.e. low/no-growth) market.
"China has said it will not accept a ruling against it in a key international legal case over strategic reefs and atolls that Beijing claims would give it control over disputed waters of the South China Sea.
The judgment by an international tribunal in The Hague came down overwhelmingly in favour of claims by the Philippines and is likely to increase global diplomatic pressure on Beijing to scale back military expansion in the area. By depriving certain outcrops of territorial-generating status, the ruling from the permanent court of arbitration effectively punches holes in China’s all-encompassing “nine-dash” line that stretches deep into the South China Sea."
Five years later, it appears the case was quietly forgotten by all.
"... members of the French Senate demanded answers at a hearing with the foreign minister as to why an article they said was fake and cast them in a bad light was still up on the Chinese embassy website [...] In the post, an unnamed diplomat suggests that careworkers in Western nursing homes - using the French term EHPAD - had abandoned their jobs, leaving residents to die."
Well, US official policy is that they do not recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court, or any other international court, over US citizens or the US state. This has been seen with a few trials for war crimes, most notably the trial they lost (and ignored) for mining Nicaragua's ports, a clear violation of the Geneva convention, an explicit war crime.
As an EU citizen, whether I'm kowtowing to Chinese or US imperialism is not all that different. Sure, I'd much rather live in the US than China, but in recent history, US influence outside their borders has been much, much worse for those under their heel than has Chinese influence.
TikTok is a curious one. The Chinese service appears to be a completely separate content silo. And Musical.ly grew in the US without needing antitrust action against FB or Snap or anyone else, in the same way that those companies displaced others. The bar to entry to that marketplace is already low, I don't think it's really relevant to discussions around Amazon or Google or MS or even Apple.
Great points. Social media is a different beast compared to Amazon/MS/Apple but seeing a CN company crack the US advertising duopoly (F/G) is interesting. And I do wonder how much of that pertains to the Musical.ly acquisition. Now, I'm trying to think about the discussion as it pertains to the AAM slice of GAFAM and the conversation gets more interesting for me there.
I can think of substitutes for Apple (Huawei) and Amazon (Alibaba) with US market penetration, but I can't think of any for M. I can think of a couple reasons why off the top of my head but I'm curious as to what you think.
Are you referring to TikTok as the crown jewel? I don't see how that description fits. Regardless:
* Where's the monopoly? TikTok is one slice of the social media pie, unlike Facebook's ownership of Whatsapp/Messenger, Facebook.com, Instagram (with its Snapchat lite features).
* What are ByteDance doing with TikTok that's different from what US companies do with their social network data? e.g., Twitter. As a side-note one could argue Twitter aqui-killed Vine, setting the stage for TikTok.
* If desired, couldn't the Biden administration immediately return to the Trump-era policy of requiring ByteDance to sell a substantial part of their TikTok business to a US company? Which is a remedy that US companies complain about when China does it.
I see far fewer problems with TikTok's associations with China than I do with Facebook's ownership of many slices of the social media pie, never mind that the US has many 3-letter agencies hoovering up data from US owned social media networks, even about US citizens (at the very least all it takes is an interaction with a non-US account for the US account data to be considered fair game).
The point is that EU regulations may prevent the creation of monopolies in the first place, so EU countries are unlikely to be a source of alternative monopolies to the existing US ones. So there's cause to think it unlikely that we'd be trading a "devil we know" that is at least partly accountable to US institutions, for a "devil we don't" that is less/not accountable.
I assumed people generally thought the opposite was true - if you let them grow fat and bloated US tech monopolies will lose their ability to compete internationally.
Relative to its size, the highly consolidated US car industry isn't a great exporter, for example, and even required bailouts to survive.
So this assumes that most of the the prospective component companies themselves are not very competent, and that their size and leverage from the dominant units is all that gives them market power.
That, I think, is probably a pessimistic view - Gmail being split off from Google Display Ads and Google Search wouldn't make me any less likely to use Gmail, say. But it would also open the door for US companies to replace them, not simply foreign ones. It's not like countries that crack down on the US services have produced many better companies good enough to compete in the US to date.
I'd accept the risk of some new dominant players from other countries in exchange for limiting the risk of misuse of market power and increasing the chance of new US competition to arise. Competition from inside or outside the US should make the encumbents better. Stagnation is what will let them be replaced by disruptive newcomers.
EDIT: I think a more likely risk is that we lose some money-losing "free" services that are basically loss-leaders, maybe even some vanity project ones. I would LOVE to replace some of those with paid products that a more healthy company could grow around, with better user-facing incentives.
Great! As a modern resident of planet earth, I’m not opposed to international competition. I’d love for FAANG not to be able to crush or acquire competitors, regardless of their country of origin.
I bet, based on recent history, that most of the upstarts would be from the US. If that isn’t the case, it will be a wake up call and hopefully the US will rise to the occasion.
Nationalism aside, there is a common refrain on HN comments that breaking up companies will result in a decline in innovation. History suggests otherwise:
The last company broken up was AT&T; at the time everyone was worried about Japanese electronics companies.
> breaking up AT&T in 1982 was the best thing that could have happened to America. AT&T's core project in 1982 wasn't fighting Japanese electronics companies: it was suppressing the growth of the internet in the USA
> Antitrust enforcement isn't an economic drag, it's an economic STIMULUS
If foreign monopolies take over then the US government should ban or regulate them in the same way that domestic companies are regulated. Foreign monopolies may (or may not) dominate global markets, but I think that concern should be lower priority than the health of our own markets and the well-being of our citizens.
Considering how many of those big tech companies rely on pushing ads, does it really matter whether they’re based in the US or not? Either way, they’re revenue is from selling out their users.
If it were more profitable to be based in another country, they would be. As it is, the stability of the US and the porous byzantine tax laws, corruptible politico, et al make the US ideal.
I would never have expected such jingoistic comments to be so popular. Instead of praising American law makers for taking an ineterest in the welfare of the internet and global culture, even at a theoretical risk to their own hegemony, you judge them as misguided and lament their short-sightedness?
Also, as a believer in the free market, shouldn't you welcome competition, both national and international, as a means for everyone to become better at this?
Those FAANG companies occasionally adapt very powerful political stances, putting their best interests ahead of ~50% of the USA. In other words, these are not American companies-- they view themselves as 'above' Americans and don't mind using their weight to try to push policy that benefits themselves.
I'm not disappointed to see them put under scrutiny. I hope big media companies are next.
Because this tired old argument has been made far too many times.
These companies have become bloated and become a liability to the US and the dollar... Soaking up all the newly printed money and wasting it on bureaucracy whilst depriving everyone else from capital. Monopolizing user attention for the benefit of other aging, rotten, decrepit, bureaucratic corporations. They were producing big nominal gains through hoarding of newly printed money but rotting the economy from the inside. Good riddance.
If the reserve banks want to restore faith in the US dollar, they have to prove it works.
I think this is a pretty absurd take. These companies are highly profitable and highly visible to the average person, but in terms of revenue, they aren't outliers among the largest companies. They aren't disproportionately impacting "the US dollar".
They are highly profitable because they have an oligopoly over consumers. Consumers are forced to use them and other companies are forced to do business with them. For no other reason than a lack of alternatives. The reason that there are no alternatives is simply because they cannot compete financially... But if they could play on a fair/even playing field, the alternatives would almost certainly win.
Their high visibility is why they are able to soak up fiat from the economy. When the Fed did the trillion dollar stimulus packages, it went straight into these highly visible stocks.
These companies seem to be running a kind of money laundering operation at this stage. I suspect they found a way to keep borrowing large amounts of money from banks in perpetuity and then circulate that money among themselves to pay off each other's debts to inflate revenue numbers (maybe they use shell companies or corporate partners). It seems that there's something not right going on financially speaking. They're not playing on an even playing field as other companies. They shouldn't be profitable but they are; simply because they have an unfair advantage due to having special access to the centralized money printers.
It's both. Network effects. Same forces behind both.
We have an a monetary system which creates the economic environment and all companies compete and succeed (or fail) based on the rules of that environment.
If the environment was different (e.g. using hard money like gold or Bitcoin instead of constantly printing more), then the game would be radically different and completely different companies (IMO, more socially beneficial companies) would be winning this game.
> . Soaking up all the newly printed money and wasting it on bureaucracy whilst depriving everyone else from capital
The total market cap of all of these companies is far less than the 6-8T that’s been printed in the past year alone, so I don’t see any evidence of that assertion.
This is clearly needed, even if late, considering that antitrust laws are not a new thing.
There is hope, we tend to forget after only a few generations, but if politicians are moving now this is because the collective opinions about big tech progressively shifted during the last decade.
I might be naïve, but I think that HN played a role.
The citizens of the US are being harmed in education both primary and secondary, medicine, and in housing. These are heavily regulated industries that recieve large amounts of tax dollars - why are they not being addressed?
I'm sticking my head out a bit here given that this is HN...
But I largely attribute the high productivity of tech to the simple nature of software as opposed to the tech industry being comprised of the most productive workers and efficient management.
The flexibility and efficiency of software is insane compared to even just the hardware side of it, much less medicine or home building.
Sure, but what does it matter? The US played its cards right and got a thriving tech industry, whereas many other countries did not. Whether it came from individuals or regulation or the nature of software isn't super important.
Being in the position of having dominant global tech conglomerates be American has immense value. Do we want to preserve that, or destroy it?
The Tech monopolists are not the entire Tech sector, in fact they are a very small portion of tech employment (and thus productivity). Their rent-seeking behavior stifles innovation and competition, and they coast on the hard work of non-monopolists, e.g. Apple's outrageous 30% cut on app developer revenues.
The real problem here is the natural preferential attachment that emerges with tech companies at this scale.
"A preferential attachment process is any of a class of processes in which some quantity, typically some form of wealth or credit, is distributed among a number of individuals or objects according to how much they already have, so that those who are already wealthy receive more than those who are not."
I don't know how we deal with this in the modern world. IMO we need to at least start with network science on the table and realize we do not have the answers if using outdated ideas.
Big Tech is in every pocket. They monitor and influence the 3-12 hours a day of screen time the average adult subjects themselves to. They can themselves, and can be paid to influence the way we think, shop and live, in ways we keep refusing to acknowledge or confront.
Yes, other things are also broken! Let's fix those too.
Tech companies currently have more more influence over the mental and emotional education of our children than any school could.
You seem to be misunderstanding the issue as “these businesses are doing poorly” instead of “extreme concentration of power in the industries that control huge swaths of people’s lives is bad.”
>collective opinions about big tech progressively shifted during the last decade
Big Tech is still relatively speaking a very new thing. There are enough people who just had their first smartphone in 2015. So not really a decade.
>I might be naïve, but I think that HN played a role.
I wish that was true but it is not. Purely from US side of things, EPIC and DHH probably done more damage than anything else.
Although Big Tech had all the problems sitting in front of them for years but they were not sensitive enough to view those as problems. Remember the biggest problem of anything is to first admit it is a problem. EPIC and DHH lit a fire and set on a chain reaction. Those who previously were too afraid to speak now wrote to congress for help. Those complains piled up, congress think of it as possibly a non-issue to reaching a certain threshold being a big issue.
My personal opinion is the ban of Parler and silencing of Social Media was also another big thing, whether you agree or disagree with it. I mean it is pretty bad when EU hate Trump but also speak out for Trump about silencing him. It is a problem because Politics is Power, big tech decided to flex their muscles and show who is really in power. And you get bet this doesn't sit well not just with politics in US, but politician across the world.
I think most people often forget, Republic, Democracy and Rule of Law, all of these were set up because of Power balance. And it is pretty clear Big Tech crossed the red line. And now there are enough political interest and business interest ( from small competitors ) to fuck them up.
And it is also why all the discussions about monopoly are quite meaningless. It is about power, and AntiTrust is exactly about the abuse of power.
I dont actually agree with breaking them up, but it is a good threat to use. And I also dont know how to go forward other than some form of regulation. But regulation are often good intention with bad consequences.
> The ACCESS Act mandates that big tech firms have to make their systems open to competitors and business rivals, in the same way that AT&T customers can talk to T-Mobile customers, or users of different email systems can communicate with one another.
Okay, this is plausible, but it can turn into all kinds of mess as federated systems aren't simpler to design, build, or operate. For example, how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact with say, Facebook Messenger? They'd have to do a matrix.org style bridges, which is going to be super tricky to maintain, at their scale. Hardware is doomed: USB-C for all inter-connects...
> The merger bill makes it harder for big tech firms to buy rivals.
Well, the race to $2T market cap just got harder. Can get behind this. I can do without Zuck in my WhatsApp, or Satya in my GitHub. Such a restriction may, instead, result in a marked increase in venture investments from BigTech, which may not be as bad a thing, after all?
> The nondiscrimination bill is intended to ban the ability to big tech firms to preference their own products, the way Google substitutes its own reviews for Yelp reviews, even if Yelp’s reviews are better.
Much needed. Looking at you "Amazon's choice".
> The break-up bill is supposed to split apart big tech firms by prohibiting platforms from owning any line of business that uses that platform.
Affects tech companies ranging from AWS and Stripe to platforms like Android and iOS? This bill can be the straw that breaks the camel's back, imo, if they get the details right. Either the incumbents remain entrenched because of the loopholes, or they no longer wield undue advantage, leaving some breathing room for upstarts. Unsure if this is good or bad for software engineers. They've enjoyed higher salaries for a while on the back of some of the most ridiculous growth ever seen, driven in no part by unabated monopolistic practices.
>as federated systems aren't simpler to design or build. For example, how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact with say, Facebook Messenger?
He said others could re-use the Signal source code and create their own ecosystems but to not federate with Signal's servers. He cited costs was one issue.
> Hardware is doomed: USB-C for all inter-connects...
I am down for a standard, it doesn't matter which one it is, so long as it's consistent. Mostly it's for power distribution, I want every single one of my devices to be able to draw from a USB battery bank.
>> > The nondiscrimination bill is intended to ban the ability to big tech firms to preference their own products, the way Google substitutes its own reviews for Yelp reviews, even if Yelp’s reviews are better.
Oh god please no. I’ve been waiting years for Apple Maps to lose drop the gosh forsaken existence that is Yelp into a burning sun.
> Either the incumbents remain entrenched because of the loopholes, or they would no longer wield undue advantage, leaving some breathing room for upstarts. Unsure if this is good or bad for software engineers.
There are always unintended consequences, but it seems like it would be good in that if there are more upstarts there should also be more jobs for software engineers. The pay may (probably) won't be like what it is in FAANG companies, but not everyone can work for a FAANG company.
Not everyone would want to work at a FAANG company either. I have quietly hoped for a redistribution of software resources for a while, it's not a practically thought out hope. I just feel like the worlds software talent could do better work in more interesting and varied fields.
I also think it would lead to more innovation. How many engineers aren't working on their own ideas because the insane salaries at big tech would be stupid to give up? I don't blame someone on 200-500k a year for just sitting tight and soaking up the dollars. 500k a year is as much or more than a successful small business owner, and you don't have to take on any of the risk.
As someone who has never worked for a FAANG company, nor wants to (FB recruiter email I got this morning will go unanswered) the mind boggles at these $200K-$500K salaries. If I were making a salary in that range I'd think it would be possible to retire after about 5 years if one was frugal.
> I just feel like the worlds software talent could do better work in more interesting and varied fields.
Agreed, but I'm not sure how these measures will do anything to provide more interesting work. It would probably just be more of the same, but more different companies doing it.
>If I were making a salary in that range I'd think it would be possible to retire after about 5 years if one was frugal.
We have our fair share of 30 something's on here already eyeing their exit. Nice mountain home, fun side projects, and perhaps some consulting here or there.
> Okay, this is plausible, but it can turn into all kinds of mess as federated systems aren't simpler to design, build, or operate. For example, how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact with say, Facebook Messenger? They'd have to do a matrix.org style bridges, which is going to be super tricky to maintain, at their scale. Hardware is doomed: USB-C for all inter-connects...
I think the fact that federated systems are harder to design and maintain is exactly the reason we need legislation enforcing this. It is extremely important for the benefit of humanity that communication between us is not beholden to one private company. This is basically where we are with Facebook at the moment, for the majority of the Earth's population (except China). For example, if you get banned from Facebook and whatsapp, in large parts of the world you will unable to communicate online with friends and businesses.
>For example, how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact with say, Facebook Messenger?
Would it be the worst thing if these went away and were replaced with open protocols that do the same thing? I say go back to systems that work together and tear down the walled gardens.
> how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact with say, Facebook Messenger?
Couldn't you use Public Key Cryptography? Kind of like what we've done for encryption between the Web Browser and Service Provider using PKI+TLS (HTTPS).
Such-as...say each chat network having a certificate authority which crypto-signs each end-user's Public Key. With PKI used to encrypt messages between users. A 4096 PKI key can transmit 4KiB of data, which should be enough for most chat networks. For attachments or very large messages, can just copy how TLS uses PKI to transmit an AES key for decrypting a larger payload.
The user's Private Key(s) can remain on phone/browser. To keep traffic e2e encrypted.
Does the ACCESS act require sane pricing/lack of technical hurdles?
For example, AirPlay requires HW chips that aren’t actually needed and could be done in SW. This gives Apple a non trivial economic advantage in the BOM of their products.
Banking and Telecoms pay their lobbying tax and their old-media advertising tax. Its a pretty simple protection racket they grew up with. FAANG thought they'd be allowed to operate without it. They're not. As soon as they pump some money into both parties and buy some ads they'll be fine.
I don't understand this movement at all. It seems very, very short sighted and also misdirected. The most toxic marketplace and social elements of some of these companies is their business model, not their scale/size.
Breaking them up into pieces doesn't fix their deleterious business models and only opens the door for non-US entities who remain scaled/vertically-integrated to become the dominant forces in the market. Either that or this will necessitate passing future protectionist legislation to keep out foreign competition, which I'm both skeptical is actually a good idea in general or that the US has the actual resolve to do so.
What problem is supposed to be solved by breaking these companies up? It doesn't make any sense to me, and I say this as someone who is generally deeply disturbed by much of what is enabled by some of these firms, so this isn't an endorsement of these companies. It's an indictment of the approach.
How will breaking up the biggest U.S. tech firms not make them more vulnerable to Chinese influence -- where, notably, the biggest firms like ZTE and Huawei have already since at least 2012 (i.e. based on E.U. agencies reports at the time) been receiving tens of billions (in USD) of funding, specifically for the purpose of outcompeting foreign (i.e. primarily western) contenders? Notably, at the time (I believe around 2012) it was found that Huawei and ZTE were backed by $30 billion and $15 billion in government financing (via central bank), respectively.
Clearly needed and a positive, but I see zero impact on stock prices of those companies. Does that mean the expert consensus is that this will simply not pass the next levels, or that it is all ineffective?
Stoller makes the excellent point that Congress will also need to rein in the judiciary and notably the Chicago School "interpretation" (neutering, really) of antitrust law perpetrated by Judge Robert Bork (he of Nixon's infamous Saturday Night Massacre) in a stunning act of judicial activism and caprice:
Wish these bills would kill clauses like "most favored nation" as far as pricing goes, anti-steering laws and forcing side loading. Making the pricing premium for using a platform naked would give a direct financial & choice to consumers to go towards the most price efficient venue.
It means that "Apple Music" cannot rely on an "online platform" (large online service) owned by Apple.
A more practical example is that Google can't run its ad-tech services in GCP. And Amazon cannot run its online store in AWS. They could, however, use each other's cloud. But not their own.
That's interesting. I would say we wouldn't have AWS if Amazon couldn't have built it by scratching it's own itch. But also, couldn't Amazon just spin up an "internal" AWS style system, instead of using a competitors cloud service?
One of the things that I would love to see would be the ban of all those acquisitions that those large firms do. Yet alone the 9bn USD MGM takeover by Amazon was not understandable.
Amazon is already too huge. Why are those aqcuisitions allowed?
I hear what you are saying and agree but wonder if this would have the effect of stifling the creation of new companies as so many people start a company with the hope of being acquired.
Oh no, what will we do without the companies running on funding, without a viable business model, trying to get more monthly active users by any means. /s
I don't think this approach has been healthy for quite a while. It may be an actual good thing that companies think more about long-term independent survival.
The anti trust break up of AT&T led to disruptive innovation, like mass produced cell phones. I personally can't wait for the AI revolution that will occur when Google is broken up. The Big Tech incumbents need to die out, because innovation stagnates in these monopolies.
That "break up", especially when considered together with the Act of '96, was a long con. Outside investors poured billions into "competitive" telcos, yet today the replacement for Ma Bell is two Daughters Bell plus a few scattered also-rans. In the meantime they got rid of common carriage, lots of PUC rules, limits on broadcast monopolies, etc. The monopoly profits they stole on the wireline side funded their anti-competitive merger spree on the wireless side. We don't have to wait for the inevitable merger between ATT and VZN to call this a giant failure.
Google and Facebook are amongst the most important sponsors of scientific research in the world. Why would you want to destroy that. The internet is a winner take all industry , all things considered the current winners are pretty good. Why ruin that for narrow political goals
Yeah for the political reasons outlined by the original posters. I happen to think those are bad reasons , me being in the minority does not necessarily make me wrong
If there's one thing to be said for the incompetence of our government, it's that at least they will be unable to actually follow through with this plan. Truly ludicrous.
Perhaps they saw how the big national monopolies, like Siemens and BASF and Samsung, and Sanyo and . became stultifying nepotistic monopolies in various fields, and when faster and quicker more innovative US companies came along that ran past them - and seeing this, decided to have a way to limit these monopolies. Look up Standard oil monopoly for some aspects, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
That is the wiki and here....
https://www.investopedia.com/insights/history-of-us-monopoli...
The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.