Big Tech Has Become Too Powerful

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/is-big-tech-too-powerful-ask-google.html

by jrowley • 11 years ago

91 87 11 years ago

AlexMuir• 11 years ago

OT: This page loads the full article, flickers for a moment, and then hides everything but the first three paragraphs. Instead I see a button to 'Show the full article'.

What is the reason for this? I've seen this pattern in a few places and assumed it was to speed up mobile page loads. But seeing as it loads the full page before hiding it I'm now not sure.

superuser22• 11 years ago

NYT will let you hit any number of pages; your paywall quota is only consumed by those where you are interested enough to click "Show Full Article."

anindyabd• 11 years ago

I do not think this is the case. I tested this out by clicking on several articles without hitting "Show Full Article" on any of them. On the first article, I was told I was reading 2 of 10 free articles. After 8 clicks I hit my quota.

nordsieck• 11 years ago

Companies want paywalled content to be indexed by Google.

WalterSear• 11 years ago

It is to speed up page loads.

Most likely, the page is being rendered to HTML on the server and then client side javascript picks up where the server left off, once it has loaded and launched. So, you get the full page load, and >then< the javascript checks to see if it should display it.

The alternative is to have the page hide the content initially and have the javascript re-enable it, but this would involve a flash of 'closed page' for actual subscriber and people who came via google.

Sir_Substance• 11 years ago

It doesn't do that on mine, benefits of blocking all their scripts I guess.

Try throwing in privacy badger, ghostery and no script, then see if it still does it.

morgante• 11 years ago

It's to expose you to the links underneath the article.

After reading the headline and first paragraph, many people would bounce (especially on mobile). By giving them alternative exit strategies, the button marginally increases traffic.

(Yes, this has been rigorously tested.)

CPLX• 11 years ago

I always assumed that was done as a metric, so they could see what percentage of people who saw the page actually read it. But admittedly that is just conjecture.

YorkianTones• 11 years ago

Consolidation of resources and broadness of ecosystem produces synergistic effects that advance tech. Google benefits in its pursuit of self-driving cars and drone delivery from existing investments in maps, AI, machine learning, and data centers. Plus, the ad revenue stream funds R&D.

striking2• 11 years ago

I take issue with the characterizations of industries as "Big X". Big Pharma, Big Tech... It's clearly an attempt at demonizing larger players in the tech industry.

My opinion is that antitrust laws and such are not applicable here because even though the companies in question have an effective monopoly on traffic, it does not make it impossible for other players to create a profitable business.

Google is not a domineering empire like Standard Oil or Ma Bell once were. They do not have total control over everything. Even if they have a certain product (for example, Google Drawings), it doesn't stop other smaller players from making quality products that people buy (Sketch, Illustrator, Inkscape, etc.)

I don't really think this is a problem. (And where it is, existing antitrust laws are performing as they should.)

aurelianito2• 11 years ago

I do have a problem with Apple forcing the iPhone app developers to use MacBooks, given that about 90% of the purchases from cellphone app stores are made using iPhones (as far as I remember). This is the kind of anti competitive behavior that an anti trust law is supposed to punish. I don't know the legal technicality they are using to avoid it.

Big Tech also formed a cartel to lower engineers salaries. This is also something that should be punished by law (and AFAIK, they did win a class action suit).

I do think this is a problem and needs to be addressed.

superuser22• 11 years ago

Antitrust law can't force you to develop your products for platforms you don't want to target. You will never see an antitrust decision that Apple must develop a Windows version of XCode, and in fact doing so would probably require a total re-architecture of the iOS platform.

You might see antitrust law force Apple to allow sideloading, including apps built by toolchains third parties have hacked together.

You're also not required to use a Macbook; the Mini is $500.

striking2• 11 years ago

The second point was addressed, though, by your own admission. It was punished (and if it happens again, I can only imagine the hammer will strike even harder).

If you don't like the MacBook, you can buy a Mac mini and use it as a build server from other (non-Macintosh!) computers. There are tools for other platforms, and Apple isn't obligated to maintain their platform for "non-standard" use. It's not antitrust, and it's not a technicality. They're not obligated to open their platform, because they're not restricting something that was previously open.

I don't like it either. That doesn't mean it's illegal.

sehugg• 11 years ago

I take issue with the characterizations of industries as "Big X"

They are Big. It's a word that describes how they can shape policy and public opinion in a way that smaller businesses can not, and that competitors' interests are aligned enough that they routinely collude via lobbying organizations or other means (Big Tech is catching up in this area).

brianlweiner• 11 years ago

It's interesting he points to acquisition of patent portfolios of the big 3 (Apple, Amazon, Google) but no real mention of their defensive necessity given the current patent climate (vs using them offensively to sue competitors)

jMyles3• 11 years ago

Seriously. This is possibly the most important comment in the thread. End software patents, restrict the use of other patents, and then watch the rate of portfolio expansion plummet.

raldi3• 11 years ago

In what way does everyone "have to use Google's search engine"? There are no barriers to switching; you could switch to Bing forever in about five seconds.

Unlike switching from Facebook, you don't need to get all your friends to come along. Unlike switching from GMail, you don't need to move a bunch of data. Unlike switching your company away from Windows, you don't need to buy all new software, retrain all staff, or get your partners to change the format they use to interchange data with you.

If someone were to build a better search engine, we would all just switch. Like when everyone left Altavista in 1999.

samsolomon• 11 years ago

I think there's something to say about having a monopoly, because the product is better than the alternatives. That's better for consumers than having a monopoly, because there are no alternatives.

sabrinaleblanc2• 11 years ago

Totally agree with you on this one, as long as the company doesn't stop better products from entering the market.

giancarlostoro3• 11 years ago

I've tried switching from Google to reasonable alternatives, and I usually have to go back to Google to search twice because the results are not what I was expecting, nowhere near. I'm not sure if this is only my own experience, no offence to other engines (and their engineers), but if you can't find what I'm looking for I'm going somewhere else to find it.

_delirium2• 11 years ago

Getting a bit tangential: I've been trying Bing again recently out of curiosity, and at least for my usage I find it now pretty reasonable. A few years ago it was barely usable, but now I'm fairly happy with it. It also feels slightly snappier to me than Google on loading results. The main problem is that a small but significant number of sites have a robots.txt that excludes all non-Google crawlers, making it impossible for other search engines to display equally good results in cases where that site has something relevant (unless they blatantly ignore robots.txt).

digi_owl2• 11 years ago

Been using duckduckgo for a year or two now. If the results are not satisfactory i can always drop a !g into he query to have them send me to the Google results.

That said, DDG is damn good at giving me relevant stuff on clear queries. But i find that Google and DDG alike gets into a bind if i get a bit technical.

agumonkey• 11 years ago

It's hard to say whether we're bubbled or if Google is really better. I tried duckduckgo for a while. There's a lot to love in ddg, but every time I needed something not obvious, I needed to check Google results too, just to be sure. And quite often, ddg results were, even if I'm not entirely fond of Google trying to understand meaning in my request, a bit too mechanical for my tastes.

sigma2015• 11 years ago

No need to leave Google for that purpose - just use Google from incognito mode in Firefox.

ratsmack• 11 years ago

I use Waterfox, which is the 64bit version of Firefox. I always use the builtin search located in the upper-right corner of the browser which allows me to choose which search engine to use on the fly. I use all of the most popular search engines depending on what I'm looking for. I find when I'm looking for services and products, Google seems to work best. The default I use is the Storm search engine which seems to return results that avoid commercially driven items. I would have to recommend that everyone not fall in love with a single source for web searching.

A_COMPUTER2• 11 years ago

From the article, Reich is saying that Google used its dominant market position to unfairly promote its own products. Antitrust isn't only about lack of alternatives.

raldi3• 11 years ago

But that has nothing to do with the part of the article that my comment is about.

jMyles3• 11 years ago

unfairly

I am as skeptical as anyone about giant corporations, but this is a stretch. How and why does our society expect players to refrain from using their current position to advance to a better position?

obastani• 11 years ago

One potential issue is data -- Google can leverage its huge number of historical searches to improve search for everyone. I doubt this is a huge issue for players such as Microsoft, but it probably poses difficulties for a small start-up.

Drdrdrq• 11 years ago

Google the search engine doesn't have a monopoly, but Google the search advertising does (adwords).

xg15• 11 years ago

If someone were to build a better search engine, yes. However, how do you do that if Google has its own data centers across the world, has special arrangements with ISPs so they can run edge servers directly in their networks and can cross-correlate their search results with data from all their other services - which include the aforementioned GMail, many millions of Chrome and Android installations and ad/analytics code embedded in a sizable percentage of all websites? Not to mention all the websites which will optimize their coffee for Google, not for your engine.

Note that I'm not talking about some clever algorithms or UI or any other kind of actual innovation. All that stuff is solely "capital" they could accumulate due to their existing power and reputation, but which gives them a huge advantage. A startup, no matter how genius their algorithms are, couldn't beat them in that field, simply because they don't have those resources.

Of course you could say "so what, that's the free market" - and of course building capital is a normal post of business - but when this inequality is so severe that it makes competition practically impossible (or only possible between 3 or 4 well-established players, as we see now) then I'd argue that something sounds be done.

bediger4000• 11 years ago

If someone were to build a better search engine, yes.

But isn't that what the essence of competition is, in the search engine market?

bobthechef• 11 years ago

True, but that misses the bigger picture of what these tech giants are doing. It also fails to account for how difficult it is to switch to something else once something has become entrenched. You could switch, but the answer is that you likely won't and the reason you won't isn't necessarily because the product is "better". One of the article's central ideas is that entrenchment can breed more entrenchment that hurts the common good. You might get a better overall search engine, but that search engine is bound up with power that goes beyond search.

malthaus2• 11 years ago

Unfortunately they are big enough to fuel a lot of the irrational valuation exuberance in the startup world as exiting to e.g. Facebook is a valid exit strategy instead of building a standalone (and profitable) business.

Besides, the giants diversifying into experimental R&D moonshot projects is a bad sign too. Shareholders should not support that and probably wont in the mid- to long-term.

ido2• 11 years ago

    Besides, the giants diversifying into experimental 
    R&D moonshot projects is a bad sign too.

Isn't that how society gets technological advances?

varelse5• 11 years ago

So right now the moonshots are privatized and the liberals are unhappy about it. When the pendulum shifts, the moonshots will be publicly funded again and the conservatives will be unhappy. Takeaway: happiness is unattainable.

malthaus2• 11 years ago

In general, yes. But are Google & Facebook the right vehicle for that? I prefer the SpaceX approach and so should any rational investor.

varelse5• 11 years ago

I think this problem takes care of itself, but it takes time, more time perhaps than people are willing to allow.

1. As organizations metastasize, the negative tail of the competence distribution becomes more and more populated. In response, the organization clamps down with restrictive rules that retard its innovation in exchange for protecting itself from the invisible stupid within. See Microsoft, see IBM, and see increasingly Google and Facebook as they turn to acqui-hires over internal expertise.

2. It's nice to rant yet again about 20-year patent cycles, but when are we going to fix the copyright system? Or will we eternally be Mickey Mouse's beeyotch? At this point, I'd be happy with a Mickey Mouse Forever Amendment(tm) to the constitution if it would free up all the other copyrights.

3. Working around patents is what clever people do best. Make more or import more clever people and you'll eventually get the companies that knock Google and Facebook onto their increasingly lethargic keesters. And free bonus, if you make more technically literate young adults, they'll have a lot less to fear from looming technological unemployment.

spydum• 11 years ago

i recently was having a discussion about #1 with some folks. I'm not sure its about the competence fall off, i think it's the desire to draw on productivity gains by orienting themselves in a process-centric fashion, versus the original product-centric design. Process centric makes sense for specialization and squeezing productivity gains out (standardized tooling/platforms, bureacracy, layers of middle management to bring it all together). Product-centric makes sense for innovation, but its inefficient in the long-term (small teams, wide range of responsibility).

varelse5• 11 years ago

So unless you want your core talent to flee for startups and begin the cycle anew, one has to find a middle ground, no? The moonshots seem like a reasonable attempt to do so to me.

But perhaps that because I'm 100% progress-driven. Process drives me nuts. It's great to have someone who can drive your progress through the channels of process, but I find that talent exceedingly rare. That said, my best work has happened the few times I've found that magic combo.

trouser_chili• 11 years ago

What a joke. Big Tech too powerful? How about the military industrial complex? Pharmaceutical companies? THE BANKS? THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ITSELF?

No, those are all OK because they fit the agenda of total control. Technology is the only industry putting up a fight, the only industry that is solving problems for people instead of creating them.

Can't have that.

jMyles3• 11 years ago

Don't forget big ag, "major" media, and the private prisons / police unions. They're big players too, and the entirety of their influence isn't evident by their market caps.

only industry putting up a fight

Firearms? Gun companies are starting to refuse to sell to police in states where ownership by other citizens is prohibited. And, predictably, we're suddenly in the middle of a "gun control" debate, despite firearms deaths and especially murders on a steady decline over decades.

danenania• 11 years ago

This. Our society happily tolerates so many entrenched monopolies and cartels that are actively hostile to their customers and blatantly manipulate government to keep competitors out. The tech industry is the least of our worries.

bsbechtel• 11 years ago

While true, the main concern I have with tech companies becoming too powerful is their access and control of personal data. This becomes even more concerning when they're so big they have significant data on individuals who actively avoid their services.

jazzyk• 11 years ago

I agree.

But I think you are missing the fact that all the big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. went to the dark side a while ago. They have become big corps looking to squeeze proftis/blood out of a stone. So the article is really about the old guard having to contend with the newcomers.

forgottenpass• 11 years ago

You don't think that those others are solving problems for people? If they weren't, they'd be easy to unseat, or more likely would collapse under their own weight. Are there all sorts of undesirable consequences of their success? Of course! But tech isn't exempt from that. And even if, for the sake of argument, the undesirable side effects of tech's businesses was magically orders of magnitude less than any other segment, it's not unreasonable to talk about it in addition to the others.

The thing about "Big Tech" is that you think the word "Tech" has anything to do with technology. It doesn't. It's just how the companies in question managed to get into a position of power. At the level of business this article deals in, it's just an identifier for a market segment.

Tech business is no longer the scrappy young underdog doing good and fighting the good fight. Sometimes their interests align with the people's and we benefit when they fight to protect their interests. But they also fight to protect their interests when they're at odds with the end user's best interests.

throwaway2048• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutery

or in this case "howaboutery"

Claims of hypocracy or some kind of inconsistent total position say absoutely nothing meaningful or interesting about the claims somebody makes, and are frankly, a really stupid reason to dismiss them.

Especially when the claimed inconsistency is so massively general that they can apply to anybody that somehow dosent like something about "the system".

Don't like the amount of corporate money in politics? Well you surely buy things from corporations! How can you justify such an obviously inconsistent position!

andyl• 11 years ago

I believe that Big Media is too powerful - unfairly promotes the interests of the establishment at the expense of the middle class.

sabrinaleblanc2• 11 years ago

The monopoly concern is legitimate, especially if the accusations against Apple, Google and Amazon have validaty in them. I think the real issue at hand is the bullying that is taking place for new entrants. Google arm restling a new entrant is like a child trying to wrestle with a boxer. There should be better policies in place to prevent frivilous litigations from tech giants.

cryptoz• 11 years ago

OT, but important I think. It's interesting that the article title is

Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful

but on HN it was changed into a question:

Is Big Tech Too Powerful?

unfasten• 11 years ago

Take a look at the URL slug:

    nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/is-big-tech-too-powerful-ask-google.html

It looks like they changed the headline on the website. The slug usually reflects the original headline and they don't want to change it later to keep links working. (I'm assuming this is the case here since I didn't personally see the original headline).

News sites are much too fond playing with their headlines to drum up hits, and with New York Times in particular I can't help but think of this quote from one of their editors:

    I often hear from readers that they would prefer a straight, neutral
    treatment — just the facts. But The Times has moved away from that,
    reflecting editors’ reasonable belief that the basics can be found in
    many news outlets, every minute of the day. They want to provide
    “value-added” coverage.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/sunday-review/did-reddit-b...

plonh2• 11 years ago

That's awesome, the editors spitting in the face of their readers and the graves of their ancestors. It puts a clear point on what's wrong the Times, though: rich kid rambligs in a classic font.

whatgoodisaroad• 11 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that the OSS Movement in general is a response to the problems that this article is enumerating. And yet, there's no mention of open source in the NY Times article.

Perhaps a better-researched version of this article would merely lament that OSS hasn't been more successful than it has.

RyanZAG• 11 years ago

Big Tech is a total monster. But it's not the current Google, Apple, Amazon who are the monsters of Big Tech. It's the company being born today that will be the Big Tech of the future that will be the true monster. I'm not looking forward to it...

EDIT: Or maybe I am. Is it better to live in a cage if the cage is nice enough? Who knows. Humanity possibly just hasn't developed a good enough cage yet.

bernardlunn• 11 years ago

The regulators come just when natural forces are eroding a monopoly - Microsoft, then Google, next Apple.

thadd• 11 years ago

I forget the context, but I saw someone (a writer for the National Review, I think) say this to someone:

You must be one of those people that think that airplanes fly not because physicists and engineers found a way to propel steel through the air, but because the FAA allows them to.

This reminds me of that.

plonh2• 11 years ago

It is fair to say that planes don't come crashing down much, because the FAA prohibits it. Private enterprise had a very low bar for safety, when left to its own devices.

jasondrowley• 11 years ago

Totally unrelated, but it's nice to find another J. Rowley out there!

Xorlev• 11 years ago

Apple rolls out ad blocking because modern ads are hugely invasive and slow down the experience.

Those most impacted by this proclaim that big tech is too powerful. Throw in Google to skirt the thrust of the issue.

Color me unimpressed by the Times' "value-added" coverage.

gozo• 11 years ago

If there's anything I take away from this discussion, it is that I miss the days when technology was about technology and people where skeptical about big corporations rather than having some weird personal relationship with them. Things have overall gotten better and better for people that want to create rather than consume, but I'm not sure it's going to last. It's weird to me that people put forward disruption as something prevalent in the industry, but they assume everything will somehow magically only get better.

Zigurd• 11 years ago

"Big Tech" should told Big Media to piss off when content protection was first introduced. Then we'd have smaller attack surfaces and better business models.

11thEarlOfMar• 11 years ago

This is backwards. More of humanity is empowered to go into business and compete today than ever in history.

There are forces that level the playing field: Open source; Utility-Grade Internet services (where Google and Amazon compete head-to-head); cheap, ubiquitous connected computers; billions of Internet-connected customers...

It has never been easier for a couple of people to build and launch an app or online business and sell to the entire planet. If you consider anyone who has done this a 'business' I am skeptical that there are in fact fewer businesses being created.

tsotha• 11 years ago

Contrary to the conventional view of an American economy bubbling with innovative small companies, the reality is quite different. The rate at which new businesses have formed in the United States has slowed markedly since the late 1970s. Big Tech’s sweeping patents, standard platforms, fleets of lawyers to litigate against potential rivals and armies of lobbyists have created formidable barriers to new entrants.

Eh... nice try on that stolen base. The internet, which is what drives "big tech", wasn't really an economic force until the mid '90s. If business formation has slowed since the '70s it's more likely to be a result of rise of the regulatory state. You can't do anything without a permit any more, something that wasn't true in 1970.

Big Tech Has Become Too Powerful

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