House: Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google have “monopoly power,” should be split

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/house-amazon-facebook-apple-google-have-monopoly-power-should-be-split/

by Deinos • 6 years ago

71 9 6 years ago

Origin Greek. monos, single.

mdorazio• 6 years ago

This is actually quite a good summary of the reasons the committee found for believing the antitrust grounds are legitimate. I recommend reading it in its entirety, especially if you think none of the named companies is a "true" monopoly and therefore antitrust shouldn't apply (antitrust is more complicated than that).

K33P4D• 6 years ago

Laughs in Microsoft by not reading the article but in all honesty, monopolies are just a side effect of unfettered success supported by capitalism, I mean infinite growth can only be nurtured by a few and if those few start early by carving a niche for themselves and make it big, you have a success story and a problem.

How long will they keep this strategy of splitting up companies each time they reach critical mass and when you fission that with govt policies, you have more smaller companies which will eventually reach that size again through shady joint practices under the radar, this will get scary if all the monopolies of all countries in the world find a way to collaborate and form this super evil alliance and throw us all into orbit with a simulation device hooked to our brains while they enjoy this planet. Imagine earth moving from pay2win to pay2die in the next 5 years once global warming becomes too hard to ignore. 'EA'

Splitting companies will ensue an uncontrollable chain reaction no single government is ready for, sadly the bureaucracy kept in place to have adequate restrictions on the fast moving giants, is also a problem which communism can solve, but leaves a dangerous precedent on the social classes with power to the political elite and leaves room for uncertainty. Let's say congress finally gets their shit together and they have this iron clad policy, yay? These monopolies would've run extensive simulations foreseeing these things and begun to course correct by the time govt enforces those policies.

Now the important thing here is the constant nudge by the govt with morally/ethically aware elected representatives who showcase a level of empathy beyond acting, false promises but rather a part of their moral fiber (they usually get assassinated and replaced) who choose to look beyond '$'signs and more at humanity and the environment as an entity to be nurtured, not to be exploited and taken advantage. This is again subjective to one's place in the social hierarchy pyramid, but let's have this discussion from the bottom rungs of the ladder for dramatic effect.

Governments should never give up, not bend to serve these monopolies through lobbying, they should keep fighting always until the end of time, this is like yin-yang, one cannot exist without the other, so there will never be a future where monopolies do not exist and we have a completely decentralized system in place. NOPE they both co-exist and no one thing can become powerful without the other opposing force. For every ton of CO2 offset, someone-somewhere is planning extensive afforestation unbeknownst to the majority of us and keep this Type 1 Civilization afloat (open for discussion and knowledge)

andyv• 6 years ago

It seems to me that splitting google up is wishful thinking. If they split google into a dozen small search companies, one of them will eventually become larger than the others through luck or smarts. The bigger reach becomes self-sustaining and kills off the smaller siblings.

Network effects are real. I'm no fan of google, either...

noodlesUK• 6 years ago

Does anyone here remember what the breakup of Bell looked like? I wasn’t alive then to remember. I think that would be an apt comparison.

fsnowdin• 6 years ago

Wouldn't this be first monopoly breakup in the software industry if the decision does come through? If so then a historic moment just happened here.

curryst• 6 years ago

If it does, it's going to be incredibly interesting to see how the breakup is effected.

Since so much of this is going to be IP, how do they handle IP that used to be shared? I.e. all the internal tooling to deploy and manage applications. If YouTube gets split off from Cloud, YouTube obviously can't sell cloud hosting, but can it run the Cloud software on their own hardware so they don't have to pay Cloud prices? Or will they be forced to reinvent those systems, and how different from the old ones do they have to be?

It's also going to be weird because the newly created companies are now potential customers of each other, and yet they also have far more detailed information on each other than is normal. I.e. Cloud probably has a pretty good idea of how much they charge to get maximum profits from YouTube without it being unprofitable for YouTube. And vice versa, YouTube probably has a pretty good idea exactly what it costs Cloud to provide certain services. Makes for an interesting negotiating table.

nojvek• 6 years ago

Please read the article. If you have time, skim through the 450 page report.

The problem isn’t the companies are big, the problem is they have openly abused their market share dominance to stifle competition.

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What was Congress looking for?

As we've explained before, antitrust law isn't just about monopolies. Being the largest player in a sector—even if you're so big you dwarf any potential competition—isn't inherently unlawful. Sometimes that can just be the way a market shakes out.

Antitrust law is instead concerned with what you did to become dominant and what you do with the outsized power that comes from being the biggest. If you have a 90 percent market share but it all came from natural growth and you deal fairly with other companies and with consumers, antitrust regulators are probably going to leave you alone. But if nascent startups can demonstrate you used your bulk to knock them out before they could become real competition, or if competitors can show you unfairly leveraged different parts of your business to squeeze them out? Those are problems.

olliej• 6 years ago

The arguments they have against Apple apply to all game consoles, so I assume those will be opened up to arbitrary software with no payments to the console manufacturers.

House: Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google have “monopoly power,” should be split

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