It really isn't. Competition globally is better for consumers. Imagine if you had to drive only US cars to keep automotive knowledge local.
I can't imagine anyone thinks such a situation is in the best interest of the user.
1) It's a voluntary transaction and is not compulsory
2) They precisely buy because it would be harder to build it from scratch. Which refutes your claim that Google or FB can't be competed against.
edit: formatting
For example, give us at least one example of a service that would directly cause Facebook to think twice before making it's app constantly harass me to update my page, minimising the videos I am trying to close, and automatically sending me push notifications for someone starting a live video?
Everybody is not there, even on Facebook, there is no such social network yet.
> and which makes Facebook fear the loss of it's users.
Whatsapp, Instagram and Snapchat. Facebook has paid premium prices for the former two and gave a pretty high offer for snapchat. They wouldn't do that if they're concerned ( of course, neither you nor I can confirm their emotional state, but we can derive useful conclusions from their actions)
> For example, give us at least one example of a service that would directly cause Facebook to think twice before making it's app constantly harass me to update my page, minimising the videos I am trying to close, and automatically sending me push notifications for someone starting a live video?
Have you stopped using facebook? Then why should they care? They will care IMO, but the point is by continuing to use facebook, you've shown that you weigh the benefits of facebook to be more than the costs/annoyances. So, you're happy enough as far as they're concerned, they might try and make you happier but that's left to them :)
Edit: Whoops! I hit submit before completing my last sentence
More importantly, the functionality of Facebook can be replicated by anyone with more-then a few years of experience in software.
So you're saying that Facebook does have proper competition? No, they don't. They were lucky enough to be at the exact place at the exact time to build the sturdy population of users. And now most of the users are paying for their luck.
In any voluntary transaction, both parties gain out of it. People who are not parties to that transaction have no business in it.
> 1) Yes, it's voluntary, but the interests of the consumers aren't necessarily taken into account. Only the shareholders of the companies being bought stand to gain from the transactions
Yes of course, because they are trading their private property. When you buy vegetables from the supermarket, can someone complain that you're not taking into consideration other people's interests, namely there's less food for everyone else. And also that only you and the supermarket stand to gain out of the transaction. This is an reductio ad absurdum of your statement
> 2) Google/Fb gives these companies an offer at a moment when it still makes sense to buy them (i.e. when they can both win from the acquisition). If the company being bought decides to decline, Google or FB or whatever monolith has ways of destroying them: - By buying their competitor instead of them, and heavily investing in them - By just building the feature themselves, and potentially fighting a very expensive legal battle
Okay, I see your logical problem, you want good to be done in one instance, but you IMHO fail to see the consequences if you logically apply that concept to its conclusion.
Again, voluntary transaction. If the startup refuses, it's voluntary. If FB or Google goes and invests elsewhere it's their money, their business. Who are we to tell them what to do with their money. Would you be okay if they told what to do with money you've earned? All things you've mentioned are coercive i.e. they are all based on things people have agreed on in written documents. Concretely, if they (Google/FB) buy a competitor, it's their money, their business. If they build the feature themselves, their money, they don't owe this startup their money, they refused when offered anyway. If they fight a legal battle, it's still legitimate because both parties (Google/FB and startup) have all agreed to work with local laws (US or otherwise).
Why not? Being the first one in and the best at what you do is still competition. Most industries don't get disrupted by a competitor until there is truly some valuable innovation that happened. (ie look at Yahoo and MySpace)
Whenever the government starts to interfere it sounds really good on paper, but it typically is not in the best interest of the user. Existing corporations often use laws to then further eliminate incoming competition.
To use your driving example it would be like saying that to use a car everyone has to drive on the same side of the road or accept identical pollution control standards. That's obviously not the case. Cars are adapted--sometimes quite substantially--to local jurisdictions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_histo...
You could debate how far the US could go with it before there are serious repercussions. However, several of the big auto-making countries go a great distance out of their way to shield their own domestic auto industries from foreign competition at home, including Germany and Japan. The US should behave exactly as they do and for exactly the same reasons.
What has the US gained by allowing foreign auto competitors such equal footing? Japan and Germany are widely regarded as having the two best auto industries overall, it has clearly has worked out just fine for them (insert the replies about correlation/causation). Why is the US held to a very different standard than China, Germany and Japan (3 of the 4 largest economies) when it comes to trade? That should and will end by necessity, whether it's a Trump or a Bernie Sanders that does it. It's a cultural wave that can't be stopped.
The US should use every lever at its disposal to compete, including strategically manipulating the global reserve currency (eg it's crazy that the US isn't running a $2 trillion, ten year, infrastructure QE program; the USD as the global reserve currency is unlikely to last more than a few more decades, we should leverage it while we have it to increase US competitiveness).
> and also acting as the world's biggest innovation VC
Wew.
> Other countries have been asleep at the wheel
Calm down with the CN propaganda.
The fact that the Chinese sanctioned companies become monopolies themselves is even more proof that it's about nationalism than protection from monopolies.
Well if I was Chinese I guess I'd hope my government was making some effort to protect the national interest at least.
Of course they are developing their own monopolies and have some pretty terrifying social control programs in the works. That can be criticised in its own right and hopefully it will be. But to try and make the case that FB is a benevolent saviour of the Chinese citizenry from their evil government is nonsense and whataboutery. If you must believe in the US as some kind of global beacon of free speech and democracy, then at least don't think that just being the lesser of two evils is a really great way to promote this.
The hard problem is that any proprietary social platform has to have a mass of people using it to be particularly useful, and any social platform that big is collecting data that makes it a huge security risk and economic factor at the national level. The only solutions I can think of are to have social networks under national control or to promote interoperability between smaller networks and partition data collection to an acceptable level for national security purposes.
Perhaps this is out of context, but I wonder if Trump is a symptom of this protectionism or if they're unrelated