Hacker News Reader

Comment by pyrale | Hacker News Reader

People seem to think that Microsoft is a company that at some point sucked at innovation. In fact, the reason Microsoft let a generation of startups blossom was mostly because they got hit by antitrust.

Google, FB and Amazon are probably ripe for antitrust, too, but the government won't move.

View on HN

Because the rest of them watched and learned from Microsoft's mistake. When the antitrust campaign started, Microsoft was giving a paltry $10K to political campaigns. By the time it ended, they were giving $1M a year to BOTH sides, and wound up with a hand-slap. The rest have cozied up to the federal government since the start, and have no fear of antitrust efforts. What they really need now is to be categorized as public services so that they can enjoy some of that sweet, sweet regulatory capture that Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast benefit from.

Its a shame that they couldn't use some of that lobbying power at least to fight the telcoms. At least we'd get higher quality internet with more choices out of it.

It's hard to go after the FAANG companies for anti-trust when they all compete with each other in so many ways -- facebook and google have multiple competing services, apple, google and amazon all build consumer hardware, and facebook is dipping it's toes in, they all have music services.. Netflix has tons of competitors outside of the big five, but amazon and google both have streaming movie services. Amazon and Google both have cloud services.

Really the only two that have a genuine monopoly are Google in search and Facebook in social networks, and I think perhaps Amazon in online retail.

The big thing is that the US government needs to recognize how vertical integration harms consumers. While Apple and Google and Amazon may all compete with each other in multiple venues, very little of that is cross-compatible. People with one product or service from a company often has little option but to use the rest of that company's products and services. The ecosystem effect means that even if there is a handful of "competitors", those services on an individual level often aren't available to consumers. If you have your stuff purchased in iTunes, you have massive monetary cost preventing you from switching to Android, for example.

One of the stories I hadn't heard of until recently when discussing the AIM closure, is that the FTC ordered AOL once to make AIM cross-compatible with their two largest competitors or face antitrust action. Had someone like Google been subjected to the same, we'd have had Gmail, YouTube, etc. on Windows Phone, and it wouldn't have died from the lack of Google apps support.

I'd be more than in favor of ordering vertically integrated companies to support at least two competitors' platforms in every way they support their own.

That's quite the can of worms, but what an interesting topic.

I see your point and agree that vertical integration is harmful. I would like to offer the automotive industry as an interesting comparison of an industry with similar compatability issues.

All of the major components produced by the big manufacturers tend to be incompatible (without heavy engineering effort). When parts on a car are compatible between many makes and models it tends to be a third party parts manufacturer that has made it but a concerted effort from the big manufacturer that allowed that to happen. Think brake pads, tires, air filters, spark plugs. In most cases engines, their computers, interiors, transmissions and so on, are all make specific and also usually model specific.

No one is compelling BMW to make sure their engine fits into a Jeep. When I buy a BMW I am locked into their infrastructure and without their parts and support I could find myself without a working vehicle.

While you can often mix and match manufacturers parts so long as you can wield a few tools and have time and knowhow, it's pretty rare that someone wants to. Similar to emulators or jailbroken phones, IFTTT, APIs and integrations, it's easy to see there is a desire for this kind of flexibility but again it's often only a particular type of individual with a particular desire that makes it happen.

I feel that this desire for interoperability is niche. My mother on her Windows phone has been perfectly happy. I have never met anyone who wasn't in tech that has complained about interop. So while I agree it would probably be a good step to introduce more flexibility there, I don't think it's critical to protecting consumers against monopolistic behavior. If you buy an iPhone you are locked into Apple for that device, but you can still buy an Android. Just like I am locked into BMW while I own their car, but could still move to an Audi.

It's not just parts though. The car analogy is more like, I can't drive my car to your house because your house was built by BMW and my car is an Audi. It's like we all live in corporate-controlled subdivisions with proprietary, incompatible rail lines instead of roads.

And we've already seen them collaborate to suppress wages through cartel-behavior. Anti-trust regulators seem to have a limited view on what necessitates punitive measures or even trust-busting.

This is due to a current style of thinking known as the "Chicago School approach": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law_theory#Chicago...

> genuine monopoly .. Facebook in social networks

I think Snap and Twitter would disagree with that point of view...

Only slightly more effectively than Bing would disagree in search.

Well sure, if you mean that by antitrust Microsoft wasn't able to force their tech on everyone. Microsoft wanted everyone running windows, programming in .net, using IE and activex. And they would do anything to get that to happen, including breaking the law and acting incredibly immoral.

A lot of us are still very happy to see Microsoft fail, because they world they wanted us to live in was horrible.

The EU is already moving on multiple cases against Google. The US would have too if Google wasn't so politically connected with the Obama administration, but the anti-trust movement is slowly building itself up again now.

That's a very interesting claim. What's your evidence?

It takes a very small amount of research to note how often Google visited the White House, how much money Google invested in political campaigns over the last number of years, and how FTC staff found more than adequate reason for an antitrust investigation of Google until the White House ordered it dropped. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google's board, was considered part of Hillary Clinton's campaign staff and personally funded the company that provided a lot of the Clinton campaign's web dev.

(Hopefully this is enough specifics for you to find any sources that may be of interest to you.)

I think this is a pretty bold claim and would appreciate the sources you found probative.

If the statements you offer constitute sufficient evidence for you, I would say that numerous companies and industries have more contact with our lawmakers than what you have described.

There's a relevant Guardian article today [0]:

'Google executives set foot in the Obama White House more often than those of any other corporation – its head lobbyist visited 128 times. Google spread its money across Washington with joyous ecumenicism. Google spent about $17m on influence peddlers of both partisan varietals. By one count, Google poured more into its DC apparatus than any other public company.'

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/19/surveilla...

Thanks, this definitely bas been a well-played gambit on their part - I had no idea how extensive their lobbying had grown.

As I stated, I was providing you with more detailed statements for you to do your own research. My comment was intended as a starting point, not a bible on the topic.

Microsoft had no concept of the Internet (and still don't -- all their Internet products are google/amazon knockoffs, except for Skype which was much better before acquisition).

Watch out for GDPR coming soon in your local area (EU)!

As Mark Twain once famously predicted - It is better to let people think you suck at innovation than to patent troll Android and remove all doubt.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com