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Is there a word for the strange behavior many have around defending large corporations? I know there's Stockholm syndrome but this appears to be more nuanced.

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Yes it's called a 'difference of opinion'.

Stockholder syndrome?

Thanks for the chuckle

I like how the Google products I use work together and worry that a broken up Google would worsen my user experience.

Also, if you cut off things like youtube and maps, I'm pretty sure they would collapse in bankruptcy as they are almost certainly not net profitable by themselves.

Do we want company's to dominate an industry because they are pumping in money from their domination in another industry? A unprofitable business is a failure and should be replaced by other firms with better business models

It's almost as if antitrust is pro-competition and pro-capitalism!

> pro-competition and pro-capitalism

Surely those two are incompatible.

Capitalism is the principle that you need capital to pay for things. If you have more capital than a competitor, you can sustain losses for longer, until your competitor runs out of capital to pay for things like food and has to stop competing.

The principle of capitalism leads to competition, but it's necessarily only temporary. Eventually, capitalism inevitably leads to lack of competition.

If they do their job after being broken up, they'll make sure integrations with other services are tight enough this won't be a problem.

They won't.

Fortunately, the market will provide as there is an entire industry of platform integrators from MuleSoft to IFTTT.

A great example of this are console "fanboys". Not only will they defend the multi-billion corporation that makes the console they bought, they will get upset if a game is playable on a "rival" console. Another aspect of this phenomenon is people using the products they purchase as part their personal identity.

I own a Mac, I'm a hip techie

I own a Xbox, I'm a hardcore gamer

I think there's some basis to brand tribalism. If the purchase involves a substantial time or money commitment, you want affirmation that your investment is justified. As well as the usual social signalling that comes with having a product that's supposedly superior to the ones that others use.

Not sure why people would go to bat for amorphous trillion-dollar corporations that readily offer their services for "free", though.

Speaking from my own position as a person who owns a console and does not play games on PC (unless they work on OSX, which is rare). I haven't seen much Xbox/Playstation fanboyism... I don't doubt it exists in some sect, but it can't be as pronounced as say: google advocacy.

There is a more general backlash against the "console peasant" statement though, because, speaking personally; I don't like being insulted just because I refuse to waste an x86 on Windows.

It's not defending large corporations, it's the reluctance to see the largest and most powerful "corporation", the state, to wake up and interfere.

As shoddy as many of their products are, the corporation that is the state provides far more goods, services, and dividends than any one other company does.

Often at far less efficiency but yes I agree, given that, at least in the US, their mission statement is "make things nicer for the citizens."

I saw Reuters on Twitter today say "the social responsibility of a company is to increase profits" so quite a different MO if you buy that.

That's the crucial difference: the state's primary aim is something other than “gather money for self and keep it away from others”.

Is this summarily, or per worker, or per unit of money spent?

Please note that, unlike corporations, governments usually can print money ("quantitative easing" anyone?) and normally finance their expenses by taxing everyone, that is, their services can't be opted out of.

The state has provided me far more value than Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber have.

If they want to regulate them, regulate them. If they want to dissolve them, dissolve them. I at least get a vote with the state; I get no such say with large tech corporations. If you would like to opt out of the state, you likely have the skills to emigrate to another country.

Maybe we should break up that monopoly? Is there a word for people who defend every action taken by the state? I know there's Stockholm syndrome but this appears to be more nuanced.

> break up that monopoly

You can avoid creating it. Look at Switzerland. But stable, well-run confederations are rare.

The US, and many other federated states (like e.g. India) do alleviate some of the problems of centralization by allowing different places to be run partly by local rules, and it does make a difference.

I heard many for-profit corporations are run in a federated way, too, because a huge monolith is not very adaptable.

Tax-payer?

I'm a tax-payer and I don't defend everything the government does.

There is only one organization in the US that is forcing me to pay a massive chunk my income towards things I don't even support.

Maybe once Google is capable of doing something like that we should consider breaking them up.

As with everything else, there is a market for states. If you don't like this one you can patronize a different one. The right of exit still exists.

In a participatory republic you have the option of actually engaging in the process and changing policy. Maybe you ought to vote with your dollars accordingly.

Also, there's no action being "defended" here. The American state is not actually prosecuting tech companies for antitrust. The EU is.

I can clearly see how these corporations benefit me, I don't see how they harm me. Not only do I use almost every product they offer for free, the salaries they offer boost the wages of all tech workers across the US. If these companies didn't exist I suspect I would be getting paid EU market rate salaries rather than what I am currently being paid.

If said companies are broken up how would that change what you've stated? There are plenty of small companies that pay a lot and offer free products that are not monopolies (if you believe they are, anyway).

> If said companies are broken up how would that change what you've stated?

Google is only able to offer services like gmail and google maps for free because of their massive ads business.

> There are plenty of small companies that pay a lot and offer free products that are not monopolies (if you believe they are, anyway).

Name one, I can't think of any.

There are many other companies that offer free email without relying on a "massive" ad business. Without knowing what you mean by a lot, but Dropbox, twosigma, most "unicorns" have an order of magnitude or more less headcount and offer similar pay.

Red Hat, Canonical, and Mozilla, I'd imagine.

Lots of people on this discussion board probably make money in some way from one or all of the companies discussed or potentially in that category. This makes it a difficult ethical question if ever confronted as such - who could one work for if that were a filter for companies one could choose for which to work?

Greed motivates all kinds of behavior. On one hand, people who work for large corporations and don't want to lose their unvested stock awards. On the other hand, some people are envious of the big money in tech. In both cases, they'll rationalize what they think is good for the market accordingly.

Well I wouldn't care normally, but the current administration and its supporters are tying up these challenges to major companies with gaslighting and red herrings and all sorts of confusion with attacks on net neutrality, preventing the ability to talk negatively about the administration, the free dissemination of information, etc.

Basically I don't trust the motives right now, so for now I defend Facebook and Google and Amazon until a government I trust to limit them for the right reasons steps in.

Kind of related, you might be interested in reading some Thorstein Veblen. Precuniary Emulation is an interesting concept[0].

[0] http://wiki.dickinson.edu/index.php/Conspicuous_Consumption_...

tribalism + Billions of $ in branding

Consumer?

Nah, you can be a consumer and not give a shit about the company that produced it. i think the things I use are good, but if something came along from a competitor, I'd be willing to buy that instead. Brand loyalty doesn't make sense to me personally (cool, you used to make something good. Is the new thing you made good? If yes, will buy. If not, will buy elsewhere)

I think OP is talking about the sort of blind fanboying that happens for some of these brands. "Every apple product is always better than every non-apple product because apple makes good products"

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