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Comment by chj | Hacker News Reader

The author is nitpicking. Warren may be wrong about the history of bing and google, but that's not really important. She's 100% right about Amazon, and the author conveniently forgot to mention.

Most people in tech industry always strive to build monopoly and dominance. In their eyes, Warren's idea is of course insane. But viewing from another point, in order to protect competition and small businesses, her proposal is mostly sound. The concept of "Platform Utility" may seem arbitrary, but actually a very helpful check and balance.

The perfect solution is that the platform should be run like an open blockchain, trouble is no one has a clue how to build it yet.

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Actually amazon is the one that I would say doesn't have a monopoly. It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space (far from it), nor in the cloud hosting (let alone server hosting) business, nor in online streaming (music/tv).

Google on the other hand has close to a monopoly on search (and browsers). Facebook on social medias.

everyone is stuck on the word monopoly. Antitrust law is much larger than just monopolys.

and, if you can prove it, predatory pricing is illegal. amazon is absolutely subsidizing a bunch of stuff with profit from elsewhere. if and what and how the government can do something about that is a huge can of worms with wide reaching implications outside the tech industry.

IF the government wants to get involved with separating product development from distribution, they should be going after splitting primevideo from aws (like saying movie studios cant own theaters), or trying to prove that netflix is being unfairly charged for resources different than primevideo (price discrimination.) they should go after amazon logistics.

amazon is a vertical conglomerate problem not a monopoly problem (if its a problem at all.) whatever amazon is, the law wasnt ready for, but whether amazon is a good or bad thing is more a matter of perspective.

So since most of the things we use everyday on the Internet is free, that means most products we use are run by companies that are using predator pricing.

Does that mean that HN should also come under scrutiny because it can price HN free? What if I wanted to start a competitor to HN? Should the government make it so there is an environment that makes that easier?

> So since most of the things we use everyday on the Internet is free, that means most products we use are run by companies that are using predator pricing.

Don't forget "if it's free then you're not the customer you're the product" -- which means it's the users who are engaged in predator pricing by not charging for access to their eyeballs.

Of course, the users aren't giving their eyeballs for free, they're trading them for services. And the companies are trading services for eyeballs. There is no money because it's barter, not because there is no exchange of value.

And that's the case with all of this. Because the marginal costs for everything in tech are so low, the "cost" of providing something to the incremental user is negligible and nothing is ever really below cost because the ecosystem benefits to the company are worth more than the incremental cost of providing service to the user.

What creates these conglomerates isn't predatory pricing, it's the network effect. People use Facebook because their friends use it. They buy stuff on Amazon because the sellers are there, and the sellers are there because the buyers are there.

"if it's free then you're not the customer you're the product" this ignores non-profit ventures like Wikipedia.

I’m well aware of that. I’ve been arguing against government regulation.

It is possible to respond to someone while agreeing with them.

But allow me to disagree with your conclusion. The problem isn't predatory pricing, but the network effects problem is still a problem.

Now, granted, the problem is as much created by the government as anything. The law (CFAA, DMCA) makes it so that people can't create a Facebook "client" without Facebook's permission.

If they could, suddenly you've got a bunch of clients that consolidate many social networks into one interface, which makes it easier for users to switch to others. If Facebook is doing something you don't like, you install another back end to your client and transparently use that service with any friends who also have it. The more people Facebook offends, the more users they lose, without any specific other service ever having to reach some critical mass before most people can stop using Facebook.

That could be brought about by removing laws rather than adding them (though you could also pass new legislation to the same effect), but in either case it does require a piece of legislation to be passed to bring it about.

The only way that you could make another Facebook client is by allowing third parties to access the social graph. Then you get Cambridge Analytics. When you give a third party access to “your” data with respect to your friends, they also have access to my data that I never gave them permission for.

Making a third party client doesn't require any third party entity to access the data, only third party software -- which it already does. If your friend accesses Facebook via Firefox, Firefox inherently has that data. So does the operating system, the TLS library the browser uses, etc.

But it never has to leave your friend's device, and neither would it need to with some different client.

So how do we trust third party software not to be collecting data and sending it back? How does Facebook give access to the customer’s information and ensure that the third party doesn’t abuse it?

My browser doesn’t have access to scrape all of my Facebook information and all of my friends FB information.

> So how do we trust third party software not to be collecting data and sending it back?

How do we trust that Chrome or Windows isn't currently?

> How does Facebook give access to the customer’s information and ensure that the third party doesn’t abuse it?

It's the customer giving the software access to the data. Facebook has no more to do with it than gmail has to do with whether you use Thunderbird or Outlook.

> My browser doesn’t have access to scrape all of my Facebook information and all of my friends FB information.

Neither would this need to. It has your Facebook credentials and accesses Facebook as you. No special rights, just the ability to do use Facebook in a consolidated interface without ending up in court.

It couldn't do anything a malicious browser couldn't do with your Facebook cookie.

Have you forgotten what happened with Cambridge Analytica?

A “Facebook cookie” doesn’t have all of the information to all my friends information

> Have you forgotten what happened with Cambridge Analytica?

That was Facebook giving a third party everyone's information without consent. This is your friends having the information you shared with your friends.

> A “Facebook cookie” doesn’t have all of the information to all my friends information

It allows you to get all of the information that your account has access to on Facebook, which is all such a client would need.

Facebook did not give “everyone” information without consent. One person gave access to their information - including their friends information (their social graph). This is the same thing. My account has all of my friends’ information.

The browser with your Facebook cookie already has access to that information. In what way is some other piece of software different? How is Thunderbird or Signal different than Firefox?

predatory pricing is undercutting a competitor to purposely drive them out of business. i dont think hackernews is trying to put other sites out of business, far from it, as a link aggregator its business model is to push eyeball views elsewhere, similar to drudge.

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

http://signalvnoise.com/posts/1407-why-the-drudge-report-is-...

> predatory pricing is undercutting a competitor to purposely drive them out of business.

That is the purpose of all competition in a free market -- to achieve as large a market share as possible. In a stable market, this necessarily involves removing business from your competitors.

No the entire purpose is to make a profit. The most profitable company in the US is Apple. They didn’t get there by chasing market share.

Profit is a function of competition. If Apple had competitors, it would not be able to charge as much as it did for its computers.

You argue that Apple does have competition, and that's nominally true if you are very coarse and sloppy with your comparisons, but due to marketing and their walled garden, they are basically a monopoly over the upper / more artistic portions of the market:

https://wccftech.com/apple-iphone-counterpoint-premium-smart...

Profit is a function of competition. If Apple had competitors, it would not be able to charge as much as it did for its computers.

Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in computers?

Apple has been competing against commodity PC makers for 40 years.

Or are you saying that Apple doesn’t have competition making MacOS computers? Apple competes with generic PC makers by making a differentiated experience. There was nothing stopping any PC maker from doing the same. It wasn’t like Apple was making massive profits in the late 90s when it bought NeXT and started developing OS X.

They out competed. Any of the PC manufacturers could have produced a differentiated ecosystem in the 80s or 90s instead of using Microsoft. Apple didn’t have a monopoly on marketing channels.

> Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in computers?

Of course not. A company need not have a monopoly in every market they compete in. For example, Apple produces an office suite (iWorks), but due to the competitive nature of that industry doesn't make money off of it.

Apple doesn't have a monopoly on computers, but it does not make much profit off of them. Most of its profit comes from smartphones, where they do have a monopoly on the upper portion of the market, and also within their own walled garden.

For example, in 2015, 50% of Apple's revenue was iPhone: https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-where-apple-really-mak...

You realize that the Mac revenue alone would put it in the Fortune 100....

> Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in computers?

They can have no competition for their computers when other people are selling computers. The reason the pricing power standard is used in antitrust is that a intuitively appealing descriptive category may not actually be a domain in which all products are actually considered against each other by purchasers and thus may not actually be a single market within which competition occurs.

> They out competed.

That's usually how younger a monopoly, other than a government grant or leveraging another existing monopoly.

It's not a contradiction to having a monopoly.

So every company is therefore a monopoly on their products since competitors can’t sell them? Coke has pricing power on Coke and can sell it at premium over Generic Cola. Does that make Coke a monopoly?

> So every company is therefore a monopoly on their products since competitors can’t sell them?

No, not every company has pricing power, which is the ability to raise prices without losing sales to competitors.

> Coke has pricing power on Coke

That's an interesting claim, but not one I've seen the evidence for.

> and can sell it at premium over Generic Cola.

A premium price alone does not establish pricing power (in fact, that the sustainable price is some additive or multiplicative premium of the price of competing goods would be evidence against pricing power.)

> Does that make Coke a monopoly?

If Coke actually had pricing power such that increases in price did not produce movement to competing products, then, yes, it would mean it was a monopoly, because the descriptively similar products would empirically not be competing with it.

No, not every company has pricing power, which is the ability to raise prices without losing sales to competitors.

Unless you have an essential good. No company has complete pricing power. If Apple tripled the price of Macs, no one would buy them. The Mac’s demand is far from inelastic.

> Coke has pricing power on Coke That's an interesting claim, but not one I've seen the evidence for.

Have you compared the price of a Coke to a generic cola?

And this is different than Apple charging a premium how?

If Coke actually had pricing power such that increases in price did not produce movement to competing products, then, yes, it would mean it was a monopoly, because the descriptively similar products would empirically not be competing with it

And this is different than Apple?

> No company has complete pricing power.

Pricing power doesn't have to have an unlimited range to demonstrate a monopoly in the sense of interest to anti-trust law.

> Have you compared the price of a Coke to a generic cola?

Again, a price premium is not even a related concept to pricing power.

> And this is different than Apple charging a premium how?

I've never made a claim about whether Apple has pricing power or merely a premium price; I've only said the existence of other sellers in the descriptive category of “computers” is not inconsistent with he characterization others made of Apple having a monopoly, because monopoly is designed by empirical evidence of competition (e.g., whether or not pricing power exists), not by whether or not their are other players in a descriptive category.

Pricing power doesn't have to have an unlimited range to demonstrate a monopoly in the sense of interest to anti-trust law.

So how does Apple qualify and Coke doesn’t? How do you decide what the “right” amount of pricing power a company should have?

I've only said the existence of other sellers in the descriptive category of “computers” is not inconsistent with he characterization others made of Apple having a monopoly, because monopoly is designed by empirical evidence of competition (e.g., whether or not pricing power exists), not by whether or not their are other players in a descriptive category.

What exactly does Apple have a monopoly on then? Computers? Phones? Lightning adapters?

> So how does Apple qualify and Coke doesn’t?

I have neither said that Apple does or thar Coke doesn't; I've never said that either of the two does or does not have pricing power.

> How do you decide what the “right” amount of pricing power a company should have?

It's not a question of “should have”; an anti-trust monopoly (which is not itself illegal, but may make other behavior illegal) exists where pricing power exists in any price range.

> What exactly does Apple have a monopoly on then?

I haven't said Apple has a monopoly, only that, again, the fact that other people sell computers doesn't mean that Apple's computers are not a monopoly (and the same would be true of any other product category besides “computers”.) Whether they have a monopoly is determined by empirical evidence of whether consumer substitution occurs between products, not as to whether products fit into some taxonomic category where there are other products.

> So every company is therefore a monopoly on their products since competitors can’t sell them?

Yes. It has a monopoly over its product.

In terms of whether we care about their monopoly power, two things matter: 1. Whether they are close substitutes to those products; and 2. Whether there is free entry & exit in the industry.

Given that a monopolist will only operate along the elastic portion of the demand curve it faces, availability of substitutes is almost a given. When the monopolist makes supranormal profits, other competitors see an opening for providing those substitutes which reduces the welfare loss from Coca Cola's monopoly over its products.

Everyone here is talking about helping “future competitors”. How can you compete with free?

It's not like there's a paid alternative to HN that's struggling because this website is free. The existence of a free product doesn't imply predatory pricing.

By keeping prices “artificially low” it’s keeping competition from forming.

Yes this argument is silly. But it’s no sillier than the other arguments being discussed.

Why else would anyone lower their prices below that of a competitor if not to get the upper hand?

So charging too much is wrong (exploiting your power) but charging too little is wrong (undercutting competitors). Whats the solution? Centrally planned prices have been tried failed.

it is usually used in the context of selling at a loss. so if amazon makes a ton of money on aws and then starts selling everything on amazon.com AT A LOSS, to purposely drive their competitors out of business, because nobody else can afford to sell at a loss for a substantial period of time. to prove it, you basically need written/recorded communication of them admitting they priced things that way to be anti competitive.

theres probably some argument to be made that uber/lyft and any of the venture capital products being sold with vc subsidization are kind of doing this.

I assume that almost every company that YC funds is losing money and selling thier services at a loss. How could I compete by selling profitably?

The whole idea of most VC backed companies is to grow big and lose money until they get acquired.

which is not the same as trying to purposely extinguish competition. its about INTENT, not just selling at a loss.

A textbook example of this would be Bezos dropping diaper prices through the floor and doing it long enough to nearly drive diapers.com out of business. After which, he squired the company.

Or YC funding a company until its non YC funded competitor went out of business to make its investment worth more.

I’m not saying that YC has ever done that. I’m just taking the argument to it’s logical conclusion.

So all you have to do to keep from establishing “intent” is for Bezos not to send an email saying “let’s undercut price to kill the competition”....

"[Amazon] has captured 43 percent of all internet retail sales in the United States, with half of all online shopping searches starting on Amazon. In 2016, it had over $63 billion in revenue from online sales in the United States — or more than the next 10 top online retailers combined. It controls 74 percent of e-book sales, is the largest seller of clothes online and is set to soon become the biggest apparel retailer in the country." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/opinion/amazon-whole-food...

Exactly, so, not a monopoly in ecommerce. And only a single-digit share of commerce.

And, of course, there is literally nothing inherently illegal (in the US, at least) about building a monopoly in any case.

I'm not so sure we should be heralding the fact that a single company has not captured all of commerce as a win for competition.

And it “captured it” because of the incompetence of the previous incumbents in retail - Barnes and Noble, Toys R Us, Tower Records, Walmart, etc.

Why should the government punish companies because they were able to disrupt incumbents?

Should we also punish Apple because RIM and Palm couldn’t compete?

It wasn’t only that. Amazon also avoided sales tax for the longest time, while all those brick and mortar stores had to pass that fee to the customer, immediately making it appear less price competitive on top of the added cost of running a physical store.

The brick and mortar stores could have easily started another company that was only online.

But as far as being uncompetitive because of a previous business model is the entire premise of the “Innovator’s Dilemma”. It’s not the governments responsibility to protect old business models.

You seem to be arguing for a winner-take-all approach to the market.

Should future competitors to [monopolistic entity] be punished because [previous competitors] were unable to effectively compete?

In any case, I don't think punishment is really an apt metaphor for breaking apart a monopoly.

So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out?

Every company I named was once dominant. Even Spotify came out of nowhere and made the once dominance iTunes Music Store basically irrelevant without government intervention.

It wasn’t government intervention that caused the once The Beleaguered Computer Company that was about to be crushed by MS what it is today.

> So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out?

They were convicted of antitrust violations, sanctions were imposed, and they weren't dominant forever.

Since a key part of Warren's criticism of the past that has led us to the current state of internet giants is that it results from a complete failure to enforce antitrust laws along the way, there is implicitly a contrast with Microsoft where, even if it was fairly light touch in the US due to timely election of an MS-friendly administration, there was enforcement and sanctions.

How did these “sanctions” help foster competition and create the players that are dominant today?

Microsoft is still just as dominant in the PC operating system market and the desktop productivity market as it was in 1999.

> Microsoft is still just as dominant in the PC operating system market and the desktop productivity market as it was in 1999.

The sanctions were on the way they illegally leveraged that (legally attained) monopoly to monopolize other markets. Something which they've been decidedly less prone to do since. Well, at least for a while, they are now pretty much following the lead of the companies Warren is complaining about and, to the extent the latter are benefitting from lax enforcement, so are they.

You really think they didn’t set out to dominate mobile, search, the gaming market, etc?

You really think they had a strategy meeting and said that their strategy was going to be to always be a strong second?

> You really think they didn’t set out to dominate mobile, search, the gaming market, etc?

No, I think they were, at a minimum, more restrained in unlawfully leveraging their existing monopolies to do that thsn they were in the 1990s with the browser, not that they didn't try to dominate those markets.

How were they “more restrained”? They made bing the default search engine for IE. They tried to tightly integrate Windows Mobile with Windows and they tried to make their three failed music initiatives work better with the bundled Windows Media Player.

>So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out?

Microsoft is a goddamed convicted monopolist. The conviction significantly changed their internal processes and they were much more careful after that point.

And how did them “being careful” affect the rise of Facebook, Apple, Amazon or Google?

They tried to compete in both the media player, digital music, and phone market and failed.

They are still trying to compete in search.

>They tried to compete in both the media player, digital music, and phone market and failed.

Yes, they tried to compete, not just buy whoever they could and abuse the rest of the market which means the conviction had the intended effect.

You mean they didn’t spend $7.6 billion on Nokia and before that $500 million on Danger?

They tried to buy Yahoo.

> So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out?

> It wasn’t government intervention that caused the once The Beleaguered Computer Company that was about to be crushed by MS what it is today.

The criticisms of Microsoft weren't that it was preventing Apple from selling computers; but that it was using it's monopoly in the operating system to prevent competition against its other software.

> Even Spotify came out of nowhere and made the once dominance iTunes Music Store basically irrelevant without government intervention.

And if Apple decided Spotify could not be on the App Store, how would Spotify do then? (Nevermind we're ignoring the "Apple tax".)

Spotify doesn’t pay an “Apple Tax”. You can’t subscribe to Spotify within the App store.

> Spotify doesn’t pay an “Apple Tax”. You can’t subscribe to Spotify within the App store.

Spotfy is an example. Plenty of Apps do pay the "Apple tax." I'd get into the complexity of how the "Apple tax" affects Spotify even though it doesn't pay it, but you seem to have already made up your mind about all this regardless of the facts.

You mean companies have to pay to be a part of a marketplace? Software distributors use to pay retailers 60% of the retail price to be sold in stores. It was 70% to be distributed in online app stores like the ones that Verizon use to run to distribute J2ME apps.

And you act as if most revenue from online stores is not coming from in app purchases of consumable goods.

> Software distributors use to pay retailers 60% of the retail price to be sold in stores.

Because retail stores have to provide shelf space with real estate cost, unsold inventory cost, etc. How much is that cost to Apple?

> It was 70% to be distributed in online app stores like the ones that Verizon use to run to distribute J2ME apps.

And it costs 0% to be distributed in a Linux package manager.

Possibly something to do with Verizon having the same sort of app monopoly over its device customers that Apple does.

You could download J2ME apps from anywhere. Honestly I used Verizon as an example but thinking back, Sprint’s store was a better example. I think Verizon used something different.

Because retail stores have to provide shelf space with real estate cost, unsold inventory cost, etc. How much is that cost to Apple?

So now the government should also decide what is a “fair” amount of markup?

And it costs 0% to be distributed in a Linux package manager.

And seeing how little money you can make from Linux users, the value add for distributing packages on Linux makes the price about right....

> You could download J2ME apps from anywhere. Honestly I used Verizon as an example but thinking back, Sprint’s store was a better example. I think Verizon used something different.

In which case the lesson is that by charging so much in a competitive market, that business unit failed. Which leads to the real point:

> So now the government should also decide what is a “fair” amount of markup?

It's not a matter of setting prices, it's a matter of having competition. Apple gets 30% because it's the only feasible way to distribute to iOS. If Apple was charging 30% and there was a competing Mozilla App Store for iOS charging 5%, I suspect Apple would lose some business to it. And if some people still think Apple's store is worth 30%, no problem -- let them pay 30% while others pay 5%. But the 5% option should exist.

> And seeing how little money you can make from Linux users, the value add for distributing packages on Linux makes the price about right....

The point is that it shows the cost of providing that service. If Debian can do it at scale for nothing, what is Apple doing that justifies 30%, and where is the option to get just the thing Debian does for free?

If Apple was charging 30% and there was a competing Mozilla App Store for iOS charging 5%,

There was nothing stopping Mozilla from making a “Firefox phone” and having a fully integrated experience. Well they did try and failed to execute. As did Amazon, Ubuntu, and Facebook.

Apple was nowhere near the behemoth it is today when the iPhone was introduced. A company shouldn’t come under government scrutiny because competitors failed to execute.

If app makers don’t think the trade off is worth it, they are free to only target the other 80% of the phone market.

I guess they think selling loot boxes with Apple taking a 30% cut is worth it. Don’t be mistaken, that is where most money being spent on the App Store is being spent - on in app consumables.

The other major market is subscription to third party services and companies can and do sell those outside of the App Store.

> There was nothing stopping Mozilla from making a “Firefox phone” and having a fully integrated experience. Well they did try and failed to execute.

The whole issue is that you shouldn't have to succeed in the phone market before you can operate an app store. Tying the phone to a specific app store is the problem. "Integrated experience" is the argument Microsoft failed to convince with when it tied Internet Explorer to Windows.

> If app makers don’t think the trade off is worth it, they are free to only target the other 80% of the phone market.

In other words, Apple has a monopoly over 20% of the app customers, in the same way that Charter may have a broadband monopoly in 20% of the country even if there are other providers in the other 80%.

Notice that this isn't the same thing as saying that Walmart has a monopoly over its own shelf space, because customers can trivially switch from Walmart to Amazon or vice versa at any time but to buy a $1 app from Amazon or Google Play instead of Apple you would first have to replace your $1000 phone. To reach the same position as Walmart, the issue isn't that they control what's in their own store, it's that there are no competing iOS app stores.

Moreover, the problem with the App Store isn't just that Apple takes 30%, it's that they can reject your app for entirely opaque reasons without recourse, explicitly including because it competes with one of theirs.

In other words, Apple has a monopoly over 20% of the app customers, in the same way that Charter may have a broadband monopoly in 20% of the country even if there are other providers in the other 80%.

I can walk into any mobile store and have a choice between dozens of phones. Most people can’t choose their homes internet service provider.

People can choose whether they want to spend money on an iPhone or an Android phone knowing the trade offs just like people can choose whether to buy an Xbox or PS4.

it's that they can reject your app for entirely opaque reasons without recourse, explicitly including because it competes with one of theirs.

Seeing that there are competing products for everything that Apple sells, this is a boogeymen that doesn’t happen anymore than it happens for the console makers.

You do realize that no software can be sold for consoles without the approval of the console makers - including physical sells.

> I can walk into any mobile store and have a choice between dozens of phones. Most people can’t choose their homes internet service provider.

No, but they can choose their home, which is the relevant analog. If you don't like Charter, just move to another city. If you don't like the Apple App Store, just buy another phone.

If the thing you have to buy to get a choice costs 1000 times more than the thing you're choosing, it's not a real choice.

> People can choose whether they want to spend money on an iPhone or an Android phone knowing the trade offs just like people can choose whether to buy an Xbox or PS4.

"People can choose whether they want to spend money on a house in Charter's service area or Comcast's service area knowing the trade offs..."

And it being no different for consoles only means that the same rules should apply there as well.

> Seeing that there are competing products for everything that Apple sells

What is the competition for Safari then? Notice that "Firefox" on iOS isn't even real Firefox because Apple requires it to use Safari's engine internally.

Also, the App Store is an app.

No, but they can choose their home, which is the relevant analog. If you don't like Charter, just move to another city. If you don't like the Apple App Store, just buy another phone.

Yes it was one of the deciding factors when I bought my house was the internet service available.

But if I don’t like Apples policies it’s a lot easier to buy another $500 phone than a $400K house.

What is the competition for Safari then?”

Opera Mini....

Also, the App Store is an app.

Apple “sells” the App Store?

Windows still has 75% market share for desktops (the thing they were a monopoly in)...

Amazon is not a monopoly... monopoly does not mean “successfull company I son’t like”

Monopoly or not isn't necessarily the question... In the EU the issue often seems to be abuse of market position.

If Facebook were to lock Apple users out of new critically important Instagram filters because they wanted to sell the FacePhone. One could argue that they shouldn't be allowed to abuse their market position in social media to make unfair inroads in the phone market.

IMO, these things are hard to regulate, and most of our walled gardens are surprisingly interoperable :)

> there is literally nothing inherently illegal (in the US, at least) about building a monopoly in any case.

This is not true, despite being repeated extremely often. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alcoa

Huh, that ruling was pretty broad. Only pertains to the 2nd circuit as it wasn't reviewed by SCOTUS, but still. Do you know if it was a key cite in cases in other circuits?

I don't have a good citation, but my impression is that the Alcoa case was quite influential, and significantly expanded the power of antitrust law in practice.

"biggest" =/= "monopoly"

43% is a massive market share but a monopoly by the definition of the word has near 100% control of a market.

I think the modern test is is it possible for someone to compete with Amazon? Costco and Wallmart certainly do. If you break up Amazon, I think online retail will just move to the next biggest player.

That is not, not has it ever been, the legal definition of monopoly.

The literal definition of the word implies a 100% share:

> A monopoly (from Greek μόνος mónos ["alone" or "single"] and πωλεῖν pōleîn ["to sell"]) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. [1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

The legal definition implies a tremendous advantage such that consumers would have no alternatives if the company raised prices:

> courts ask if the firm has "monopoly power" in any market. This requires in-depth study of the products sold by the leading firm, and any alternative products consumers may turn to if the firm attempted to raise prices [2]

2. https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

I don't think Amazon can raise prices substantially without negatively affecting their market share. Costco, Walmart and Google Express are big enough players that they could handle an increase in volume if Amazon tries to raise prices beyond what the market is willing to bear.

What is the legal definition of a monopoly?

As a followup, should that definition remain the legal definition of a monopoly? Do we need a modern appraisal of that definition?

A monopoly is when there is no competition. There can be seller and buyer monopolies.

While having a huge market share is a given in such a situation, it's nonetheless not the definition

Competition is just a weasel word. Existence of multiple parties with overlapping interests is not competition. ie A participant in the market is ignored by the dominant player, who continues to dominate (regardless of any comparable metric), it's a functional monopoly. This is why companies often describe their product as "trust" more so than any specific feature set.

A buyer 'monopoly' is called a monopsony, not a monopoly.

This definition kind of punts the question on to the definition of "compete." Microsoft in the 1990s was probably the most clear-cut monopoly in most of our lifetimes, and they still had multiple competitors (e.g. the then-beleaguered Apple), which they did try to use as a defense. I think the key factor is more about whether you believe the competitors are a credible threat. If it doesn't seem like a company is realistically beatable under the current circumstances, that's sort of what we're looking for when we talk about monopolies.

And in retrospect, it would have been a mistake to break up Microsoft. No one is advocating breaking them up today. And that happened just through market forces and time, no government intervention needed.

There was absolutely intervention from multiple governments, and it scared Microsoft so much that they changed their company culture to studiously avoid even the appearance of monopolism — because they knew that if they ever got brought to court again, the break-up would almost certainly happen. If it had really been left just to market forces and time, Apple might have gone under (Microsoft actually propped them up when they were struggling in order to keep up the facade of competition), and Microsoft would have brought their might to bear against all the competitors that have risen up since then instead of being the gentle giant we have known for the past couple of decades.

Internet shopping is still very much a small share (~15%) of all shopping that occurs in the United States.

> It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space

For vendors, the situation looks different - and Amazon certainly does abuse their position towards vendors often enough, e.g. with the AmazonBasics program where they take bestselling stuff, produce it at Amazon scales and then outprice the "competition".

That seems like the weakest part of the argument — Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens, Costco, and every other major retailer has a similar program.

All use sales data to determine what sells best and copy it. I did this for a decade, designing store brand medical devices for all the major retailers.

There are plenty of legitimate critiques of Amazon. The "private label" one is by far the weakest.

The difference between the other major retailers and Amazon is the search. When I go through a physical store I will see everything that they have up for sale and have the choice of buying everything - but on Amazon the sheer amount of products that are showing up in searches is the problem. Hard enough to compete against other vendors for the place on the first two search pages, it's unfair that Amazon gives their own brand an advantage.

With Amazon, I have the ability to list my product, and buy ads pointing people directly to it.

With physical retailers, I have to hope I can convince the retailer to stock it, often have to pay up front for shelf space, and then have to continue to pay co-op fees for advertising services of dubious value.

Moreover, with Amazon, I know exactly how many units have been sold at any time and have the ability, for a fee, to get feedback from the buyers. With retail, you only get a rough estimate of sales, usually lagging by a quarter, and have no easy way to survey buyers.

I'm not saying that Amazon is acting like a great corporate citizen, but having worked with Amazon and most of the major national retailers, I'd take Amazon in a heartbeat.

As a consumer, I'd say search is Amazon's weakest link. It's often easier to find products on Amazon through Google or DuckDuckGo than through Amazon's own website. Product metadata is so poorly curated that Amazon's filters are pretty useless; compare sometime to specialist retailers like Microcenter or NewEgg where curation is much more complete. I often search for the combination of features I want on other sites and then look for the same exact product number on Amazon to check for a better deal (and Amazon isn't always the cheapest).

Funny you mention that. Because my experience is different: I often have to wade through shady marketplace offers with hundreds of fake reviews and paid ads. I have to dig deeper or explicitly search for AmazonBasics products to even find the USB cables or tablet stands from Amazon itself.

It might be that personalization is in effect here (or some sort criteria), but I sometimes would like to better filter marketplace offers I don't even trust.

Plenty of physical stores do that too - place their brand at eye height, in more places, featured in their ads, etc.

Amazon controls a large but minority of pretty much any market their in, until you start making smaller and smaller market definitions to the point of being ludicrous. As such, not being a monopoly, they're perfectly fine to do all this they want.

And manufacturers also pay retailers for improve placement. Unlike online, you never know which product is in place because of paid placement.

Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens and Costco are not marketplaces, they're retailers, and they have contracts with suppliers and pay distributors to purchase goods to resell to consumers. Amazon is a marketplace where any retailer can list their goods for sale.

I believe Warren's argument is that Amazon is abusing their position as the marketplace platform owner by listing their own goods at prices that undercut marketplace retailers.

So your argument is that a marketplace is a place where it is easier for a third-party to get their goods sold than a retailer? And the distinction is how a supplier gets their product in is the differentiator?

And then the argument is that the marketplace (where it is easier to get listed) should be regulated more than the retailer (which often uses control over sales to push prices up)?

I'm not onboard with this.

The argument is that retailers take on risk by agreeing to sell a product since they purchase the product upfront. A marketplace like Amazon is different because they can take on 0 risk while still collecting all the data about what's selling and then turn around and undercut the vendor with an Amazon Basics product risk free.

First, I think large retailers like Walmart can reduce or even eliminate the risk of selling a product in their contracts with product producers, making it effectively like selling on consignment.

How profitable is Amazon Basics anyway? I bet it's small numbers. If dropping it was enough to get regulators to go away, I bet Amazon would drop it in a heartbeat. Other aspects like Prime and AWS are worth fighting over, both in terms of their value to the company and their potential to harm markets.

I bet Amazon does pretty good business with "Basics". It is a really interesting concept, IMO, and really different from store brands in the past.

In many cases, the Amazon Basics products compete with essentially brandless (or relatively unknown brand) importers. The Amazon Basics brand works in these cases by having significantly more credibility than (insert random name here) USB cables.

Its really the opposite way that store brand products have worked with traditional products in B&M stores, where the branded product generally has a higher natural reputation.

> since they purchase the product upfront.

That's not actually how retail works. Products are shipped to stores first, then are sold, and only 1 to 3 months later are the vendors paid.

Unsold products are simply returned with no risk to the store.

On top of that vendors will PAY stores for better shelf space, and will even be willing to stock the shelf, for free, for the store.

The practical difference between selling a few items in a few test stores vs offering a marketplace is zero. The storespace is a much bigger limiting factor than the perceived difference between a "marketplace" and a "retailer", IMO.

So you think it should be illegal for Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens and Costco to allow a company to rent shelf space, and allow that other company to keep the capital on its books until its sold, and to allow the retailer to act as a payment processor?

Whos books the capital sits on while its in a warehouse is absolutely the most arbitrary distinction in all of this. Amazon provides warehouse space, and the product provider takes the risk of unsold product. Its a fair trade that allows exposure companies wouldnt otherwise get, unless they convinced amazon to BUY their stock.

If anything is anti competitive, its walmart/apple etc forcing companies to drastically ramp up production, and then leaving them high and dry unless they accept low ball offers. It's exactly what Apple did to GT Advanced Technologies (forced a furnace company to turn into a manufacturing company, a deal they "couldnt refuse", and when they backed out / failed to deliver the company ended up ~90% smaller.)

Walmart.com is a marketplace.

How is a platform different than a retail space?

Say you've invented a product and are producing them at a small scale (100 units per month).

What would it take to sell that product at Walmart?

What would it take to sell it on Amazon?

Amazon sells all products, Walmart only sells some. Amazon sells online, Walmart sells in retail and online.

So Amazon might preference another product, while Walmart both preferences other products and doesn't even accept most. Walmart preferences other products online as well.

Yet Amazon is a monopoly? So if Amazon greatly restricted their product offering, they are good to go?

You asked the difference between a marketplace and a retail store. Being a marketplace alone does not incur regulation. Being a dominant marketplace which takes anti-competitive stances is problematic, and taking action against anti-competitive moves by the most dominant marketplace in the US is what's being debated here.

I'm not certain why we seem to be debating the merits of Walmart versus Amazon. I would be willing to venture that Warren supports regulations and potential antitrust action against Walmart, too. Just because she's proposed antitrust action on one type of organization doesn't mean she won't also support another - indeed, she wants the same of many organizations on Wall Street, and previously sponsored legislation to regulate Walmart to prevent poor labor practices [0].

[0] https://thehill.com/policy/finance/224535-warren-puts-pressu...

> Being a dominant marketplace which takes anti-competitive stances is problematic.

Totally agree. The reason I bring up Wal Mart is to illustrate how this is essentially click-bait legislation.

Wal Mart tore through main street providing retail space for products they liked, also making their own versions and selling for much cheaper, preferencing products, etc. Dominating the marketplace and forcing businesses to close. We called that good capitalism. To my knowledge, Warren has not submitted or voted on a bill in her tenure to break up Wal Mart.

However now we are presenting Amazon as a unique type of problem and asking to break it up. With the one chief difference being the perception of fairness in presenting products equally because you can upload the listings yourself and it's on the internet.

I'm just trying to figure out why these relatively young, trendy companies, instead of a whole host of other monopolies that are far more important.

If the legislation comes down to semantics around an internet "marketplace" vs a retail store, then that begs another question of whether or not that is actually fair, and what the functional difference between the two actually is.

This is a net benefit to consumers, not something they need to be protected from.

Amazon is the one that continues to amaze me. People forget the original pitch to investors was _LOSE_ money for 5 years until they either drove competitors out of business, or became the single largest e-commerce provider. I've never understood how this was legal. It seems like the definition of 'anti-competitive' and 'predatory'? If Microsoft gave a free computer with every purchase of windows, and could afford to continue the practice until Apple, Dell, etc. went bankrupt - would that be ok ?

Sounds ok to me. I think the consumer would be very happy with 200 dollar PCs that were comparable in quality to thousand dollar machines.

Ok...but the point is that after they achieve the monopoly they can jack up the price to well over a thousand dollars without worrying about losing market share.

At which point why would wouldn't a new company form to compete with them? They probably couldn't kill the market forever, and it would be very expensive to try this and fail.

That'd be the illegal part of being a monopoly. The antitrust laws work by restricting (penalizing) monopolies from abusing their market position/dominance.

Basically, it's not a problem if you happen to be the best in computers. But it's a big no-no to try to force resellers into exclusive contracts and so on. (If you continue to just buy up newcomers to the market that's not a problem, after all investors can just keep funding new competitors and you have to waste money.)

But of course this is a very difficult problem at the intersection of economics, politics, law and sociology.

The typical antitrust concerns around monopolies don't really apply to google (currently). Google hasn't used its position to create barriers to entry for competitors, it is only that google has a reputation for producing a superior product in this domain. I've also heard some argue that google has a monopoly on advertising eyeballs, but this is clearly false (i.e. there are lots of platforms that make a lot of money by selling eyeballs)

Google's monopoly on search is entirely because it is the best search product by far.

However, as search becomes increasingly important in our lives, and as past search data becomes more important to ranking algorithms, Google might be at a point where no company ever stands a chance to compete with it.

By using Google, you make it better. It's already the best, and it already captures 85%+ of searches. How is anyone ever going to compete?

Bing even offered to pay people money to use its search engine for a while, and still it got hardly any traction.

I don't think Facebook's and Google's monopolies are too concerning other than the impact they have on online advertising. Google basically made CPC ads 10x more expensive like 10 years ago, and ever since, that's been the price of a click.

Facebook having a monopoly on social advertising clearly had no interest in starting a price war with Google to win ad dollars. They compete in separate spaces. They can each charge a premium.

> Google might be at a point where no company ever stands a chance to compete with it.

I'm not sure that this, in and of itself, is a problem. Someone has to be the best, and google's product will still be the best even if you break the company up. It's not as if people will start using bing if search were broken out into a separate company; if anything I'd guess that it might increase market-share as that new company would put all their efforts into making search better rather than on broader initiatives that cut across google as a whole.

This is patently false.

Google’s monopoly is on resources required to be a search competitor. It has a giant stash of patents related to search, and it also has an enormous collection of historical data that can never be obtained by a new competitors. On top of that it continues to extract behavioral and structural data about both users and the web from things like analytics, Android, etc. with gigantic reach.

These are gigantic barriers to entry and Google created them.

Now it’s reasonable to argue that there they did nothing insidious or unfair in order to create them.

However just because they didn’t do anything evil to create the barriers to entry they now enjoy doesn’t mean they didn’t create them or that they now enjoy a monopoly position as a consequence.

> It has a giant stash of patents related to search

Patents are not an antitrust violation. Breaking up google doesn't revoke their patents.

> On top of that it continues to extract behavioral and structural data about both users and the web from things like analytics, Android, etc. with gigantic reach.

Breaking up google doesn't mean all this insight disappears. We need better data privacy laws to address this.

> These are gigantic barriers to entry and Google created them.

You haven't described a barrier to entry, you've described a product that is so far ahead of the rest of the market that it's difficult to compete, but there is nothing preventing a competitor from giving it their best shot. If somehow a group of genius polymath programmers developed a superior search product, nothing about google's current business practices (besides brand awareness) would hinder their success.

A barrier to entry is something a competitor cannot acquire.

I have clearly described multiple of those. It’s not just difficult to compete. It is impossible for competitors to acquire the insight that Google has amassed, since it is based on historical data that is not available anymore.

Breaking up google wouldn’t make this insight disappear, but the fact that you acknowledge it exists proves my point that barriers to entry are present.

Your claim that I haven’t described a barrier to entry is therefore false based on the implications of your own statements.

I am not arguing that the remedy should be the breakup of Google, and your complaints about that remedy are irrelevant to what I am saying, and do not refute the contention that Google is in a monopoly position.

Nevertheless I am arguing that Google has critical resources that cannot be replicated by this mythical group of genius polymaths because they are now owned by Google exclusively, and that this is certainly a consequence of their market position, power and business practices.

It is ridiculous to suggest that the only thing preventing this is ‘brand awareness’. It’s hard to believe you are serious about that.

> A barrier to entry is something a competitor cannot acquire.

This is 100% incorrect. By that definition every company's private source code is a barrier to entry for their competitors. Clearly this is wrong.

> It is impossible for competitors to acquire the insight that Google has amassed, since it is based on historical data that is not available anymore.

I'm sorry but you are just plain wrong about what constitutes a barrier to entry. "The product is so advanced that nobody can compete" is not a barrier. "All you have to do" is produce a better product; just because that is hard does not make it a barrier.

> I am arguing that Google has critical resources that cannot be replicated by this mythical group of genius polymaths because they are now owned by Google exclusively

I am just going to repeat myself with emphasis since you don't seem to be understanding that patents are not an antitrust violation. I am going to repeat it again: patents are not an antitrust violation. If you want to discuss the ethics of software patents that's a different topic where I likely agree with you, but within the context of anti-competitive behavior owning patents does not qualify. By your logic I suppose you want to break up Tesla since they are a market leader with a massive patent-warchest. If not, why not?

> it is ridiculous to suggest that the only thing preventing this is ‘brand awareness’.

This is a misreading of what I wrote. I'll assume it wasn't deliberate. What I said was that if a group of engineers produced a better product, the only thing that would prevent their product from being successful is google's ubiquitous branding, there is nothing about google's business practices that would prevent a superior product from being successful. Your argument is that google is so advanced that nobody can produce a superior product, but even if thats true, producing a superior product is not anti-competitive.

> This is 100% incorrect. By that definition every company's private source code is a barrier to entry for their competitors. Clearly this is wrong.

Nope.

In the case of source code, a competitor has just as much opportunity to solve the same problem in either the same way or a better way.

In the case of data which is no longer available, there is no equivalent way to reproduce it. You either took advantage of it when it was available, or you never can.

These are two different things. Google’s code may be replicable, but their data and access to data are not.

You place "The product is so advanced that nobody can compete" in quote marks as if it’s what I’m saying, but in reality, nobody is saying this. It’s just a straw man that you can keep railing against, as if it’s what other people are saying.

You can repeat your misunderstandings again and again with additional emphasis if you like.

> In the case of source code, a competitor has just as much opportunity to solve the same problem in either the same way or a better way.

Same is true of google source code.

> In the case of data which is no longer available, there is no equivalent way to reproduce it. You either took advantage of it when it was available, or you never can.

The data is available through the same mechanism that google used to acquire it, i.e. by tracking user behavior; it's a common practice for just about every business with a web presence.

> Google’s code may be replicable, but their data and access to data are not.

True of literally every software company.

> It’s just a straw man that you can keep railing against

It's not a straw man, it's your semantic equivocation in order to make the claim that tracking user behavior to improve the product is somehow disjoint from the product itself. Based on that reasoning we should stop every company from tracking user behavior because that somehow creates a barrier to entry for their competition.

Before you move the goalposts any further away from patents into data collection, any answer for my Tesla question?

There is no moving of goalposts. Data collection was part of my argument from the start.

It seems like you have a problem with basic comprehension.

You say “Same is true of google source code“ as a retort to my first paragraph. Can you not see that I am actually saying that? Notice that the first two paragraphs are actually connected as part of an argument.

The argument is that although a competitor can potentially produce code that competes with Google’s code, a competitor cannot collect historical information about the web and searches.

Why do I say they can not collect this information?

Because it’s historical - i.e. it was available in the past, but is no longer available.

Google has the advantage of having not only a huge head start, but all the data available up to how about the structure of the web and user searches.

Patents are a separate issue, I did mention them in my original post, but it doesn’t matter whether we agree or disagree on that, since there it only takes one barrier to entry for you to be wrong.

Google isn’t just an algorithm.

It is also data. Data which is not available to competitors because it isn’t present anymore.

Your statement that we should ban user tracking is another example of you creating an absurd remedy as a strawman.

Nobody is proposing that remedy.

That doesn’t mean we have to deceive ourselves into believing that there are no barriers to entry to compete with Google.

> There is no moving of goalposts. Data collection was part of my argument from the start.

It's moving the goalposts because when I countered the argument you dropped it, ignored it, and redoubled on data collection.

> Because it’s historical - i.e. it was available in the past, but is no longer available.

Every company that collects data collects "historical" data.

> advantage of having not only a huge head start

A headstart is not a barrier to entry for your competitors.

> all the data available up to how about the structure of the web and user searches.

Data collection is not a barrier to entry for your competitors. Google isn't stopping you from crawling the web to determine its structure. Just because google collected data on user searches in the past doesn't mean you can't collect data on user searches on your own platform today.

> Your statement that we should ban user tracking is another example of you creating an absurd remedy as a strawman.

I did not propose it as a remedy, it is a deliberately absurd conclusion meant to illustrate the flaw in your reasoning, i.e. the fact that every company collects user data and nobody ever views that practice as barrier to entry for competitors.

> That doesn’t mean we have to deceive ourselves into believing that there are no barriers to entry to compete with Google.

For someone that deigns to project insults about reading comprehension you sure are bad at it yourself. Re-read what I wrote. I never said there are no barriers to entry, I said that google's business model does not create barriers to entry for their competitors. If we're using every single competitive advantage as an example of a "barrier to entry" then the term is meaningless because it applies to every market leader.

You just said ‘I never said there are no barriers to entry’.

But earlier you said:

> ‘All you have to do" is produce a better product; just because that is hard does not make it a barrier.’

Which is it - are you claiming there are no barriers to entry, or do you concede that there actually are?

As to your dismissal or the argument about collecting data. That’s also a false comparison.

Lots of people collect data yes, but they don’t have what Google has, and they aren’t trying to use it to compete with Google.

It’s not relevant, and it’s another example of you creating a straw man.

The point is that the corpus that enables Google’s search quality to be so high is not available.

Could it be argued that Google is engaging price dumping by financing the development of its search engine from unrelated revenue? Namely, ads placed on websites other than its search result pages?

Just thinking out loud, really.

I love how people love saying Amazon doesn't have a monopoly in retail when that massive category includes the sale of all consumer (and some producer) goods.

Amazon has 70%+ market share in many sectors of retail, such as books. But because it's only a fraction of their business, it seems like nothing.

> Google on the other hand has close to a monopoly on search (and browsers)

Which are both free products/services. How do you have a monopoly on a freely provide service? They have a monopoly on the supply (eyeballs) of the digital advertising market.

They have a monopoly on advertising because they have a monopoly on search, hence traffic, hence knowing what individual people are up to.

We’re going to see more and more defensive content come out and it’s only going to help Warren. Strategically she’s positioned herself well, she could easily be the most publicized democratic candidate because of this topic alone.

It's definitely timely and getting a lot of attention.

But Andrew Yang could end up making waves here. His approach seems more productive - proposing a VAT on big tech and a "Freedom Dividend".

I think Yang goes a lot farther than warren in that breaking up tech companies still concentrates wealth in costal tech hubs while a UBI would begin shifting that back to the middle states.

It is sort of admitting that tech has “won”, but the power of data at scale is imo fundamentally a part of reality and denying it in the US just means China will develop AI technology faster.

Either way I’m glad to see these ideas being discussed more broadly.

Sure, though this article isn't defending the FAANG companies. The author is also concerned, though he is saying the problem is deeper, not well-understood, and Warren's solution as-proposed is simplistic and will not be effective.

It's a sad state we're in that instead of talking about the most important monopolies, we're only able to talk about the ones with the most brand recognition.

You need to get into specifics vs. trying to just provide your general view. The author you are claiming is nitpicking is Ben Thompson - the most prolific tech strategist of our times. And look at your response which offers nothing interesting at all. Do you have any suggestions on how to make these breakups happen given all the nuances and challenges? And please get into details vs. pretending they are not important.

Also, some would argue it's also good to protect democracy from any entity getting too powerful and having too much influence. None of this of course only applies to tech companies.

The author has written a lot about Amazon, how it gained power, both in that article and in others on that blog. He did not conveniently forget to mention it.

The article may seem like nitpicking the history of Bing and Google at the beginning of his article. However, if one were to read through the whole thing, he is showing how Warren is coming from an inadequate frame to make an effective policy. The author analyzes this from the Aggregation Theory he has been working on for years throughout other articles on his blog.

The biggest takeaway is that, the FAANG aggregators get their market power because consumers voluntarily use their product. While promoting competition can help a market, the current US standard for antitrust is around consumer welfare, and modern-day aggregators do no meet that standard. The concern here is that developing antitrust policies without addressing these deeper concerns will not solve the problem (dominant companies that grow increasingly more dominant over time), and may end up exacerbating it.

Warren's Amazon coffee maker argument is pretty convincing, but the author focuses on the history of bing and google, that's a big turn off. Shouldn't the author come from the perspective "Where Warren's Right" if the author's "Aggregation Theory", which I am not familiar with, happens to have the same spirit of Warren's proposal? Is it reasonable that since Warren made a mistake about bing and google, therefore she's inadequate for coming up with a policy?

To be honest with you, I didn't read the whole thing. Instead of spending many screens of texts in the beginning to show how Warren's wrong, the author could instead promote his own theory right at the start, then we will have a better idea where he's coming from. Right now, from the structure of his writing, it feels nitpicking.

The author perhaps, should have lead with (paraphrased) "Warren raised this as a discussion, and that is a good thing." He wrote that towards the end.

However, according to (what I understand) as the author's frame, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the tech companies gained power and market dominance. The nitty gritty details about Bing and Google was meant to demonstrate that.

Also keep in mind: this author has been writing a blog related to Aggregation Theory for a long time. Years before Warren had raised this issue to the nation. He had analyzed each of the FAANG companies, including Amazon, in depth. Many of his readers would already be familiar with Aggregation Theory. The key insight here is that the FAANG companies are not like the monopolies of the old.

These are probably a better introduction:

https://stratechery.com/2016/the-amazon-tax/

https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/

The redefinition of the term 'monopoly' to just be 'large marketshare' is very dangerous.

However, as a bit of schadenfreude, its nice to see the leftist big-tech receive the unintended consequences of their beliefs.

Sadly, the realities is that they will just hire ex-regulators as 'consultants' to help enshrine their businesses into quasi-state protected monopolies.

> The author is nitpicking

You are being charitable to the author. Usually Stratechery articles are decent, but on this one, the author has many ignorant remarks.

> Bing

Microsoft, if not checked with antitrust investigations, could have shoved Bing (or Live, or MSN Search) down everyone's throat. Just like Google tried to do with Google+. So to credit Warren's point, without antitrust case, we could be living with Bing (or Live or MSN Search).

> of course a browser should be bundled with an operating system; a new computer without a browser would be practically useless (for one, how do you install a browser?).

Hasn't the author heard of floppy disks or CDs with software, which was the popular way to install softwares in 90's? In fact, without Microsoft's free offering, browsers could have remained a software worth paying for and we wouldn't be living with an almost monoculture.

> Google would have emerged with or without antitrust action against Microsoft.

I read a wonderful article a while back, which stated that the real effect of antitrust on Microsoft was that every minor decision was heavily scrutinized internally, with lawyers vetting the major decisions, thus dampening the velocity of the company. So it is debatable whether Google could have emerged without the antitrust lawsuit.

> Microsoft, if not checked with antitrust investigations, could have shoved Bing (or Live, or MSN Search) down everyone's throat. Just like Google tried to do with Google+. So to credit Warren's point, without antitrust case, we could be living with Bing (or Live or MSN Search).

Bing started in 2009. Google was already amazingly dominant at that point. What did the previous antitrust cases have to do with Bing's success or failure?

The purpose of government should not be to “protect small businesses” - ie protect business models that can not compete in the market

Well, I think all businesses grow from small ones. They do need some kind of protection while they are developing.

So I have this great idea to delivery pet food. Should the government protect me while I grow it?

OK, I see that we have different ideas of protection. When you are selling pet food, surely you don't want the delivery company steal your customers, right? Now if government says that delivery company can't sell user data, that's the kind of protection I meant.

And the government has been great about protecting privacy? The government is one of the biggest proponents of less privacy because of the various “Wars on $X”.

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