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Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not trolling but the same way ALL monopolies hurt consumers and the fair market. It is not a hard thing to read on up monopolies across history. And it isn't just FB. We need to stop the M&A activity that is only good for the VCs and not the consumers. We need to start unrolling the ones that have already happened.

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But the difference is that "ALL OTHER" monopolies are priced whereas facebook is a free product. Can it be called a monopoly if your product is free? Pretty sure, most lawyers won't have a hard time convincing a jury that it can't be.

Besides, if FB is a monopoly then so are Twitter, Google, Reddit, Quora, etc. Its an oligopoly of sorts with each player dominating a slightly differentiated product and all products are free of cost.

FB's users are not it's customers. It is free for users, in the same way that food is free for cows in a diary. Indeed, the cows did not choose to live that life, but increasingly [not] having a facebook account is not an option.

FB's customers are the advertisers. And they pay very good money, or FB wouldn't have had the money pay for WhatsApp, Instagram and its tens of thousands of employees.

>> but increasingly [not] having a facebook account is not an option.

but so is the case for google maps, gmail, linkedin, twitter, uber and a zillion other services. Facebook is just like any other web service at the end of the day.

>> FB's customers are the advertisers.

Even if that's true for arguments sake, I don't see how FB becomes a "monopoly" in that case. There are potentially large # of advertisers buying advertising space from potentially large # of website owners. How does FB have a monopoly on advertiser spending?

> but so is the case for google maps, gmail, linkedin, twitter, uber and a zillion other services. Facebook is just like any other web service at the end of the day.

Google Maps, Twitter and a zillion other services give me service without requiring an account, so it definitely is an option (I don't have a twitter account; I do have an old gmail account but I use Saerch, Maps and Youtube logged out and have for ~20 years).

I can hail taxis -- in fact, I'm now staying in a country where Uber is a regulated taxi, and there's no advantage (cost or otherwise) to using an Uber.

Linkedin is trying to force an account on me, but they haven't reached saturation anywhere that it impairs me that I don't have one.

Facebook events, however, and WhatsApp/Messenger, have become in my experience (and most people's by all account) the sole distribution point of a lot of timely and important information e.g. about kids school activities. So it's not just "another website".

> There are potentially large # of advertisers buying advertising space from potentially large # of website owners. How does FB have a monopoly on advertiser spending?

FB and Google have a duopoly due to user reach. It's really as simple as that. It's not illegal to have a monopoly, mind you, and some monopolies are "natural" (e.g., Google's search has classic[0] network effect, yet everyone I know who switched off it came back due to quality issues). But once you do have a monopoly, some generally acceptable actions become illegal.

[0] The fact that Google's users give feedback to Google about the result quality (by virtue of notifying Google which link was actually selected) is a weak network effect - but it only makes the network value linear in the number of users, whereas FB has more of a metcalfe square-of-number-of-users value.

If M and A becomes harder, why would VCs invest?

There have only been two YC companies that have ever gone public. I doubt that YC invested in any of its companies to produce “lifestyle businesses”.

If M&A became harder, more companies would go public; or stay private and distribute profits as dividends.

But the problem is not M&A on its own; the problem is that through M&A, big players are able to stifle competition. I'm sure it's possible to define a reasonable law (about company size, market size and kind) that would make it much harder for today's Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon from acquiring potential would-be competitors, without making it harder for two $100M companies to merge, or one $100M company to buy a $20M one.

Apple buys a company at least every couple of weeks. Most companies that Apple buys would never be successful products as an IPO. They were never products that would have ipo’d

You conveniently ignored the "or would have stayed private" part.

So in what world would most of the money losing companies that Apple bought remained private and profitable?

Instagram had no business model when it was acquired.

Could any of the chip design companies remain private? What would have happened to the company that Apple bought that made Workflow - that is now the Shortcuts app - if Apple had just built it in house? Would that have been a better outcome for consumers or the company behind Workflow?

In the case of technology companies, do you also want the government to stop acquihires?

If the government stopped acquisitions, the bigger companies could still just poach all of the employees.

> Instagram had no business model when it was acquired.

They would have created one, by doing the obvious thing. Selling ads.

I don't think they would need FB to figure out that they need to do that.

If they hadn’t run out of money first. Also advertisers don’t want to deal with every mom and pop website. If they did, you wouldn’t have the pervasiveness of as networks.

What are the chances that they could have grown organically? Do you really want the government to tell founders that they couldn’t accept Facebook’s $1 billion dollars? Would you want the government telling you who you couldn’t sell your property to?

That’s already the case that the government limits these transactions, and for good reasons.

Democracies and free markets are good at many things, but staying free is not one of those things. If Google and Facebook decided to merge tomorrow, the government would stop them, for good reasons. If Verizon and AT&T decide to merge, similarly so.

I was only suggesting that these restriction apply more strictly; and indeed that would dramatically change the market - similar time how existing regulation change the market so there’s no googbook or veriso&t

You mean like they stopped Sprint and T-Mobile?

Like they should have in my opinion, yes.

According to Wikipedia[0], """On August 4, 2014, Bloomberg reported that Sprint had abandoned its bid to acquire T-Mobile, considering the unlikelihood that such a deal would be approved by the U.S. government and its regulators""", that is, the government effectively banned it, but Sprint pulled out ahead of time saving everyone time and money.

They recently approved it -- a mistake in my opinion -- but again that just proves my point: This is already the rule. Your position appears to be that the government shouldn't have this power at all, mine is that it should be applied more strictly to enhance competition.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Sprint_Corporation_a...

Sprint has been losing money and users for over a decade. Their chief backer was tired of pouring money into it. The alternative wasn’t four major carriers or three major carriers after a merger. The alternative was three carriers, one out of business and the other three buying the spectrum.

Instagram is now worth something like 100 billion dollars.

If FB was offering them 1 billion, I am sure that there would have been many investors willing to out some money into it.

Instagram is worth 100 billion because Facebook leveraged its advertising network and integrated it heavily with FB proper.

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