Examining the dominance of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple | Hacker News Reader

Examining the dominance of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple

judiciary.house.gov

55 pointspartingshots28 comments

Worth noting that these are the house members of the committee overhearing testimony:

David Cicilline, RI (D), Hank Johnson, GA (D), Jamie Raskin, MD (D), Pramila Jayapal, WA (D), Val Demings, FL (D), Mary Gay Scanlon, PA (D), Joe Neguse, CO (D), Lucy McBath, GA (D), Jim Sensenbrenner, WI (R), Matt Gaetz, FL (R), Ken Buck, CO (R), Kelly Armstrong, NE (R), Greg Steube, FL (R)

Care to elaborate?

I interpreted the inclusion of party affiliation in parentheses as indicating this has bipartisan interest

Yep. Also FL is over represented for some reason.

It's still irritating that Larry Page has never successfully been brought before Congress for questioning. It's arguable that the entire Alphabet/Google structure was done in part to begin the process of isolating the founders from having to testify[1], despite being the key decisionmakers in much of Google's operations over the past decade, and still technically being in control today. Every time he's been asked for, we get someone like Pichai, or even more insultingly, Kent Walker[2].

Our nation has asked Larry Page to testify many times before, it's about time we start ordering him to.

[1] https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1202294177444302849 [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-04/google-to...

You might be disappointed. Larry Page has vocal cord paralysis on both sides, and as a result, his in-person presence is not very satisfying.

Moreover, Page would not have substantially more interesting testimony. For any Googler at the top, the answer to the question of "Why is Google so dominant?" is "Google's services are free and high-quality," and there's not really any extra thinking that goes into that line of thought.

We shouldn't expect that Page, nor any other executive, would say something like "Yes, Doubleclick was operating fraudulently," or "Yes, we agreed with Apple to fix salaries and avoid poaching," or "Yes, we developed tools to help China commit human-rights abuses," or "Yes, we knew about Eric Schmidt's trip to see Julian Assange," or "Yes, we successfully avoided tax burdens in multiple jurisdictions." It's one thing to have strong circumstantial evidence and informally-recognized smoking guns, and another thing to expect a top executive to directly and nonchalantly incriminate themselves in front of Congress.

Obviously one would need to make any accessibility accommodations necessary including potentially a translator/someone to vocalize his words written in front of him. But we should be hearing from the man himself, present in the room, not his PR people.

I'm aware that this is not a comment that contributes much, but nonetheless: I agree. Get him present in a hearing!

I'm puzzled why Microsoft is not on the list

Per the post, the investigation is about "the dominance of a small number of digital platforms".

Which digital platform is Microsoft dominant in?

I don't see an answer that's on the level of the ways the other 4 are dominant these days (AWS, social, appstore/search/Youtube, app store).

My suspicion -- offered without supporting evidence -- is Microsoft had their say, and has had no small role in supporting this investigation.

I suspect Amazon is not in hot water for AWS, there are major competing platforms and AFAIK no sketchy anti-competitive behaviour there. I'd have to guess its for their "market" business.

They've been using pricing data from third parties and their own in house brands to take business from those third parties. There is also rampant illegitimate reprinting of independent book publishers.

Yes, good point. That makes sense.

EDIT: I thought it, but I think AWS might at least get mentioned. To your point, I also spent some time writing external pricing engines for an e-commerce channel push up to some of the marketplaces. We optimized pricing for buy box participation, but it'd be easy to write the whole thing off as unbalanced by disparate forces, Amazon itself being the most obvious. We re-priced based on the data we extracted from Amazon.

AWS is in constant competition with Azure and to a lesser degree GCP clawing it's way back.

The competitors have both the resources and the aggressive commitment. AWS may be the leader, but it not a position that is easily maintained.

> There is also rampant illegitimate reprinting of independent book publishers.

And rampant fraud enabled by "comingling" in the rest of their market.

I’m not sure what platform Apple is dominant in either. I’m currently an iPhone user, but have used android in the past and switching back wouldn’t be burdensome. Yes they have their App Store, but iOS is a minor platform.

Just for discussion, do you think Microsoft's dominance has increased or decreased since they last had antitrust action against them in the 90s?

Yeah, Microsoft has become huge, but if you want to avoid MS products or services, it's very practical to do so these days. That wasn't the case in late 90s/early 2000s.

Unless you happen to need to exchange Office type documents with other entities. In that case you'll need the MS Office suite for compatibility.

Or your business needs niche software that only happens to exist for Windows.

Or if your business's core competency isn't technology related and you don't want to pay a premium for Apple products or hire a top tier IT staff to manage open source infrastructure.

Get out of the tech industry and see what most enterprise IT infrastructure looks like. It does not look like a healthy competitive market.

I'm inclined to believe Microsoft still doesn't quite has the (understandably challenged) dominance it once had, but your comment gives me pause. Perhaps its stranglehold is still worth challenging?

EDIT: Playing fast and loose, my characterization of the current climate is that the monopoly is more diffuse, shared with Google and Apple and Facebook, but the end result is that we've ended up with a 'triopoly' that is just as dangerous as Microsoft's monopoly was at one point in time. We're not that much better off, and the arsenal of countermeasures is much weaker in dealing with these new monopolies.

I would say increased but at a lower rate than apple or google.

The advent of the smartphone really damaged Microsofts monopoly imo. Windows use to be the only way to do computery things for everyman, but now people browse, check email, and consume content on their smart phone/devices.

The advent of the web as a platform for applications also made OS lock-in less of a thing.

Apple and Amazon seem to have ways through which they can be proven to abuse their position and can get decoupled through an investigation.

What would be the play on FB? They own three large data silos but do they leverage one to gain competitive advantage on other? I just use WhatsApp these days, so I am not sure of this. AFAIK, they allow you to export your data like photos out of FB, so that can't be proven to lock in your data as well. So, will this investigation be limited to their algortihmic ranking for posts or matching for ads?

Isn't the network effect sufficient?

I mean back in the days when telephony was starting, companies had to open up their networks to each other.

Can't FB just point to a newcomer like Tiktok and give a counter example for network effect not being something that stops a new competitor?

Also, how do you imagine a network opening up? I doubt FB and Instagram can be converted to a standard.

Messaging/Chat might be converted to a standard. XMPP was that but now we have clusters of messaging apps doing their own things.

You might have a point but FB also owns WhatsApp.

Yeah, that's where it would be interesting to see compatibility. Like using your favorite messaging app to talk to your friends without being limited by app/platform choice.

I can't answer your questions, but I'll add this:

1. FB owning both Instagram and WhatsApp means that it's almost impossibly for me to escape their grasp as a 'regular person'.

2. even avoiding FB itself is difficult. From apps that use the FB SDK to like buttons infecting many sites I visit, FB gets to track my behavior. That seems like abuse, or monopolistic.

I can't see a practical way to avoid FB in my day to day. That's definitely a duck that quacks.

Since this is just an event announcement, we should probably wait until the actual event.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com