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Comment by ulrikrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

What I don't get is why Google is allowed to provide a browser and be a major content provider at the same time. If this is allowed to continue then it seems inevitable than an unhealthy monopoly will form where Chrome and its derivatives are the only browsers that can consume the modern web, and where opting out of tracking is not a possibility for anyone but the most technically inclined (although that's almost already the situation now).

Come on EU, step up. Google doesn't need protection here, they'll survive even if they cannot retain control over the development of Chrome, and in particular the authority over the extension store.

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What I don't get is why Google is allowed to provide a browser and be a major content provider at the same time.

For the same reason you are allowed to make this comment or I am allowed to reply. There is no explicit law prohibiting them from providing a free browser while also being dominant in the content space.

There is a fair argument to be made that Google's vertical integration of internet advertising could be running afoul of antitrust laws, if those were still being enforced in the US.

Well whenever the governments of the world get their heads out of their collective asses and learn what a computer even is, then we can have competent legislation.

I think you’ll find that the areas with the most government oversight are not exactly the best in terms of innovation and quality.

I thought the accepted solution to these problems was "disrupt!", not regulation.

Edit: It seems that not even Silicon Valley likes the monsters it has created.

The general solution is to do a little of both. The job of the regulators isn't to just kill off specific companies that got too powerful - it's to create conditions where disruption is possible. An important way to do this is to prevent big players from abusing their power to make themselves nearly-impossible to disrupt.

But that's the whole point of the SV business model! Strangle any competition by initially offering your products for free (and funded by huge amounts of VC), and then raise prices at your leisure once you're the last one standing.

I suppose this is tolerated because there's usually more than one party trying it at the same time, so there's technically a competition going on - but it doesn't take into account the collateral damage done to the entire market. VC subsidies run out, eventually, and if the upstarts haven't found a path to profitability by that time, society is left with a damaged market segment.

> The job of the regulators isn't to just kill off specific companies that got too powerful - it's to create conditions where disruption is possible.

Broadly speaking, the big regulations tend to create conditions where disruption is harder. Regulatory compliance is often a substantial investment, and a rather big one, thus a barrier to entry; it's a lot easier for big, profitable Google to hire a team of regulatory compliance officers and GDPR architects and the like than it is for a small startup.

That depends. Often enough, regulatory burden tends to scale with size as well! But I agree that quite a lot of compliance requirements apply to everyone, and that they're much harder for small companies to meet.

However, the reason for those requirements isn't, ostensibly, to make disruption difficult - it's to protect the society from problems that can be caused by companies of all sizes equally easily. For example, safety regulations about medical equipment. Or data protection regulations. To the extent these laws make disruption difficult, it's often unfortunate cost of safety.

(I understand though that the real world isn't perfect and big players tend to influence these laws to their benefit. But perfect being the enemy of good, and all that.)

> However, the reason for those requirements isn't, ostensibly, to make disruption difficult

Perhaps not. But public choice theory is chock full of unintended consequences.

That's exactly why we don't need "regulatory compliance" but straight up break up monopolies into multiple independent companies like what should be done in this case here.

Natural monopolies are actually one of the main places regulation helps.

We need a regulation that will automatically deal with such monopolies by ordering companies to split after reaching certain thresholds. This way we would never get companies too big to fail.

We'll need a second bit of regulation then (and I'd say, possibly we need it already) to counter the obvious workaround - creation of a thousand of small companies doing roughly the same thing, controlled by the same group of investors.

Then what is the incentive to start a company, grow it within the legal and regulatory framework and when it gets to an arbitrary, non-defined size have the legal and regulatory bodies systematically dismantle it by forcing you to sell it off?

There should be no incentives to grow a company past a certain limit. Ideally, that limit should be established well in advance.

And in US, it was back in the day - but then, thanks to Reagan and Robert Bork, we effectively threw away all the anti-trust legislation that was functioning quite effectively for 80 years. The large businesses, of course, heavily lobbied in favor of that.

So, they have created the present environment - and now that we have seen (yet again) why anti-trust enforcement has to be proactive, they're complaining that it would be unfair to revert to old rules?

It's not selling off but splitting. The goal should not be to create 100 billion super company, but to provide value to consumers. Companies that would be at a stage where they would be required to split have different priority - to extract value from a consumer and maximise profits for shareholders. That will be a target, not your small or medium business.

The ability to walk away with enough money to fund multiple lifetimes of obscene gluttony long before that point?

The same incentive to start a family or a restaurant.

I don't know why people open restaurants - do they know the profit margins? They must, and they do it anyway.

So it must be for the love of it.

This idea that starting a business just to make money is a good idea, is tenuous at best. It's a sign of the times that people even ask the question of 'well, if I don't get rich, why would I do it at all?' It's a sign of how dysfunctional work has universally become, that people view it as suffering, to reach a promised land, rather than a calling to do your part as part of a larger community.

If it's suffering, maybe something is wrong. Taking away the idea of heaven enables you to say no to resistance you're experiencing now. That's a good thing - don't believe anyone promising you a heaven later on - how would they know and if they're in it, is mentoring you to suffer really a part of their heavenly experience?

Supose we take this icorrect argument - you starg a company but at arbitrary size you have to sell off chunks. Okay, you made a profit, thats the point of capitalism.

Are you suggest we should instead cater to megalomaniacs that wish to run maximally large companies and rule industries?

because the company is still intact but not it is split in two. It's obvious that there needs to be limits on capitalism when companies get too large that they can dictate what the internet/any market does on a whim because they're the only game in town. Amazon and Google are quickly approaching that if not already there. They can crush competitors on a whim.

In EU, maybe. However don't forget the lobbying.

Money is actually a power (via buying other people's time and effort to spend on one's problems). The money is also behaves like the mass in Universe: it sticks together in large clots. So the power does too.

At some point some companies have become too big to disrupt. I think the best way is to partition companies that grew too big, that could be called disruption if you will. I'd like to see Alphabet holding to be dismantled and all products moved into separate independent companies.

It wasn't popular on here last time I said it, but Google has won the web. Time to move on.

Also - Google is the natural result of the Silicon Valley business model. You got what you wanted!

I have moved on. To duckduckgo, firefox, fastmail...

Except that everyone is running to keep up with all the new web standards introduced by Google. I assume you also don't use Android.

How is that different than a supermarket offering its own brand? Costco offer Kirkland, Whole Foods offer's 365 brand. Apple offers various Apple apps even though they provide the platform, both included "Pages" and separate "Final Cut Pro", etc...

I don't understand this logic. You can use the same argument against any Vertical integration.

Vertical integration is fine, it's the part where one or more pieces of your vertical gives you too much control over the markets around other parts of your vertical.

Well you don't have to use their browser to consume content on the internet and I never have used it to consume content from their sites.

Now if they start to force it where you have to use their browser to access their content it may be an issue depending on how much competition is in that space.

Or worse, they use their influence on standards committees to effectively lock out other browsers. That would be worth taking them to town over.

Google is no more the internet than any other company. You never have to use google or their products for anything but many do because its just there and it just works

Yup. Markets require independent referees.

Google acts as their own police, judge, jury, executioner, and bank.

Ditto Apple, Facebook, Twitter, etc, etc.

The pro-capitalist position is to protect markets. We need tort, fair and impartial adjudication, and right to appeal.

where opting out of tracking is not a possibility for anyone but the most technically inclined (although that's almost already the situation now).

DNS over HTTPS is another example of Chrome trying to workaround means of blocking tracking.

What I don’t get is how many howl and cry foul at Apple for its Store “monopoly” while anyone can opt-out of it by switching to any other of the myriad competitors.

While in this case, Google is very likely abusing its dominance to coerce the whole ecosystem beyond their own platform in their favor: if the web becomes “works with Chrome” everyone is (probably negatively) affected.

Definition of myriad (Entry 1 of 2)

1 : ten thousand

2 : a great number

The Apple/Google duopoly does not constitute a "myriad of competitors".

Also apple isn't even close to "monopoly" in the phone business. It's pretty easy to buy a phone from a different company last I checked. Chrome is quickly becoming the only game in town --for internet access--

I don't own an Apple product and probably never will, so I'm not that familiar with the situation there. In general though, I'm not that fond of private entities being regulators of markets. This is what democratic institutions are for, but unfortunately we don't have strong institutions in this space.

For what it's worth this argument - that users are actually able to switch to Android if they don't like the iOS app store and that consitutes competition - will be tested by the courts in the Epic vs Apple case.

Epic says this is not a real factor for consumers, despite it still harming them.

Now that you mention it, this is a pretty evil strategy. It may seem that developers and businesses have all freedom to create and run their sides and apps as they wish but if they don't comply to Google's view how the web and apps should be they... ... rank very low on search results and are therefore displaced by competitors that play along the rules of Google ... don't get into the Play Store or get kicked out ... can't express an opinion on any Google platform that goes against their (vaguely formulated) terms of use, otherwise their account gets blocked in no time.

While Apple does not have a monopoly over the smartphone market by any meaningful definition, what it does have is a vastly outsized mindshare.

Not only did Apple invent the modern smartphone, they created the first modern App Store. This, combined with their high cultural cachet, allows them to define by their actions what an App Store "should be" in many people's minds.

Personally, as a lifelong Apple user, I'm both concerned about Apple's singular control over the iPhone app market, and concerned what would happen if that singular control were broken.

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