All the recent actions directed against Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon. None of these is a monopoly in any sense of the word. Well, maybe Google, a little.
People often get cough up in definitions of what is or isn't monopoly or what free market is, on HN. And its even often argued in USA politics. In EU its far less. What is important is the perceived result (Apple, Google, Facebook have enormous power over daily lives of people) and how people feel (weather something is fair of not). And many inside EU myself included think that
> Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon
are abusing their market position, that they are doing shady stuff to limit competition, starting to use more and more dark patterns, avoiding taxes (taxes are higher in EU so people are more pissed if somebody is "getting away with it") and generally don't trust them.
So politicians (that want to score points with people) are doing what people want.
Another thing is, that some of this companies are starting to become so powerful that they are starting to worry politicians themselves. So politicians are "defending their turf", by smacking the upstarts when they can. (This is happening in USA as well )
Unlike politicians whose first interest is getting elected and second getting reelected with any other concern at a huge distance away.
There are plenty of places with week governments in the world, where global multinationals are above the law (look at Africa, some south America).
If corporations get big enough, this might start happening in more developed world as well.
I perhaps notice it more because I live in small country (Slovenia) whose entire national budget is lower than any one of the FANG's. This is one of the reason I support EU despite it's many shortcomings.
Apple have abused their hardware position to artificially restrict and abuse devs via their app store.
Facebook - Do we really need to do this? Facilitating genocide and election interference both don't fly over here.
Amazon - Being a market place and a seller on said marketplace is a no no. Using your customers data from your market place to undercut them and run them out of business is again a no no.
Apple has created their own hardware platform(s) and it has a healthy competition for it. There are rules to be on it and they are mostly for the benefit of the consumer.
Facebook is simply a forum. If facilitating communication facilitates genocide and election interference it's people who are the problem, not Facebook. Besides, TV & Radio are much bigger facilitators for genocide and election interference and nobody attacks both.
Amazon - any physical retailer is both a market place and sells its own competing products crated using said customer data. Just visit any supermarket.
Oh now you've done it, there goes my tea and a keyboard. That was wildly funny, thank you. For a moment there I thought you were serious.
Just talking about Search: I've been using it daily for over 20 years now, I couldn't live without it and I know no better search engine, even though I would switch in a heart beat.
Not finding value in Google's offerings is not what it is about: it is about abuse of monopolistic power, and Google is very guilty of that.
While not exactly fan of Google pushing their other offerings, I still have to find someone who doesn't do that on their own properties. Even our office landlord keeps pushing us to rent some more parking spaces.
But that does not make it a monopoly and the very fact that those other offerings are unsuccessful shows that this behavior is not that problematic.
I am willing to put up with it if this means preventing yet another competition stifling, consumer harming, incumbent favoring - regulation.
A monopoly on their own product is an incoherent market definition that isn't flying anywhere.
> Amazon - Being a market place and a seller on said marketplace is a no no. Using your customers data from your market place to undercut them and run them out of business is again a no no.
Every single retail store in the EU (and the rest of the world) does that. Completely normal. That's what store brands are.