Antitrust: Split Up Microsoft | Hacker News Reader

Antitrust: Split Up Microsoft

hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com

30 pointsheadalgorithm14 comments

Split up Google. By controlling the most popular browser, and the most popular sites, they have captured the Web.

Chrome login is integrated with Google login, Chrome features can basically become standards when YouTube and Search both use them, and, of course, they directly advertise each other.

Also kill Electron in the process, packaging Chrome as "native app" also doesn't make it better.

We should not have trillion dollar corporations. They're all just far to large - they distort society, let alone the market. All the FAANG's should be broken up.

I tend to agree on MS and 3/5 of your FAANG comment. Certainly, I don't see any reason to break up Netflix.

On Apple, it's more complex. They seem to have one integrated product line where I don't actually see how it could or should be broken up. Plus, until we've successfully broken up the other players I would hate to get break up Apple. Their attempts to push back on Google/FB's data collection only succeeded because they were similarly sized. To that end, I want to see Google/FB brought to heel before i want Apple to start being broken up.

> Certainly, I don't see any reason to break up Netflix.

It might be nice to break up content distribution from content development. But I don't think there's any (current) reason to specifically target Netflix over that, cable and satellite providers have a bigger overlap in that area and they've been given a pass for the most part.

We shouldn't break up these companies by product. That just creates smaller monopolies. We need to split them including their products. Think splitting MS into two companies that both have the IP rights to windows and office (the trademarks needs to be fiddled with obviously). The same is true for Google and apple.

The market should more closely be modelled after evolution. Right now there is just no good analogy for repeoduction/splitting. This approach would solve that.

Apple probably should just be required to give back most of its huge cash reserves to its shareholders. It would stimulate investment elsewhere in the economy and stop Apple from gobbling up potential competitors. This doesn't just apply to Apple (Facebook, looking at you) but given the size of their cash holdings, they're the most obvious. If we want to not have trillion dollar companies, forcing dividends and reducing the ability to snap up growing companies is one way of making it happen. Of course those whose lifegoal is to get their startup snapped up for enough money to retire at 23 are going to be opposed to this.

Not sure how you can agree about MS but have hesitations about Apple. For all its faults, MS is way more open and end-user friendly than Apple. Also, smart phones and portable devices in general are the general compute devices of the current and new generations and this is where Apple, not MS, is dominant. For millions of people growing up, their gateway to the internet and all that follows is a smart phone.

It should go without saying Alphabet/Google are more deserving of anti-trust than either MS or Apple.

There are a couple of reasons I feel okay on MS but less about Apple.

First, my desire to break up large tech companies is very correlated to their adware/spyware business model. Apple has taken a strong stance against, MS has been moving in that direction. Second, MS has multiple disparate product lines (XBox, Azure, Windows, Office, Bing/Outlook) whereas Apple doesn't really. I'm not even sure how you can divide up Apple in a meaningful way. Third, Apple currently is the only thing keeping Chrome from eating the entire web. Even MS gave up on their own browser and reskinned Chrome. Apple also is pushing a more privacy focused single login to eat at Google/FB. In my view, breaking up Apple would only make sense once we knew we had properly broken up Google/FB as right now Apple is far better at reigning in their excesses than any other entity, including the world's governments.

I agree that currently the introduction of most people to computing is a smartphone, but I don't see how breaking up Apple can make people's lives better. Until we have better ways of protecting people's privacy on an app-by-app basis, I'm happy with using Apple software on my phone.

All that said, I really would just like privacy protections, with hefty fines that enforce compliance. It seems easy enough to do, but there seems to be no stomach for it.

please explain to me, a total stranger to anti-trust about the benefits of "breaking up a corporation". its not like they magically become enemies and do opposing stuff. the owners are the same, employees are the same so if we break up Microsoft into say office division corp separate from windows, why won't they still work together as a "team"? does the anti-trust breakup mean they can't work together? like we face social logins to websites, will that break? this is a bit confusing

The benefit of antitrust is that it leaves a void left to be filled either by competition or 1 company specializing in it.

It could of course be true they might still collaborate but that's all there is, if other companies work on getting a better product out it'll be hard for Microsoft to only support 1 application.

20 years ago they should've done that, don't think at this point it's no longer required. Of course it might come back in the future.

No longer required? It's worse than ever. We're a hop and a skip away from commodity hardware being vendor locked to Windows using encryption. We're already there on Windows/ARM.

This article is not "let's get around to doing it"... it is a historical piece.

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