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Comment by ReactiveJelly | Hacker News Reader

If intellectual property (specifically software patents) were weakened, this would be less of a problem, right?

Companies don't buy companies, they buy IP, as I understand it.

Maaaaaybe. I am not a fan of software patents but intellectual property laws are the only thing stopping Big Company A from just cloning Small Company B's product. At least now they have to go to the trouble of buying them.

Of course, it goes both ways and laws often favor the strong against the weak. But it is not all one-sided.

> intellectual property laws are the only thing stopping Big Company A from just cloning Small Company B's product

Is that really the case? Does it work? Isn't Instagram basically cloning TIkTok right now? and cloned Snap before that?

Apple with Alfred, Spotlight, F.lux etc are also examples. Seems like for software, either patents aren't utilized or simply can't be enforced.

Instragram/TikTok/Snap aren't exactly novel ideas, the only valuable thing about them are the brands (also intellectual property but not what we are talking about).

I only know VMWare from its days as virtualization software. I would put money on them having had a bunch of patents on the specific techniques they used.

Software patents sometimes work out, sometimes not. If I were king of the world I wouldn't get rid of them but narrow the scope down to protecting specific implementations, none of this "Buying stuff of the internet" pantenting that invested the 00s.

> Big Company A from just cloning Small Company B's product

That's called competition

Wasn't there a whole thing about big tech companies interviewing small companies as if to acquire them and then just cloning the product anyways?

Most small companies don't have patents, or ones that matter.

No, not in the software industry. Nothing VMware has in pure IP is that special. I can’t think of any of the big tech companies that even use VMware.

Broadcom is paying for the huge enterprise customer base, sales and support connections, mindshare, and engineering org that has proven adaptable to market demands.

> I can’t think of any of the big tech companies that even use VMware.

I would be shocked if every single 'big' tech company didn't use _some_ vmware product _somewhere_ internally. Their software portfolio is a hell of a lot bigger than just the actual vmware product. Example: where I work we use the vmware product Carbon Black for 'endpoint protection', which as I understand it is virus scanning + some amount of port monitoring.

Such a silicon valley HN comment holy shit.

https://www.vmware.com/company/customers/index.html#

Calm down. I’m talking about Google and Amazon in the hypervisor space (which is about the only interesting IP VMware has). Everything VMware makes can generally be done better in-house by tech companies. VMware’s business proposition is managing all of that cruft when it’s not an area of relevance to your business.

It’s like saying Taco Bell has incredible culinary secrets because it’s so widespread.

> I can’t think of any of the big tech companies that even use VMware.

You are quite wrong…

Uh, except everyone that uses VMWare, which is a massive list.

You don't have to think, you can just browse their list, filter by industry, and have fun as you will:

https://www.vmware.com/company/customers/index.html#

Note that this is just a tiny subset of companies that use VMWare (those that have writeups). I've worked for some very big companies that used it but aren't listed.

Out of the five Big Tech companies (FAANG - Netflix + MS), three have their own cloud divisions and one (Apple) does partially use AWS and Azure.

Consolidation in mature markets inevitably happens.

...absent functioning antitrust legislation, yes.

Is there an antitrust case to be made here? Antitrust means a lot more than just 'big company'.

You seem to be asking if there is a case within current legislation. Whereas the parent is suggesting that more cases ought to be covered by future stricter legislation (which could at least in principle be as simple as "big company").

So you put a cap in it, what happens, mitosis?

I’m not sure it would have that big of an effect. It would certainly help in some areas like search and social networks though.

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