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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Antitrust. Break up big tech next election cycle.

The big companies are suffocating entire industries because their scale is so large that they don't even need to profit in many of their businesses. They just enter new markets, snuff out the competition, and add eyeballs to their platforms.

Amazon is a movie studio and a grocery store and a primary healthcare provider.

Google owns every ingress to the web on every pane of glass.

Apple taxes and polices all activity happening on a platform they tightly control and that due to economies of scale you can't launch a competitor. Their duopoly partner in crime is complicit.

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Thanks to big tech:

When a German citizen listens to German music released by a German record label, Google or Apple takes a cut and transfers it to America.

When a French company advertises on social media to French citizens, Google or Facebook takes a cut and transfers it to America.

When a Swedish citizen installs a mobile app from a Swedish company, Google or Apple takes a cut and transfers it to America.

When a British citizen makes a purchase from a British company, Visa or Mastercard takes a cut and transfers it to America.

When a Danish company buys a PC, Intel/AMD and Microsoft take a cut and transfer it to America.

And when an Italian company needs hosting services, there's a good chance Amazon, Google or Microsoft will be providing them - transferring the money to America.

Have you ever considered that so long as it's an American monopoly, bringing in fistfuls of cash in from abroad, there's no need to break up the goose that lays the golden egg?

> When a German citizen listens to German music released by a German record label, Google or Apple takes a cut and transfers it to America.

Unless you are using Apple Music or buying from iTunes. This isn’t true.

> Have you ever considered that so long as it's an American monopoly, bringing in fistfuls of cash in from abroad, there's no need to break up the goose that lays the golden egg?

And yet the Democrats tried to do exactly that and wondered why BigTech that was supportive of them until as recently as 2020 ran screaming to Trump.

No one outside of the tech bubble put anywhere in their priority stack to “break up BigTech”

> And yet the Democrats tried to do exactly that

Some people among the Democrats said some things. Politicians say a lot of things.

It's actions that count. And in terms of actions, there hasn't been any meaningful antitrust enforcement since the Clinton administration.

Lina Khan went after most of the BigTech companies. They also didn’t support American companies when it came to some of the craziness from mostly the EU.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Spotify’s bad business model. Spotify hasn’t allowed in app purchases for almost a decade

Amazon doesn’t wield much power at all in the grocery industry or the movie streaming industry.

Because Apple and Google are abusing their power to tax and dictate the shape of all modern digital businesses.

Apple doesn’t “tax” Spotify. Spotify doesn’t allow in app purchasing, neither does Netflix. Apple is not getting 30% from Spotify

I think the big entities you should be directing your anger towards are the big media companies, not tech companies. When it comes to streaming, Media companies have the Tech companies balls in a vice grip.

Yep, big tech sounds like they are in a dire position right now /s

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