[HN Gopher] Google's Secret Initiative - "Project Hug"
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Google's Secret Initiative - "Project Hug"
Author : radmuzom
Score : 606 points
Date : 2021-08-21 10:28 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| Santosh83 wrote:
| Cartelization is nothing unexpected. Just like governments cut
| all sorts of deals to form geopolitical blocks, so do leading
| companies in any industry. It's win-win for them. As for
| "regulators", they tend to drag their feet for a long time, take
| even longer to build a case, and after all that time, their
| action tends to be more show than substance. I wonder why that
| is.
|
| True decentralization is impossible without drastic change in
| human nature. We can only replace global powers with smaller,
| regional powers, or a single power with multiple ones. Despite
| cartelization it is better than absolute control wielded by one
| entity.
|
| Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not
| figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in
| home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and
| instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps
| established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign
| govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well.
| [deleted]
| Sabinus wrote:
| This is clear anti-competitive behavior. Unregulated capitalism
| is dangerous capitalism.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I wish we did a better job facing this fact as adults. This is
| the Achilles heel of Capitalism and ignoring it or making
| excuses only hurts us all. I love Apple hardware, I love
| Android, but I also love Capitalism and having choice. Living
| under this economic system requires responsibility to regulate
| these things.
| gbrindisi wrote:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1428415009860714500.html
| jayd16 wrote:
| Does any of this surprise anyone? I thought the custom deals with
| large companies was common knowledge. So were the pack in deals
| with Gapps and Play store. What is the new info here?
| lucasverra wrote:
| That is why we need trustless / censorship resistant platforms
| like "regular" web or the yet to be proven web 3 (led by
| ethereum)
| grishka wrote:
| No. We just need two things:
|
| - it should be illegal to lock down a device against its end
| user
|
| - governments should stop protecting companies and helping
| prevent adversarial interoperability
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| > governments should stop protecting companies and helping
| prevent adversarial interoperability
|
| Do you realize that given our current laws in the US, that
| this is pretty much impossible?
| grishka wrote:
| As a person from a country that's not US... Everything
| being centralized around the US and other countries
| basically having no sovereignty is also a huge problem.
|
| When two companies collude, it's illegal. When countries do
| the same, it's perfectly legal and is called a "trade
| agreement" because it's them who write laws.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I've grown pretty pessimistic about the prospects of the Internet
| as a motor for entrepreneurship. Today it is theoretically still
| "free" but wherever you go you'll find gatekeepers like Google,
| Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft that keep a tight grip on
| who is visible on the net and who can offer a service or software
| product on a given platform.
|
| In my view, the market dominance of the big players has led to a
| new type of hidden taxation and a "winner takes all" Internet
| economy. Almost all digital markets require you to pass through
| large companies to get visibility or offer your services, and
| they get increasingly good at extracting every bit of profit you
| make. This really needs to stop.
| tomComb wrote:
| That's why the web is so important. When the proprietary
| platforms get the upper hand you get eg. Apple taking a 50% cut
| off revenue in their news app.
| adventured wrote:
| It's simultaneously true that big tech is too big (and set to
| get far bigger yet) and there is no scenario where you can
| escape being under the influence/impact of platform owners.
|
| Want to advertise? You had to go through radio stations with
| license monopolies. Or maybe you had to go through a newspaper,
| historically there were usually one or two that thrived per
| city, and usually one dominant super paper in a given city (2-3
| times larger than its smaller competitor). Or maybe you had to
| go through one of the few big broadcast networks (ABC, CBS,
| NBC, Fox). Just a few behemoths dominanted television.
|
| Want to transport goods? Say hello to the railroad oligopoly,
| going back more than a century now.
|
| Maybe you needed a lot of vehicles for your business, circa the
| 1950-1970s. Say hello to the GM and Ford oligopoly, your
| dependency.
|
| Maybe you wanted to buy airplanes, it's 1971 and you're
| starting a version of Fedex. How many choices do you have? How
| many suppliers are there in terms of dependency?
|
| You want to get something on a store shelf across the country?
| Let me introduce you to Sears, Pennys, Kmart, Woolworth, WT
| Grant, Genesco, Allied, McCrory's, May. That's 50 years ago,
| they owned retail.
|
| The new boss, same as the old boss (today some of them are even
| bigger, that much is true). You can't escape it. Unless you own
| all the platforms, you will always have to go through other
| platforms, other gate keepers. The best you can hope for is to
| intelligently diversify your risk exposure, so it takes more
| than one of them to cripple you.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > maybe you had to go through a newspaper, historically there
| were usually one or two that thrived per city, and usually
| one dominant super paper
|
| what you 're describing is NOT a monopoly, because the
| winners were local, physical separation prevented
| monopolization, and crucially there was more than one
| dominant player. There is a whole new world on the internet
| where for every verb there is one, single monopoly for the
| entire world. In the end , one can look at the money flow:
| How many people were employed in newspapers vs how many
| people are in googleplex
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Want to transport goods? Say hello to the railroad
| oligopoly, going back more than a century now.
|
| And regulated as a common carrier[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The endgame of entrepreneurship is monopoly, if possible. The
| (western) internet has no physical barriers so is infinitely
| scalable so it got monopolized very very quickly. Whether those
| monopolies are forming a cartel to prevent new entrants is
| another matter; it might well be the case that it is now closed
| for new entrants. There is some innovation in things like
| decentralized finance which are inherently orthogonal to the
| current state. There is also the old internet which could never
| be centralized, it's still out there but it's unmonetizeable
| now.
|
| If there is going to be competition for the big players, it
| will come when closed markets like Russia or China develop
| enough to threaten them. It is possible that Europe at some
| point will also follow their example.
| Sargos wrote:
| Thankfully I think Web3 (dapps made from composable protocols
| collaboratively developed by everyone) will form strong
| competition and maybe even replace Google in the next 5-10
| years. Services like social media, finance, gaming,
| productivity, etc will all be interoperable by default
| providing a seamless user experience and be built by millions
| of developers around the world. Each company coding only what
| they specialize in and being built on top of existing protocols
| leads to massive efficiency and what looks like exponential
| growth.
|
| Tech monopolies will likely fade away over time like the early
| industrial revolution monopolies did just at an accelerated
| pace due to things working at internet speed. Even Google can't
| compete with a decentralized worldwide developer network.
| ozten wrote:
| What are the more successful DAO or dapps we can study, to
| evaluate this model?
| Sargos wrote:
| An example I find interesting and easy to explain is Pool
| Together which is a no-loss lottery where you can buy $10
| in lottery tickets for a chance at a $3,000 weekly prize
| but if you don't win your tickets still work for the next
| round and even 10 rounds from now you can withdraw your
| full $10. It works by putting everyone's money in the same
| account which earns ~6% interest savings account and the
| winner actually gets the accrued interest as prize money.
|
| This project was built by a team of maybe a dozen people
| but is rather complex and needs a stablecoin (DAI from
| MakerDAO), an interest bearing account (Compound), an
| account system (Ethereum public/private key), and the
| running of the protocol (the smart contacts are run free
| for devs by Ethereum and users pay to perform actions) to
| make the system work. All of these dependencies took other
| teams years to build and the small Pool Together team
| leveraged that to make a cool little product by just adding
| a small amount on top. The ability for small teams to make
| functional products which can then be used by others to
| quickly spin up their own experiments and products is
| incredibly exciting to me and it's a much better method of
| development then the traditional closed vertically
| integrated tech giant where innovation is limited by
| bureaucracy.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 6% interest paid by who?
| Sargos wrote:
| Compound is a lending protocol so people take out
| collateralized loans out and pay an interest rate on that
| loan which is paid to the lending pool the money is
| deposited into.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Is there an example that is not related to gambling or
| moving around money? As it doesn't seem to be very
| productive in countries where online gambling is
| restricted or regulated...
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I'm pretty pessimistic about decentralized (blockchain-based)
| apps as well, almost all projects have been overtaken by
| speculators and fraud seems to be rampant, so I would not go
| near any of those. There really is no need to use blockchain
| technology to build decentralized infrastructure, most
| Internet 1.0 protocols are decentralized & federated and none
| of them relies on cryptocurrencies or a blockchain to
| function. So, sorry, but for me this whole movement is BS and
| seems more like a pyramid scheme than a real effort to build
| something useful.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Even Google can 't compete with a decentralized worldwide
| developer network._
|
| Google literally built their business on a decentralized
| worldwide developer network.
| zpeti wrote:
| I think this is just the natural evolution of any market.
| Unfortunately it leads to this. There's not much competition in
| the railroad market, or the telco market anymore, which used to
| be massive spaces for innovation.
|
| There are two options:
|
| - We have to wait for the next technological revolution.
|
| - It is simply just more costly to be an entrepreneur. It's not
| about throwing together a website or app, it's much more costly
| to break through the existing monopolies. While you can still
| make a website or app yourself, I think you do need more and
| more capital to market it.
| ant6n wrote:
| There's competition in the railroad market in the EU,because
| they want there to be a market. In particular they mandate
| separation of infrastructure and operation, and force rail
| infrastructure owners to give open access to all (for a toll,
| which has to be the same for all operators). Once you can't
| use infrastructure as a moat, competition is much more
| possible.
|
| The US which only regulates rail safety but not the market,
| has a bunch of local monopolies and calls that a market,
| being in total denial that markets need to be regulated to
| actually allow competition.
| the-dude wrote:
| Are there any indications that a market for rail is
| actually more efficient?
| beckman466 wrote:
| > Larry Page told Steve Jobs in 2010 that "There will always be
| places we compete, and places where we cooperate."
|
| > After another meeting between Apple and Google senior
| executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is
| that we work as if we are one company."
|
| > That is a damning little piece of evidence.
|
| Looks like it's exactly the meritocracies Google and Apple claim
| to be, nothing monopoly-like to be found here... /s
| draw_down wrote:
| And as we all know, everything between Google and Apple has
| remained exactly as it was in 2010
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| We have here smoking gun evidence _that both Google and Apple
| themselves_ see themselves as a monopoly, see them commenting
| about how they "essentially function as one company", yet I
| absolutely guarantee we will get a torrent of comments denying
| that in this thread, I am sure with a lot of smug pasting of
| dictionary entries.
| VelkaMorava wrote:
| already happening. It's disgusting.
| arkitaip wrote:
| As always when mega corps are involved we have to at least
| entertain the idea that their employees and agents come out in
| full force to defend the actions of the corp. Anything else
| would be dangerously naive.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Thu Aug 19 17:54:55 +0000 2021 1428415009860714500
|
| https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371/pho...
|
| https://t.co/gq0m2tIVry
|
| Google has a secret initiative originally called "Project Hug"
| that offers app makers like Activision Blizzard special treatment
| in exchange for paying the 30% fee and being quiet about it.
|
| Read Twitter without a Javascript or browser:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491
| spicybright wrote:
| tbh, isn't it completely in google's right to do this? It's not a
| regulated market, it's google's store.
| feanaro wrote:
| In addition what everyone else responded, even if it turns out
| to currently be legal, it doesn't mean it _should_ be legal.
| lozenge wrote:
| That's what the lawsuit is about. "Epic's complaint alleges
| that Google's payment restrictions on the Play Store constitute
| a monopoly, and thus a violation of both the Sherman Act and
| California's Cartwright Act."
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Maybe google should move to one year exclusivity on the apps
| in their App Store?
| seniorivn wrote:
| > Larry Page told Steve Jobs in 2010 that "There will always be
| places we compete, and places where we cooperate."
|
| > After another meeting between Apple and Google senior
| executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is
| that we work as if we are one company."
|
| if it will be proven in court it's a firm base for anti
| monopoly/cartel case
| samhw wrote:
| Honestly, I don't think that's going far enough. That "our
| vision is that we work as if we are one company" line
| couldn't be a better basis for an antitrust case if they were
| literally _trying to_ incriminate themselves.
| sulam wrote:
| That line, bereft of context, is being used as if the two
| companies don't compete in many many markets. Do you really
| think that the original context was as broad as the entire
| company's operations? Or even the respective phone
| ecosystems? They clearly compete with each other heavily.
| luckylion wrote:
| Maybe they aren't competing, but merely simulate
| competition in many markets. Why isn't the app-store-tax
| getting lower through heavy competition?
|
| In many cases, it looks like there's some mutual
| competition-simulation going. Google launches Google+ to
| pretend Facebook isn't the only social network, Microsoft
| launches Bing so Google can say "we don't have a monopoly
| on search", Google finances Firefox to say the same about
| browsers, Apple creates Apple Maps to pretend Google Maps
| has competition etc, but they always seem to put in no
| more than the minimum effort required.
|
| Of course, they could be honestly trying to compete and
| they just suck at doing those things their competitors do
| really well. It just looks suspicious, and quotes like
| that add weight to that impression.
| sulam wrote:
| Yes, all capitalism is just a big agreement to channel
| all the assets to wealthy people. The only one not in on
| the secret is you.
| [deleted]
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Also, that line may be the only evidence... depending on
| who said it and in what context, it is very unlikely that
| a plaintiff would use a single instance like this as the
| basis for their entire case.
| gorwell wrote:
| Don't Be Evil.
|
| Project Hug.
|
| Your antennae should go up whenever you hear phrasing like this.
| kook_throwaway wrote:
| Who redacted this in the first place, and how would it have been
| sealed? Much of it is clearly redacted for PR reasons, and I
| don't really understand how there could be any excuse for keeping
| it hidden.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I think the lawyers from Google got to redact what parts of the
| filing should be available to the public. And yeah, there's no
| trade secrets here, just clear evidence of horrible abuses.
| Glad the judge ordered it unredacted.
|
| It's not just about the public knowing: Legislators and
| regulators aren't privy to non-public judicial information, and
| this is key evidence that Congress needs to pass strong laws
| that break the backs of Apple and Google.
| jakecopp wrote:
| > After another meeting between Apple and Google senior
| executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is
| that we work as if we are one company."
|
| ...
|
| > This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of
| Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores
| on the smartphones they sell and service.
|
| Insane reading.
| ctvo wrote:
| The new FTC chair, Lina Khan, read this like Birdman, rubbing
| her hands.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| That's it, right? That's the game? There's no way the DoJ
| doesn't have a slam-dunk case with that one quote.
| [deleted]
| Andrex wrote:
| I can see the justification for this in Android's early life.
| Every Android phone having its own app store would have been a
| disaster for everyone: users, developers, Google, and even
| telcos in the long run.
|
| Hard to believe, but Google Play (nee Android Market) was
| pretty damn shabby until about 2013 or so.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >> 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival
| app stores
|
| Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default
| SE. Despite Adwords' incredible profitability, Yahoo & MSFT's
| experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard
| and earning $0 profits... Their Revenues @ were far lower than
| proportional to their market share, and costs are the opposite.
| Better to just take your share of monopoly profits than work
| hard competing, unless you expect to win _their_ place.
|
| This stuff is the norm. Maybe we should switch to being
| surprised (delighted?) when these guys compete at all.
|
| ^https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c..
| .
| edouard-harris wrote:
| > Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its
| default SE.
|
| It's actually between $8-12 billion now. [1]
|
| > Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was
| working very hard and earning $0 profits.
|
| This is an exaggeration though. MSFT made nearly $8 billion
| in revenue last year from search (mostly Bing), and the
| business has naturally high margins so it would be extremely
| surprising if it was unprofitable on an operating basis. [2]
| The reality is that search is so huge that it's worth
| competing in, even if the incumbent has 30X your market
| share.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428416856038072321
|
| [2] https://backlinko.com/bing-users
| dalbasal wrote:
| >>business' has naturally high margins
|
| $8bn in revenue might not mean profitable. Google certainly
| spend a lot more than this on search and advertising, and
| well... software scales.
|
| In any case, whether they make $1bn in profit, losses or
| something in between... This is <1% of market _profits_.
| Apple is making $8bn-$12bn, all profit, just on defaults.
| moondistance wrote:
| Large companies have massive governance issues. When you get that
| large, you end up with an endless stream of people nattering on
| to compromise values for profits. Eventually, leadership gets
| sick of fighting or misses the impact of a big change. It's all
| downwards from there (the next piece of garbage in the room
| appears more quickly).
|
| I think the only way out of this for companies - and governments
| - is to build AGIs and put them in charge.
|
| I realize this will sound radical today, but we are getting
| closer and closer.
|
| If we can carve a path where the AGIs see us as similar to
| parents, and we "teach" them similar to our kids, I can see how
| this could all work out (writing about this elsewhere).
|
| My two cents.
| mard wrote:
| In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization" under
| Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their operating
| system.
|
| 20 years later, Apple and Google bundle not only their browsers,
| but whole irreplaceable app stores with no legal consequences.
|
| I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from
| the common sense standpoint.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >>I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical
| from the common sense standpoint.
|
| Let's make a point of starting here. There's room for the
| legalistic standpoint, especially if we're trying to understand
| legal processes... but this isn't a law forum. It's near
| impossible to discuss antitrust usefully from a mostly-
| legalistic perspective. The laws, precedents, legal doctrines
| and economic doctrines they relate to are extremely patchy,
| flimsy and often barely exist.
|
| I think a core part of the problem is a weak, badly grounded
| antitrust framework in the first place. Key definitions like
| "monopoly" use contradictory conceptual frameworks, from
| different eras. Generalizing from one instance to another is
| difficult. A lot of key concepts don't have definitions at all,
| or really wishy washy ones.
|
| I think the nature of monopolies has a lot to do with this. One
| possible definition of monopoly is an singular market entity...
| IE not generalizable, by definition. Are courts supposed to be
| punishing violations, or structuring markets and doing
| industrial policy? Are they supposed to be regulating
| monopolies, preventing them, or declaring their existence so
| that a different set of regulations kick in? Is monopoly a
| normal occurrence in market maturity, or market failure?
|
| At some point, Peter Thiel gave away the game when he said that
| "monopoly is the goal." If you read microeconomics basics, but
| conceptualize it as software companies instead of a auto
| manufacturing... you tend to think of monopoly, rather than
| commoditization as the equilibrium point that's never quite
| reached. Successful tech companies don't try to make money by
| competing in a level field with lots of competitors. That's for
| appstore app developers, salesforce plugin consultants, spotify
| artists and such.
|
| The whole premise of the tech miracle is that monopolies are
| the bull case. How else to expect/justify/realize tech company
| valuations.
|
| Imagine pitching an investor like Thiel on your idea to spend a
| billion dollars making youtube content for ad revenue? That's
| all wrong. Your bull case is that you'll temporarily
| profitable, if successful. Even if you're very profitable, its
| temporary. There are zillions of youtubers and squillions who
| could be. They'll copy you, or maybe your content will just get
| stale over time. A youtube policy change could wipe you out. In
| the turbulence of youtube's free market for online videos,
| profits don't last at scale. To get Thiel's attention, you need
| to go for your own monopoly.
|
| "Commoditize your compliments" has long been a tech motto.
| Well... what's the corrolorary? Monopolize your market segment.
|
| Commoditize PCs. Monopolize the OS.
|
| Commoditize smartphones. Monopolize the OS.
|
| Monopolize consoles, Commoditize games. Platform/Content.
| Market/Vending. Users/Advertising. Data/Advertising.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| > In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization"
| under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their
| operating system.
|
| You're forgetting how that ended. Remember, the DOJ threw the
| book at Microsoft. It was an intensely publicized trial, with
| pretty much all the country hating Microsoft and Bill Gates.
| Waffling over the word "ask", the infamous "knife the baby"
| email, the Halloween documents and Embrace-Extend-Extinguish.
| That all came out as part of the DOJ antitrust suit. It's hard
| to remember how visceral the hate for this was. During the
| height of that, The Simpsons decided to portray Bill Gates on
| the show, not positively [0]. A game developer released a title
| called "Microshaft Winblows 98" to positive reviews and very
| good sales [1].
|
| The judge makes their final verdict. Microsoft clearly stepped
| over the line, there were no easy answers. They were too big a
| company, the only possible remedy is to break them up. Into at
| least two companies, but probably more; at the very least, the
| apps and OS needed to be split up into the "Baby Bills", they
| were going to be called.
|
| Then George W. Bush comes in, guts the DOJ to a fifth of their
| size, and basically all but tells them "never do that again,
| please". The case quickly and silently went to appeal, where it
| was reduced from "Microsoft needs to be broken up" into a small
| fine [2]. And after other tragedies in the early 2000s, the
| nation quickly forgot.
|
| So, no, despite the fanfare, despite the judgement and ruling,
| the DOJ antitrust case had very limited effect on reality. And
| the message from above seems to be "try that again, and get
| your budget demolished even more". That's, uh, why antitrust
| isn't a thing anymore.
|
| Except, well, it did have one effect. In the midst of
| everything, Bill Gates was basically forced to resign and go
| into philanthropy to clear their image, resulting in Ballmer
| taking over. Some believe that was the true punishment for
| Microsoft.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_SZRhWr1s [2]
| https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/bush-administration-a...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| This kind of glosses over the fact that they were found
| guilty of anticompetitive behavior in the EU.
|
| They got a massive fine and were and forced to do things like
| open up the client server protocol used between Windows
| Domain Controllers and Windows Clients.
|
| They came pretty close to being forced to open up the Office
| document formats, but the EU backed down from that one.
| macintux wrote:
| People both inside and outside the company have also asserted
| that Microsoft was quite gunshy, both during and after the
| trial. It seems to have had a pretty dramatic impact on their
| behavior.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| The law sees it as they have been paid and blackmailed to see
| it.
|
| There was a report yesterday that showed Apple's lawyers
| threatening to pull out funding of a minority education school
| if the state considered any sort of App store laws.
| mercora wrote:
| do you have a source available?
| wayneftw wrote:
| https://www.imore.com/apple-used-intimidation-and-lot-
| money-...
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Wouldn't that be Apple's prerogative? There's no reason to do
| business in a state that's hostile to your interests or
| pursuits. That's not blackmail anymore than the attempted
| Hollywood boycott over Georgia's abortion laws a few years
| ago. There are plenty of well-documented violations of
| integrity to accuse Apple of, but using its philanthropic
| investments as a leverage isn't one of them.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical
| from the common sense standpoint.
|
| Regulatory capture.
| alex_young wrote:
| Not only does Apple include its own browser, it forces other
| browsers to use Safari under the hood on iOS.
| JCWasmx86 wrote:
| Ironically this is the only thing preventing a chromium
| monopoly with probably >90% of marketshare (Although this
| restriction is still not that great for the user)
| Xelbair wrote:
| so if this restriction was gone, it would make everything
| more sane for customer, while finally dealing with chromium
| monopoly.
|
| sounds like a win-win to me.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| How would a chromium monopoly be a win (for anyone but
| Google)?
| tyingq wrote:
| I think the poster was thinking it would make Google a
| clear monopoly, making an anti-trust case easier to
| pursue.
| Xelbair wrote:
| exactly this.
| tpush wrote:
| The tying claim eventually got dropped from the case, though,
| since the govt couldn't prove that the harm to competition
| outweighed the benefits of having a browser built in to the OS.
| darkwater wrote:
| Not in Europe though. We had a WinXP version without IE and a
| prompt at first install to choose the desired browser
| Y_Y wrote:
| I was really excited about the "browser ballot" when that
| judgement came through. In the end though it appeared on
| tragically few installs. I never even saw it in the wild.
|
| It was a mess for other reasons too, but it felt at the
| time like it represented a turning tide against anti-
| competitive behaviour in software.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| You can only explain this by corruption. I think three letter
| agencies slept on that one...
|
| Edit: Not sure why accusation of corruption is downvoted? It's
| a very difficult crime to prove and requires resources to
| pursue, so there is no appetite to prosecute. Big companies and
| civil service know that. If these companies pay off developers,
| they would have no reason to pay anyone else in their way and
| that would unlikely result in any consequences.
| woofie11 wrote:
| Marketshare. The law sees marketshare.
|
| * Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is no
| monopoly.
|
| * Microsoft had no effective competitors.
|
| You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for
| a stronger case.
| realusername wrote:
| > * Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is
| no monopoly.
|
| [source needed]. The only tariff change Apple ever made was
| ... due to a real threat of an anti-trust lawsuit. And Google
| followed straight away.
|
| I can't recall any competition between both companies, they
| just have their own distinct market.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| They both offer a highly integrated platform for mobile
| computing. One offers devices as well, the other relegates
| that part to other companies, but anyone in the market for
| a mobile phone today effectively will pick between those
| two options that do pretty much the same things with
| similar UX. That totally looks like competition to me.
| realusername wrote:
| In theory I do agree, competition between both could
| exist. In practice though it does not happen. There's
| some pretty clear market collusion.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| The law is interpreted according to different standards over
| time. NPR has a really interesting 3 part podcast series that
| explains how antitrust laws have been applied over time.
| Marketshare was the significant metric at one time but more
| recent judges have used impact/harm to consumers based on
| price. Under recent case law, if the consumer is still able
| to get the good cheaply, you can basically own the entire
| market.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/anti.
| ..
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is no
| monopoly.
|
| They effectively have a monopoly over their customers _from
| other customers_ and can leverage that monopoly to control
| their vendors.
|
| And Google and Apple secretly working together as "one
| company" literally defines trust behavior:
|
| 'After another meeting between Apple and Google senior
| executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision
| is that we work as if we are one company."'
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| In this very document you have Google and Apple claiming that
| they effectively _do not compete_ in terms of app store
| pricing policies.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| I've once worked for a large corporation that got hit hard by
| antitrust. Think a few tens of billions of dollars. Why? A
| seller was caught giving freebies if they bought their
| products. That's it. That's all it took.
|
| I know because due to that incident we had to follow online
| formation every god damn month about antitrust. You don't
| have to have a "monopoly" to trigger antitrust legislation.
| The mere mention of "deals" or "cooperation" or
| "understanding" in the same conversation that involves
| competitor can be enough evidence to cause huge trouble.
| smokeymorning wrote:
| >Marketshare. The law sees marketshare.
|
| As I understand it, the law sees detrimental effects on
| consumers.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| Google and Apple have been caught colluding before on trying
| to keep software engineer salaries low.
|
| They also conveniently had the exact same app store fee for
| years. Doesn't make much sense if they were actually
| competing with each other
| woofie11 wrote:
| That's actually quite exactly the behavior you expect from
| a competitive duopoly. In a duopoly, I know that if I lower
| prices, you'll match. Operating at the Nash Equilibrium
| isn't anticompetitive.
|
| I'm not disagreeing with the conclusion -- I agree that
| they are colluding -- but the logic isn't right.
| VelkaMorava wrote:
| I'll tell you a secret. Game theory and economics is
| mostly voodoo wrapped up in statistical mumbo-jumbo. In
| other words, if economists could explain what is
| happening, why are they poor and have to go to work to
| make living?
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| > have been caught colluding before on trying to keep
| software engineer salaries low.
|
| Wow they are really bad at this then. 200-400k without even
| requiring a college degree is pretty wild. It's about what
| my brother made as a doctor and he had an undergraduate
| degree, medical school, an internship, a residency
| program...
| ren_engineer wrote:
| Without the price collusion engineers might make
| 600-800K. Not sure why you are defending a Trillion
| dollar company illegally working with another Trillion
| dollar company to lower worker wages. The reason software
| engineer salaries remain high despite big tech collusion
| is that startups not in on the deal were willing to pay
| higher, which forces big tech to continue paying for
| talent.
|
| not sure why doctor wages are brought up, supply and
| demand determines prices. Google and Apple tried to
| artificially distort the labor market
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I judge compensation based on what value people bring to
| society. I look around at the world created by software
| engineers and I'm not impressed. For every dystopian
| nightmare being foisted upon us, you have an "engineer"
| saying "Yes sir and what else would you like us to do to
| them?" to their higher ups at these trillion dollar
| companies. I'm sure hitman pays well also but I don't
| have to root for them to get higher wages.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| The people that are archetechting the dystopian nightmare
| are capturing the excess value here, not sure why you
| think that's somehow a better situation.
| steelframe wrote:
| Every former co-worker who I've talked to when they left
| Google did so for at least a 20% bump in total comp. The
| few Googlers I've talked to who left for Apple got equal
| or even a little less total comp.
|
| Anecdotal, but once you get some years of Big Tech
| experience under your belt, I do think you become
| comparatively more valuable to smaller companies.
| dalbasal wrote:
| "The Law" is pretty patchy, inconsistent and self
| contradictory. A lot of them are old. A lot of definitions
| are sketchy. There aren't many precedents, and the normative
| precedent of what doesn't get prosecuted is vast and
| confusing.
|
| >> You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes
| for a stronger case.
|
| The realities of being a primary OS, App Store, or browser
| vendor today are both more significant, and more well known
| than in the 90s. They have financial consequences many times
| greater.
|
| I don't see how you can come to an intelligible concept of
| monopoly, market power and such with a general, legal-
| friendly theory of monopoly. The logic needs to be reversed.
|
| NEW UNDERPANTS PLAN:
|
| 0. Forget about proving a monopoly exists to strengthen your
| case that X is acting as a trust.
|
| 1. Use evidence that X is acting as a trust, as to make the
| case that monopoly exists instead.
|
| 2. ???
|
| 3. Profit.
|
| The problem is that we don't have a step 2. What happens when
| markets mature into an monopoly dynamic? We need an answer,
| because some have.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| They do indeed compete but doesn't Apple have a monopoly on
| IOS with it's app store and Google on Android with PlayStore?
|
| At least on Android you can install you own market if you're
| so inclined. I have yet to find an alternative app store for
| ios though(might be just me not knowing where to look
| though).
|
| Edit: Forgot to add that when you're talking about Apple vs G
| I don't see it as 1 big "smartphone" market. It's 2 different
| ones. Apple hardware running iOS vs generic hardware running
| Android.
| moogly wrote:
| From the very Twitter thread:
|
| "Our vision is that we [Apple and Google] work as if we are
| one company."
| [deleted]
| Revenant-15 wrote:
| What? Antitrust isn't solely about marketshare and having a
| monopoly. You can behave in anticompetitive ways that break
| antitrust laws without having a monopoly.
| IncRnd wrote:
| You should read the actual page before you comment!
|
| From the article: After another meeting between Apple and
| Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed:
| "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I want to know how opulent the celebration at the
| plaintiff's lawyer's office was when they found that.
| IncRnd wrote:
| I can't even guess. That could be a huge factor.
| zarzavat wrote:
| What is Apple's market share for tablets in the US?
| crazygringo wrote:
| The different is crystal clear. Microsoft was considered a
| monopoly. You really had no good choice but Windows.
|
| Apple and Google aren't. You have a choice between iOS and
| Android, _both_ vibrant and thriving.
|
| It really is that simple. And it's not just the legal but
| common sense definition of monopoly too -- do you control the
| market or not?
|
| Now you might have _other_ criticisms of app stores, but basing
| them on the Microsoft-monopoly-argument isn 't going to be
| helpful or useful. You're going to need a different legal
| foundation for that.
| bobmaxup wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly
| titzer wrote:
| The monopoly criterion is so outmoded. Anti-trust laws were
| enacted to counter organizations that cornered basic things
| like steel, railroads, power, communications, etc. 100 years
| ago, almost everything they could imagine was a commodity
| that was easily replaceable.
|
| But app platforms are not commodities. There is considerable
| vendor lock-in, by design. It's not like one just takes an
| iOS app and instantly ports it over to Android when Apple's
| terms no longer suit; there is considerable sunk cost.
| Platforms cleave the market into captive audiences that can
| and are abused.
|
| And what to do if you are little guy who invested everything
| in one of those two platforms and didn't have the foresight
| to write your app in a way that it was easily ported? Well,
| screw you.
|
| So these platforms actually compete with each other to offer
| "value adds" which are really just like traps for vendor
| lock-in.
|
| Anti-trust laws are full of flawed and antiquated reasoning
| that is unable to deal with the realities of the 21st century
| marketplace. And there is precious little understanding of
| these technological issues in courts and legislatures.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization"
| under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their
| operating system.
|
| Microsoft got out of that, though. They barely paid a fine. I
| don't disagree that there are antitrust concerns with all sorts
| of big company behavior. But this is the world we live in. If
| you want the government to regulate this stuff for you you need
| to elect a government willing to do that (or rather, willing to
| appoint judges willing to do that).
| giantrobot wrote:
| A sibling comment pointed out that you're wrong about the
| Microsoft case. You're also seemingly under informed about
| monopolies. One of the core issues in the Microsoft case was
| that they're a _horizontal_ monopoly. Microsoft 's monopoly
| affects all players in the market because a majority of the
| players use Microsoft's OS. They used that leverage against
| Netscape and many other companies.
|
| Apple on the other hand has a _vertical_ monopoly, they control
| the whole stack from hardware to software. While their
| influence _on iPhones_ is absolute, they don 't have outsize
| influence on other phone vendors. Also while popular iPhones
| don't have a majority of really any phone market.
|
| Antitrust considerations are different for different monopoly
| types. Unless a company with a vertical monopoly also had a
| market monopoly position _and_ used that position to actively
| influence /harm other companies it's really hard to legally
| pursue them. You can't fault a company for building their own
| products and trying to make money from selling them. If a
| Samsung washing machine has some cool feature when paired with
| a Samsung dryer, just because Samsung has a monopoly on Samsung
| appliances doesn't mean they're violating some antitrust laws.
|
| If anything Google is in bigger danger of antitrust suits since
| they have a more horizontal position in the phone market. While
| they have token entries in the hardware market they're an OS
| and service provider. Which is likely why they're supportive is
| sideloading and alternate app stores, if they behaved like
| Apple but with a horizontal monopoly the DoJ would be all over
| them.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Apple and Google control almost everything. Horizontally.
| jasode wrote:
| _> In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization"
| under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their
| operating system._
|
| That reductive summary is repeated but isn't accurate.
|
| Microsoft didn't get in trouble for adding its own IE web
| browser to Windows. (Software companies always add new features
| and enhancements.)
|
| The key nuance that triggered the government lawsuit was anti-
| competitive actions such as using obscure/undocumented Windows
| API functions to cripple Netscape and forcing computer
| manufacturers to avoid other software when licensing
| DOS/Windows. All of that is in the long document:
| https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
| gentleman11 wrote:
| What about alerting users that Firefox is potentially malware
| and that edge is safer? That seems extremely anti competitive
| to me
| hliyan wrote:
| On a perhaps related note, I have noticed that a Google Meet
| that consumes just over 1Mbps on Google Chrome consistently
| consumes close to 4Mbps on Firefox. Same settings, same
| window size, same participants. I cannot help but wonder
| whether Chrome has implemented some standard browser feature
| more efficiently, or whether it has special native features
| just for Meets.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| His point still stands, especially on iOS where other
| browsers isn't even allowed and every browser has to be
| basically a reskin of safari. That way others can't add
| features or stability, forcing developers to use the app
| store and give Apple a large cut.
|
| This is much more serious that the Microsoft case.
| cartoonworld wrote:
| Firefox works fine on iOS
| frumper wrote:
| You mean safari with a custom skin
| fooey wrote:
| As the parent post says, Firefox on iOS isn't really
| Firefox. It doesn't run Gecko, it's barely more than a
| skin on top of Safari.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS
|
| https://developer.apple.com/app-
| store/review/guidelines/#2.5...
|
| > 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate
| WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| How much does this really matter to the typical user? I'm
| not using Firefox because it's JS and rendering engine
| are significantly better than webkit. Can't really tell
| the difference honestly. I'm still getting all the other
| features of Firefox that actually distinguish it from
| it's competitors. The so-called skin is more like the
| guts from a user value perspective.
| cartoonworld wrote:
| Question to downvotes:
|
| I've seen people saying in these comments often that you
| have to use safari. I am using ff on my iOS device right
| now, what am I missing?
| fingerlocks wrote:
| The technical reason is that a very powerful system call
| is blocked on iOS that's required to build a custom
| language runtime needed for a browser. This is done to
| increase security of the device. The trade-off is that
| the JavaScript engine and renderer must be shared by all
| browsers on iOS.
|
| _But if you can't tell the difference, does it really
| matter?_
| cartoonworld wrote:
| Thanks, appreciated greatly
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Different times. Today we have more alternatives. iOS users
| have windows and hundreds of linux distros from which to
| choose. Back in 2001 there weren't any real alternatives to
| windows and so it was under greater scrutiny. The walled
| garden of iOS is a choice rather than a prison. Apple can
| get away today with things that Microsoft could not in the
| past. Times change.
| erhk wrote:
| We should still call for breaking up bad busoness
| practices regardles of whether something is a monopoly or
| not. We forget that even considering a monopoly to
| require gov intervention is a somewhat novel concept.
| Right to repair comes to mind, especially for things like
| tractors. Im tired of paying for products and not truly
| owning them in the way I want to. Be it in the literal
| sense or being locked into iOS' walled garden or
| otherwise.
| withinboredom wrote:
| wut
| grishka wrote:
| Desktop OSes aren't alternatives to mobile ones. They
| serve different purposes.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Except when they are. There were windows phones briefly.
| And linux will run on phones. And Android laptops. Such
| choices were not around in 2001. PC users in 2001 would
| have killed for the number of options available to phone
| users today.
|
| The 2001 decision was comparing desktop options at a time
| when they weren't any. Today's mobile users have plenty
| of options, plenty of brands and OSs to choose from.
| grishka wrote:
| Windows Mobile may have had the same kernel as the
| desktop counterpart (but I believe it was heavily
| stripped down), but the userspace was entirely different
| because the usage paradigm is entirely different.
|
| Android is Linux under the hood. It just doesn't use any
| of the cruft that desktop Linux usually has, like Xorg.
| frumper wrote:
| Linux wasn't a viable alternative to windows in 2001 and
| I don't think a Linux phone would be considered a viable
| alternative to google or iOS. There are 2 mobile OS's,
| which admittedly is twice as many as desktop OS's in
| 2001. As for hardware, there were a ton of options on
| 2001, probably more major brands than what phones have
| today, that's not even including mom and pop custom built
| PCs.
| mkotowski wrote:
| > Back in 2001 there weren't any real alternatives to
| windows
|
| - Mac OS X Public Beta (2000)
|
| - SUSE Linux 7.0 (2000)
|
| - Debian 2.2 (2000)
|
| - OpenBSD 2.7 (2000)
|
| - Solaris 8 (2000)
|
| - AmigaOS 3.9 (2000)
|
| - and so on... [0]
|
| Hardly "no alternatives" in my humble opinion.
|
| And in office space, MS-DOS was still a thing for quite
| some time.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_operating_
| systems#...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| None of those had the broad software options of windows.
| Everyday users who wanted to complete office tasks, use
| the internet, and play games were locked into windows.
| (The 2001 ruling also took a while and was based on
| pre-2001 behavior by MS and likely future behavior.)
| VelkaMorava wrote:
| You FAANG apologists are funny. There is a dude
| responding to someother person with "Nobody made people
| buy phones with Android or iOS, so why should those
| companies be punished for that by not allowing them to do
| whatever they want with their platforms".
|
| Well guess what, none of the alternatives to Android and
| iOS phones have the "broad software options" or offer
| anything that could compete with these two systems. So
| what now?
| Forge36 wrote:
| Based on this previous case Apple isn't violating the law
| because they also sold the hardware.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Does it make a difference that Apple _is_ the hardware
| manufacturer, whereas Microsoft just provides the OS for
| PCs in general?
| H8crilA wrote:
| You mean Apple's monopoly position is even stronger
| because they can put roadblocks at the hardware level? :)
| overtonwhy wrote:
| Because the whole device and experience is the product.
| It's not just an OS.
| trhway wrote:
| yep, that was the argument against the rebates and
| disbundling Windows from laptops.
| roenxi wrote:
| The problem with that line of accusation is that Apple
| having a monopoly on the production and maintenance of
| Apple products isn't a very compelling threat.
|
| In a more reasonable market, like smartphones or phones
| in total, Apple just does not have a monopoly. There are
| alternatives.
| danShumway wrote:
| Keep in mind that the words "reasonable market" and
| "alternatives" are doing a lot of work here.
|
| From the linked documents:
|
| > If Android competed with iOS on app transactions, the
| market competition would make Android apps cheaper for
| users and attract developers to launch their apps first
| (or even only) on Android. [...] After a meeting
| involving senior executives of Google and Apple, notes of
| the meeting were exchanged between the two companies. The
| notes reflect: "Our vision is that we work as if we are
| one company."
|
| Epic's lawsuits are alleging that both Apple and Google
| have engaged in anti-competitive behavior here, albeit
| sometimes in different ways. Even bolder, they're
| claiming that Google and Apple engaged cooperative anti-
| competitive behavior that benefited both companies. What
| consumer-ready alternatives exist for users outside of
| Apple and Android? If a developer announces that they're
| building a smartphone game, and that it won't work on
| Android or iOS, do you think it's reasonably possible for
| that developer to make money with that game?
|
| Apple has massive amounts of competitive leverage over
| the smartphone ecosystem; they control the most
| profitable app store. And the vast majority of non-iOS
| phones are running the Google Play Store. In that
| context, locking down the hardware has much bigger
| implications than it would in a truly competitive market.
| I think the question is, do we actually have a
| competitive smartphone market when it comes to smartphone
| app stores and OSes?
| howinteresting wrote:
| Often the measure used for market share is not a linear
| one but a squared one.
|
| By that measure, there is very little competition in the
| smartphone segment--it is highly concentrated and so the
| major players (both Apple and Google) should face greater
| antitrust scrutiny.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirsch
| man...
| amelius wrote:
| Do you think the consumer would have been better off if
| Microsoft was the hardware manufacturer too, back then?
| laurent92 wrote:
| It feels like I could find a line, to rationalize what
| happened or not to MS or Apple.
|
| But in reality, in the wake of 9/11, USA thought it was
| more important to have extremely large companies, and it
| let them grow.
|
| (And MS' EU fine was related to not giving the API doc,
| and perhaps using fines as a political weapon).
|
| Clearly, if US applied the anti-monopoly laws, it would
| shoot its own companies. In my opinion however, no single
| entity should dominate, govt or enterprise, and we must
| parcel large ones to keep competition fair, replacements
| rolling, class mobility high, the american dream possible
| for new entrants and more importantly, so that governance
| of our daily life is regularly given to the next
| generation.
| skohan wrote:
| What does pro-corporate policy have to do with 9/11?
| llampx wrote:
| It marked a shift in thinking and foreign policy
| skohan wrote:
| I don't know, it seems to me there was a continuous trend
| in pro-corporate neoliberal policies you can trace back
| to the 80's or mid-70's.
|
| Can you give any evidence of what changed after 9/11 in
| terms of pro-corporate policy?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "In the wake of 9/11" is lazy writing. Kinda like
| businesses saying "we have crappy service, because of
| COVID."
|
| Antitrust enforcement has more to do with the party in
| power than anything else. The Bush Administration wasn't
| interested in suing businesses, and now the Biden
| Administration is again.
| galleywest wrote:
| Microsoft DOES sell hardware. The Surface series anybody?
| filoleg wrote:
| It does now. The discussion isn't about Microsoft in the
| present time, it is about Microsoft in the time when they
| lost their anti-trust lawsuit.
| adventured wrote:
| > This is much more serious that the Microsoft case.
|
| Even more so when you consider how much larger these
| companies are set to get yet (Google will double in size
| again within ~5-7 years). It's the Microsoft case if
| Microsoft had been allowed to continue to build its power
| out for another 10-15 years unchecked. In the 1990s a
| parade of magazines ran stories about how Microsoft wanted
| to set up a toll road on the Internet, to position itself
| to take a bite out of all ecommerce. They were of course
| meant to be scare stories to garner attention as Microsoft
| wasn't close to accomplishing something like that at that
| point.
|
| And yet, here we are two decades later, Apple and Google
| control two big Internet toll roads and are drastically
| larger and more powerful than Microsoft was in the 1990s.
| IBM was seven times larger than Microsoft in 1997.
| Microsoft of the 1990s looks downright quaint by
| comparison, an emerging big tech company playing at being
| giant (back then there were still far larger and more
| powerful corporations); today, Apple and Google - big tech
| broadly - are the most powerful and largest companies.
| Caterpillar, GE, 3M, General Dynamics, GM, Ford, Honeywell,
| etc look like sad jokes standing next to Apple or Google.
|
| Google for its part has three monopolies which have
| amazingly been left entirely alone: search, YouTube,
| Android. They must have signed one helluva protection deal
| with the intelligence apparatus back when PRISM was getting
| set up, they got a ten year get out of jail free card (it's
| in the interests of the intelligence community to have
| these giant intel-hoovering companies that sprawl and span
| the globe).
| [deleted]
| shagie wrote:
| If apple prevented its licensees for the iPhone to bundle
| Safari rather than another browser... then this would be
| more applicable.
|
| However, Apple _isn 't_ extending its dominance in the
| smart phone area (Apple has 53% market share of mobile
| devices, Microsoft had above 90% market share for intel
| compatible PCs https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-
| courts-findings-f... ) to its licensees for iOS.
|
| Apple not forcing Samsung to bundle Safari on the Samsung
| branded iPhones to the exclusion of Chrome.
|
| Yes, Apple _isn 't_ licensing iOS to others and that's a
| key difference. Furthermore, Apple has half of the market
| dominance that Microsoft had in its day.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Just because they make both iOS and the iPhone doesn't
| mean they get a pass to be anticompetitive on their
| platform.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| They can be anticompetitive on their platform as long as
| their platform doesn't have a lock on the market. So say,
| if you didn't need to buy an iPhone and could buy an
| android instead, and if that actually happened in
| practice, Apple could reasonably argue they didn't have a
| monopoly on the market even if they had a monopoly in
| their own platform.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Not when their platform holds the majority of users in
| the US and when they're colluding with the "competition".
| ryan93 wrote:
| A majority of users choose apple. but they didnt have to
| CrimsonRain wrote:
| Just like the majority of users choose to use Windows
| back in the day? They didn't had to. Linux was always a
| choice.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| 54% is a majority, but its not a vast majority.
|
| > and when they're colluding with the "competition".
|
| Unless you have evidence for that, that's just libel.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Libel? It's directly from the material referenced by the
| tweets that we're talking about:
|
| > 'After another meeting between Apple and Google senior
| executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our
| vision is that we work as if we are one company."'
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Which they already got busted for and had to pay fines
| on. If you mean they are still doing it, then provide
| evidence, don't just assert its true.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Nobody here is talking about things that Apple and Google
| got busted for already. Everything that we're getting
| today is new.
| howinteresting wrote:
| By the HHI, Apple absolutely has a lock on the market.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirsch
| man...
|
| With 53% market share, Apple alone contributes over 0.25
| to the HHI. 0.25 for the _entire market_ is regarded as
| highly concentrated.
| sciprojguy wrote:
| "Samsung Branded iPhones"? This can't possibly be a
| thing.
| inetknght wrote:
| Well, not at the current model with Apple's abusive
| position of manufacturing both the iPhone and iOS and
| Safari.
| Xelbair wrote:
| which is basically nothing compared to google/apple of
| today.They are basically forcing you to use them as a middle-
| man for any app you want. While getting a cut from all
| transactions.
|
| Non-google app stores cannot automatically update aps, side-
| loading is hidden in menus behind scary warnings.
|
| IOS forcing you to use safari no matter what, and there is no
| way to side-load apps, nor any non-apple app stores.
|
| chrome de facto sets web standards, giving them slight edge
| over other browsers - and they do use chrome specific APIs to
| cripple other browsers - like YouTube working worse on
| Firefox due that reason.
|
| And that's even without taking into the consideration all the
| tracking in form of telemetry on the devices, coupled with
| their own ads markets.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Apple have undocumented instructions now let alone APIs
| dekhn wrote:
| you're mixing up the details of the MSFT lawsuit.
|
| Also, there's nothing antitrust about bundling web DLLs in an
| OS, or using the web shell for applications. That's what a
| Chromebook did.
|
| What MSFT did was abuse its monopoly position to take advantage
| of other companies and customers.
| mard wrote:
| Fair enough. Merely bundling some software was not a
| violation by itself, but that bundling was also additionally
| reinforced with "concerted series of actions designed to
| protect the applications barrier to entry", which caused
| "consumer harm by distorting competition" [1].
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-
| findings-f...
| Andrex wrote:
| The MS decision got gutted on appeal, which merely emboldened
| the monopolistic practices which developed since the dot-com
| boom.
| wslh wrote:
| > I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical
| from the common sense standpoint.
|
| In these cases, generally, the law acts when other parties push
| it. Mainly big actors. The app stores are generally build by
| those major actors. May be regulations will happen in several
| years.
| scotty79 wrote:
| 90% of things mentioned here should be super illegal and the
| punishment should be 150% estimated income they achieved through
| such deals.
| dalbasal wrote:
| 100 years in the electric chair!
|
| This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail,
| etc. It's an industrial structure. The competition is
| competition for monopoly, a superior & highly profitable market
| position of some sort. Those are what make Google, FB & so
| profitable.
|
| Google competed with Yahoo & Microsoft for years in search
| marketing. I don't believe either ever made significant
| profits. Their "market share" in terms of users may have been
| 10%-20%. But, their share of market revenues was a fraction of
| that. Their share of profits was negative.
|
| OTOH Google pays (for example) Apple $7bn per year to make
| Google Search default. That's better than best case scenario
| profits MSFT or Yahoo could have _hoped_ to make, unless they
| managed to replace Google in the no. 1 position.
|
| Competing is just a lot less profitable than cooperating in a
| lot of cases. What is Apple supposed to do, say "keep it, we're
| good?"
| erhk wrote:
| Can't read on mobile without a Twitter account
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Twitter changed something recently where they no longer let you
| view most tweets without an account.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think you just need to tap the tweet again to see the
| thread. But you could also use nitter.
| bronzeage wrote:
| Google and apple shills / workers are working hard on this thread
| downvoting everything. Literally every comment downvoted. Are
| Google and apple workers that much common in hacker news? Are
| they that loyal to their disgusting monopolistic company they
| feel obliged to defend it with downvotes on some internet forum?
| scrollaway wrote:
| I'm downvoting your comment because it's irrelevant, probably
| wrong, and downright boring to complain about downvotes in the
| first place, even more so about shilling.
|
| I am not affiliated with either company.
| joemaller1 wrote:
| Thread links no longer work on mobile web Twitter without an
| account.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Nitter should help.
|
| https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Extensions
| d3nj4l wrote:
| Somewhat OT, but this has been great for me. I've been trying
| to kick twitter, but even deactivating my account didn't
| completely kill it because I kept going back to some profiles,
| but with this change it's unusable when logged out. I'm finally
| free.
| nulbyte wrote:
| The link worked fine for me in Firefox without being signed in.
| Went straight to the first Tweet, showed another, and gave a
| link to continue reading the thread.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Did you try to click the link to continue reading the thread?
|
| That's what fails for me.
| Cycl0ps wrote:
| This is a known "feature" of Twitter. If it assumes the user
| can be logged in, it will hold the page captive until you
| sign in. I've had it happen to me, though I'm not sure of the
| details. Like whether it's being A/B tested or what
| specifically it's hitting on to require login
| aendruk wrote:
| Last time this issue came up there was some skepticism due to
| Twitter's varying behavior. Here's a screen recording for those
| unaffected:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/ze7IBg2
| gpas wrote:
| Clear twitter cookies or open the link in incognito
| wayneftw wrote:
| Long press the timestamp link on the first post and open in a
| new tab. At least that's what worked for me on iOS.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| HN should implement a rule that makes it mandatory to link
| twitter threads through one of those services that make them
| readable. It's quite frankly obnoxious.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Same, bypass Twitter altogether:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1428415009860714500.html
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