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Comment by zooq_ai

2 years ago

There is nothing preventing search companies paying the same $60 Million to license content.

If reddit had exclusive agreement, it would be anti-competive.

This is classic HN anti-Google tirade (and downvoting facts, logic and concepts of free market)

27 comments

zooq_ai

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not_wyoming  2 years ago

> There is nothing preventing search companies paying the same $60 Million to license content.

Yes, actually, there is - having $60m to throw around.

"Barriers to entry often cause or aid the existence of monopolies and oligopolies" [0]. Monopolies and oligopolies are definitionally the opposite of free market forces. This is quite literally Econ 101.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry

  • GuB-42  2 years ago

    Microsoft can throw around $60M, and Bing is used by most of the "alternative" search engines.

    It doesn't solve the problem, but if money is the only thing preventing search engines from accessing Reddit, then what goes for Google also goes for Microsoft.

    • superb_dev  2 years ago

      Cool, so the top two players are now the only players and everyone else is now trapped feeding off of them

    • account42  2 years ago

      > Microsoft can throw around $60M, and Bing is used by most of the "alternative" search engines.

      That's a symptom of the issue, not a solution. Bing is used because having your own crawler is infeasible, partially because you will be literally blocked in many cases.

  • saghm  2 years ago

    Not to mention the fact that if this became commonplace, other websites might start charging as well

  • try_the_bass  2 years ago

    And yet "free market forces" are often the reason why monopolies and oligopolies arise...?

    Monopolies are entirely consistent with free market economics. After all, if there's clearly a "best product" for a particular niche, it's entirely rational (free market actor) behavior for everyone to use the same product, leading to its monopoly in that market segment.

    I don't understand why people think this isn't/won't be/shouldn't be a common result of "free market forces".

    • Newlaptop  2 years ago

      > Monopolies are entirely consistent with free market economics

      Not in the least. Literally in the first semester, Economics 101 type class that any business/economics/etc student would take, it would be covered clearly that monopolies are violations of free markets.

      A free market isn't a euphemism for anarchy or "no rules", it's a specific economic term. The things it is free of include artificial price floors or ceilings, barriers to entry, anti-competitive practices, etc. In other words, monopolies, oligopolies, cartels, monopsonies, etc are all violations of a free market. You do not have a free market if there is a monopoly supplier.

      3 replies →

    • not_wyoming  2 years ago

      > Monopolies are entirely consistent with free market economics.

      This is a fair critique. I'm approaching this from an admittedly American perspective in which "free market" colloquially implies competition - but I recognize that competition is not inherently a free market concept.

      Good callout!

  • zooq_ai  2 years ago

    Having a Monopoly != Anti-Competitive.

    Having Barriers to Entry != Anti-competitive

    Yes, large players have advantages of Economies of Scale.

    Just because you can't run an Airline because you don't have money to buy an Airplane isn't anti-competitive.

    Today Microsoft, Apple, OpenAI, Google, Amazon all can afford those piddly $60m to license from reddit.

    Not Anti-competitive at all.

    But saddened by how much corporate-hate by HNers destroys their credibility in debating these thing.

    Go ahead downvote

    • not_wyoming  2 years ago

      If you check citations, you'd find the sentence preceding my excerpt on barriers to entry:

      "Because barriers to entry protect incumbent firms and restrict competition in a market, they can contribute to distortionary prices and are therefore most important when discussing antitrust policy."

      Antitrust policy then links to a page on competition law: "Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies." [0]

      So yes, I'd downvote you if I could, but HN doesn't allow downvotes - which is honestly pretty fitting in the context of this conversation.

      [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

      6 replies →

pluc  2 years ago

Paying 60 million to every site you want to index is also a bad precedent to set. Why can Reddit get paid and XYZ can't?

  • zooq_ai  2 years ago

    Anyone can ask for licensing deal. I'm sure NY Times, Conde Nest all have licensing deals. Mr. Beast signed a deal with Amazon. Joe Rogan with Spotify. Why is it hard to understand?

    Even HN can get a licensing deal if they want to.

    If you are producing content, you have every right to do what you want to with the content.