Comment by bobajeff
1 year ago
I think Google should just be split up into baby Google's that each have to cooperate with each other. Like we did with Bell. Also we should do the same thing to Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. In fact I think we should do it again to AT&T and also Comcast. This should probably be done every so often as maintenance.
Don't forget the other industries suffering from the same problem: Walmart, UnitedHealth Group, Berkshiere Hathaway, ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, etc.
The problem with Google, Meta, Amazon, et. al. is that they have a steady stream of income from their main business, and use it to enter new markets with loss leader schemes obviously designed to destroy their pre-existing competition...
I'm not from the US, but it seems to me like the companies you mention stay in their respective market and don't try to destroy competition in other markets, like Walmart is a supermarket chain, UnitedHealth is just health insurance, Exxon just deals with gas, JPMorgan Chase is just a bank, etc...,
meanwhile Google operated YouTube, Chrome, Gmail and other services at significant losses for years up until the point where they basically have monopoly in those areas because the competition couldn't keep up with Google's free products, and now when the competition is destroyed, they are destroying these free services with increased pricing or ads, neither of which were there while they still had competition in those spheres...
> and don't try to destroy competition in other markets, like Walmart is a supermarket chain
Have a look at the list of services offered: https://www.walmart.com/services
They're not all over the place, but definitely expanding to what's interesting to them.
hotmail, yahoo mail, etc. were also free when google started gmail. gmail won because it was just way better, and it has changed very little in terms of its value proposition in all that time.
How should free webmail work?
The egg cartel, the potato cartel, the corn cartel, almost every food resource silo has its own monopsony or monopoly of some kind in the USA or globally. In the USA at least it seems many of these things are constructed to avoid the letter of the old laws around monopoly.
I don't understand how this worldview coexists with countries like Russia and China.
If the feds kneecap US companies, it's not going to make the next generation of US companies stronger, just cede influence to worse jurisdictions.
Yeah but it's also not great when Amazon can undercut their way into every market because AWS is a crazy cash cow, which hurt other US companies. Do you really need Amazon to be a "second government" who can decide what "you" buy, see and to some degree think.
It "works" in China where the government just stomps their feet if companies misbehave too much and everyone complies instantly or get replaced.
Edit: s/Amazon/Jeff Bezos/g?
We have megacorps in EU too, Airbus and Lidl comes to mind, though I don't think Lidl operates anything but their main business outside of Germany, in Sweden we have Lidl grocery stores however.
Absolutely agree on the fact that we don't need / should not have "second gouvernements" (and non democratically choosen too). Which is why we should also apply this regular "maintainance split" to largest fortunes too.
Some companies / services are just not viable as a standalone company, but still provide immense value to customers.
What will end up happening is not that Amazon will have to compete with others on video game streaming for example, what will happen is that video game streaming will disappear because not viable.
Browsers won't suddenly flourish when Google cannot finance browsers anymore, they'll just turn to shit.
People won't spend $50 a month to subscribe to what Google currently provides for free, they will just lose access.
In the end the users will just flock to the Chinese equivalents which will be happy to steal all of the western data for the low cost of providing file hosting.
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Breaking monopolies doesn't kneecap US companies. Noncompetitive markets do that. Forcing healthy competition is how we keep competitive advantage, failing to do so is how we lose it. See: Deepseek
Seen this argument a lot recently, it's a really interesting take that I wouldn't have really considered before.
The common argument for breaking up monopolies is to provide more competition in the key area, since monopolies tend to focus efforts on things that don't benefit the consumer (like buying out smaller companies to stop them existing).
From that view, monopolies don't really benefit the US, if anything it stops the US market functioning competitively, and eventually running themselves into the ground.
I guess the other view is that "somebody is going to have a monopoly so why shouldn't it be my country?", but I'd say that ignores the fact that you can just curb other non-competitive behaviour fron foreign countries, like the EU has been trying to do with Apple and Google.
Smaller companies would be more nimble and efficient. Also, Google’s main dominant product (e.g. search & ads) would be forced to compete & innovate vs leveraging Chrome & Android to keep themselves dominant.
Smaller is less efficient. They don't get to benefit from economy of scale as much as larger.
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We should run our economy in the way that has the best long term outcome, which is likely with plenty of competition rather than monopolies.
If other countries are doing something to advantage themselves relative to that, there’s tariffs or other ways to relevel the playing field.
> If the feds kneecap US companies, it's not going to make the next generation of US companies stronger
Worked pretty well when they broke AT&T and not only got an extremely innovative lab full of small projects, but also kickstarted the internet era.
AT&T did not have international competitors.
You think monopolies should exist?
Instead of smashing up successful businesses, you should tax them, and use the tax revenue to improve deficiencies in the market.
If the government thinks there should be more browsers, (or mobile os's) they should tax the existing ones and pay folks to improve the open source alternatives.
You _should_ outlaw behavior that creates monopolies, like predatory pricing etc
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There has never been a problem with having a monopoly because your product is so good that everyone wants it. There's also no problem with natural monopolies, for example there's no sense in having a competitive market for utilities.
I've noticed that the bigger a company gets, the shittier they get. I don't think the answer to the threats posed by countries like Russia and China lies in consolidating our markets under an oligarchy of bloated mega-corps.
Smaller companies are faster, more agile, and hungry for success. This breeds market competition, spurring innovation and rendering better products for the consumer. The Amazons and Googles and Microsofts of the world have largely outlived their purpose and only exist to hoover up money in their cornered markets rather than innovate.
I think with the current monopolistic trajectory there will not be the next generation of US companies because current companies just buy up everything that shows any kind of potential. There's no benefit to society from trillion-dollar companies - they don't need to innovate and they have the power to stop any would-be competitors.
and how does your worldview work in practice? a protected and empowered US/Western conglomerate is more motivated innovate and outcompete mega corps of Russia/China/latest-boogieman and destroys them because of this? or is the point to just say: well Russia/China have their own mediocre protected conglomerates lets have ours too?
Both of those countries dislike powerful, large corporations because they are a base of power that could compete with the state or party. The Wagner Group comes to mind. But China also did a huge crackdown affecting companies like Alibaba and Tencent.
There's no reason why there can't be international co-operation on this subject.
> Both of those countries dislike powerful, large corporations because they are a base of power that could compete with the state or party.
These countries are not different from any other in the world. The US also has anti-monopoly laws exactly for this reason: nobody wants a corporation that can compete with the government, be it democratic or not.
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Just ban the ones from worse jurisdictions then.
I'm happy to let China and Russia be the global leaders in panopticons and mass propaganda for their citizens. Google and Meta would be no great loss for Americans.
So competition isn’t actually good for free market economics?
A level playing field is good. The playing field includes other countries.
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Which business units should be broken up?
Microsoft and Azure, Bing, Office 365
Amazon (the retailer portion) and AWS, and probably their logistics wing
For AWS we should split the platform and the managed services (no one should have to compete with "the platform". See elasticsearch, redis).
This also works for Amazon retail, they should not be allowed to sell on their own marketplace (they have to choose, they are either a marketplace or a seller)
I've always thought is should be Azure, Office and XBox, and each should get their own copy of Windows that they could focus on different things while still being largely compatible. Don't know if XBox could survive on it's own.
This would kill xbox
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None of those are owned by Google
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Chrome, search/ads, youtube, consumer apps - gmail & docs etc.
Breaking up workspace would hinder Google in competing with Office and Zoho
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