Comment by samrus
1 month ago
This doesnt work if the market incentives themselves encourage these rent seeking actions.
We have given capitalists more and more power pver the last few decades and instead making things better, its just allowed them to nueter the government regulations that would have prevented them from fucking common people over. The market can not solve for this the same way it cant solve for education or the military. This needs laws
Of course I'm in support of consumer protection laws but what needs to be more widely understood is that with Google specifically, probably with Apple and maybe with Microsoft, we are at a unique point in history where passing laws isn't enough.
There are laws on the books, Google's breaking them, and it's just forging ahead with more of this anti-consumer control crap anyway. Google's unique in American history, it has recently been ruled an illegal monopolist in two cases in two markets and a third ruling against them in a third market is likely to drop soon. Even Standard Oil didn't achieve a rap sheet like Google's.
Yeah of course we need government action and I'm calling for that. But people need to realize that this monster is way bigger than just passing a law. The judges need to be choosing harsher remedies including a breakup. The enforcement apparatus needs to be stronger, willing and able to seize direct control of the company if it doesn't comply or complies maliciously. EVERYTHING in the system needs an upgrade because Google is so uniquely huge and criminal in the context of American history.
They are a different, far larger and more intractable problem than your standard, garden variety corporate criminals and extreme measures are needed to rein them in.
Now, imagine a future where the Web platform didn't become a duopoly and Phone+Tablet+PC OSes didn't become a triopoly. A half dozen vendors globally for one, and a different half dozen for the other. That's a very very different world where someone is going to carve out plenty of market share by letting you continue to install your own apps even if they're ad blockers or whatever else you would like. You just wouldn't get 12 companies plus the US, EU and Chinese governments or whoever to all agree on a single platform. We need the big guys to fight. We need the market to be divided. We need competition. We need to slay Google and never have another Google again.
So exactly what law is Google breaking? They are not a monopoly in the US or even 50% of the phone market.
And are you going to force app developers to support all of these platforms?
Weirdly, when the market was smaller, when there was less money available, developers DID support multiple platforms.
Today, when we have significantly fast tools, more standards, more shared knowledge, and MUCH more noney moving through the ecosystem, yet somehow it’s harder to support more platforms.
There’s a problem either at the level we’re talking about (the mono/duo-polies), or perhaps one level higher (national economies). My hunch is that it’s the same problems that are widening wealth gaps the world over (not just in the tech industry), but I’m open to other ideas.
> So exactly what law is Google breaking?
I mean, why do you need us to repeat these very well publicized convictions that have been all over the news? They've been found guilty of anti-trust violations in multiple cases in multiple American markets. The details are just a Google search away... Are you disputing the court rulings that Google possesses a monopoly? Which court?
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