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Apple is not a monopoly, even google is not a monopoly. facebook is. Fb is either buying or using its reach to enter into other markets. Messaging, videos (y

Apple is not a monopoly, even google is not a monopoly. facebook is. Fb is either buying or using its reach to enter into other markets. Messaging, videos (youtube), stories (snapchat), crowd sourcing (gofundme), marketplace (offerup). In all these it is using its existing dominance in one market to enter into other which is classical case of antitrust.

ipsum2 8y ago
Wait, what? You said Facebook is a monopoly, but just listed competitors in every single area Facebook is in.
- tehsauce 8y ago
  Those are the competitors in spaces that facebook is currently invading, not its core
  - aylmao 8y ago
    It's been like this with every big tech company though; Microsoft had (has?) a monopoly on the desktop OS (the only OS that mattered back then), before it diversified. Google had (has?) a monopoly on search before it diversified. Amazon has a monopoly on e-commerce, and is just now starting to really diversify. Apple is the only exception-- they aren't really a "software" company though. Claiming that Facebook should be broken up but not other big-tech companies isn't taking this into account.
    - otabdeveloper1 8y ago
      > Google had (has?) a monopoly on search before it diversified. Search is not Google's product.
    - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
      We should break up most of them. Conglomerates and market concentration are bad for innovation and competition in general.
      - toasterlovin 8y ago
        Things are early. IMO we should just see what happens. Tech is changing fast enough that all of this concern could be moot in 10 years. And I say that as someone who thinks Facebook (and social media, in general) is a cancer on our species.
        eli_gottlieb 8y ago
        Things can change quickly, you're right, but if the long-term secular trend is towards market concentration, then merely putting one giant monopoly in the place of another doesn't provide the kind of "change" we need for market competition to spur innovation and serve society.
      - kazinator 8y ago
        Nope! What we should break is the fingers of the idiot users that foist this garbage onto the rest of us. It's hardly Big Company's fault that one non-employee X of Big Company forces another non-employee Y of Big Company to use something. It's X who is instigating it.
- bane 8y ago
  Just wait until the world realizes email still works.
  - plankers 8y ago
    And IRC!
- lord_ring_11 8y ago
  Yeah there are competitors and always will be. Point is does fb use its monopoly in one area to enter into another? Just being monopoly is not illegal.
adventured 8y ago
Google has an extremely blatant monopoly in search. That has been the case for over a decade now. The competitors to Google, outside of a few markets like Russia and China, are trivial at best. Google's search competitors are so weak, all they've collectively done is lose market share for 20 years. The social competitors to Facebook - Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, etc. - are no more threatening to FB's monopoly than DuckDuckGo and Bing are to Google's search monopoly. When companies like Google and Facebook have monopolies, what they do in response is lie: they claim competition is everywhere. Microsoft used that lying tactic as well. They pretend they're not really in the search space specifically, they're an ad company in general, and they're only a small N% of the whole global ad market. So Google likes to lie and pretend they compete with every input box on the Web, and every ad served anywhere on earth; naturally their share of all text input box usage is merely 1%.
- RRL 8y ago
  It's better to think of Search as less of a historic plain text input field on a landing page, and instead to open it up to where people discover new ideas, products, and opportunities. Facebook and Amazon are enormous in this model. Amazon so much so that WPP and other advertising giants are less afraid of Google & Facebook, and instead incredibly terrified at what Amazon has and where Amazon is going.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Google has an extremely blatant monopoly in search Tough thing is it grew to a position of dominance, on the user side, organically. (On the ad side, the story is more complicated.) Facebook grew on both sides by gobbling up potential competition, e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp, et cetera.
  - adventured 8y ago
    I agree. I regard Google search as one of the greatest technological accomplishments in world history. The service it has been to humanity can't be overstated. It wasn't just slightly better, it was radically better in every way. It was faster, it produced better results, it even had greater integrity (less clutter & junk, less abusive ad approach by not mixing results & ads, etc). A dominant, extreme majority market position by itself isn't valid justification to break a company up or apply anti-trust (in the US). Monopolies are of course not illegal in the US. Google's search product remains superior and it's unlikely to be directly, seriously challenged by a threatening competitor. It's the change in integrity that might take them down. Call it greed. The greed eats the ecosystem, pushes for a greater share of the pot, then the ecosystem cries foul to regulators, identical to Microsoft's mistakes derived from greed. If a monopoly platform can't control itself properly - in terms of human nature, it's probably extremely difficult to restrain that level of economic power while existing in a low feedback, low consequence bubble - then the authorities will probably step in and do it. When it comes to monopolies, you can eat this, maybe you can eat this and that, you can't eat this and that and that and that and that. It's pretty much that simple, you control yourself or eventually the guys with the guns will do it for you (if only out of concerns for preserving their own power).
mtgx 8y ago
Correction - Google is not a monopoly in the US, China, Russia and a few others. It's a monopoly in most of Europe and I think most Asian countries, too.
ahartmetz 8y ago
It seems to be a little known fact in Silicon Valley that you can not buy Apple products and do all your computing just fine.

ipsum2 8y ago

Wait, what? You said Facebook is a monopoly, but just listed competitors in every single area Facebook is in.

tehsauce 8y ago
Those are the competitors in spaces that facebook is currently invading, not its core
- aylmao 8y ago
  It's been like this with every big tech company though; Microsoft had (has?) a monopoly on the desktop OS (the only OS that mattered back then), before it diversified. Google had (has?) a monopoly on search before it diversified. Amazon has a monopoly on e-commerce, and is just now starting to really diversify. Apple is the only exception-- they aren't really a "software" company though. Claiming that Facebook should be broken up but not other big-tech companies isn't taking this into account.
  - otabdeveloper1 8y ago
    > Google had (has?) a monopoly on search before it diversified. Search is not Google's product.
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    We should break up most of them. Conglomerates and market concentration are bad for innovation and competition in general.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      Things are early. IMO we should just see what happens. Tech is changing fast enough that all of this concern could be moot in 10 years. And I say that as someone who thinks Facebook (and social media, in general) is a cancer on our species.
      - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
        Things can change quickly, you're right, but if the long-term secular trend is towards market concentration, then merely putting one giant monopoly in the place of another doesn't provide the kind of "change" we need for market competition to spur innovation and serve society.
    - kazinator 8y ago
      Nope! What we should break is the fingers of the idiot users that foist this garbage onto the rest of us. It's hardly Big Company's fault that one non-employee X of Big Company forces another non-employee Y of Big Company to use something. It's X who is instigating it.
bane 8y ago
Just wait until the world realizes email still works.
- plankers 8y ago
  And IRC!
lord_ring_11 8y ago
Yeah there are competitors and always will be. Point is does fb use its monopoly in one area to enter into another? Just being monopoly is not illegal.

adventured 8y ago

Google has an extremely blatant monopoly in search. That has been the case for over a decade now. The competitors to Google, outside of a few markets like Russia and China, are trivial at best. Google's search competitors are so weak, all they've collectively done is lose market share for 20 years. The social competitors to Facebook - Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, etc. - are no more threatening to FB's monopoly than DuckDuckGo and Bing are to Google's search monopoly. When companies like Google and Facebook have monopolies, what they do in response is lie: they claim competition is everywhere. Microsoft used that lying tactic as well. They pretend they're not really in the search space specifically, they're an ad company in general, and they're only a small N% of the whole global ad market. So Google likes to lie and pretend they compete with every input box on the Web, and every ad served anywhere on earth; naturally their share of all text input box usage is merely 1%.

RRL 8y ago
It's better to think of Search as less of a historic plain text input field on a landing page, and instead to open it up to where people discover new ideas, products, and opportunities. Facebook and Amazon are enormous in this model. Amazon so much so that WPP and other advertising giants are less afraid of Google & Facebook, and instead incredibly terrified at what Amazon has and where Amazon is going.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Google has an extremely blatant monopoly in search Tough thing is it grew to a position of dominance, on the user side, organically. (On the ad side, the story is more complicated.) Facebook grew on both sides by gobbling up potential competition, e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp, et cetera.
- adventured 8y ago
  I agree. I regard Google search as one of the greatest technological accomplishments in world history. The service it has been to humanity can't be overstated. It wasn't just slightly better, it was radically better in every way. It was faster, it produced better results, it even had greater integrity (less clutter & junk, less abusive ad approach by not mixing results & ads, etc). A dominant, extreme majority market position by itself isn't valid justification to break a company up or apply anti-trust (in the US). Monopolies are of course not illegal in the US. Google's search product remains superior and it's unlikely to be directly, seriously challenged by a threatening competitor. It's the change in integrity that might take them down. Call it greed. The greed eats the ecosystem, pushes for a greater share of the pot, then the ecosystem cries foul to regulators, identical to Microsoft's mistakes derived from greed. If a monopoly platform can't control itself properly - in terms of human nature, it's probably extremely difficult to restrain that level of economic power while existing in a low feedback, low consequence bubble - then the authorities will probably step in and do it. When it comes to monopolies, you can eat this, maybe you can eat this and that, you can't eat this and that and that and that and that. It's pretty much that simple, you control yourself or eventually the guys with the guns will do it for you (if only out of concerns for preserving their own power).

mtgx 8y ago

Correction - Google is not a monopoly in the US, China, Russia and a few others. It's a monopoly in most of Europe and I think most Asian countries, too.

ahartmetz 8y ago

It seems to be a little known fact in Silicon Valley that you can not buy Apple products and do all your computing just fine.