Re:Did the early internet activists blow it?
by AnthonyMouse on Saturday February 15, 2020 @09:55PM
(#22339544)
> 3. Facebook and Google are natural monopolies, and they should be regulated like telecom carriers.
Malarkey. If Facebook was a natural monopoly they wouldn't have to keep buying competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp because the barrier from the natural monopoly would prevent the then-competitors from gaining significant market share to begin with. The failure there was on the part of antitrust in allowing Facebook to buy them, and even that isn't fatal as long as they don't continue to do it. Social networks only have a popular lifespan of a decade or two and exist in parallel to multiple other competitors. That is unless one company is allowed to buy them all, and keep buying them as newer ones become popular.
And Google doesn't even have network effects. All they have is a better search engine than anybody else, which only lasts until that stops being the case. It's hard to complain about it as long as they're giving the results you actually want -- especially when competing search engines do exist and can easily be used by anyone who wants to.
Malarkey. If Facebook was a natural monopoly they wouldn't have to keep buying competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp because the barrier from the natural monopoly would prevent the then-competitors from gaining significant market share to begin with. The failure there was on the part of antitrust in allowing Facebook to buy them, and even that isn't fatal as long as they don't continue to do it. Social networks only have a popular lifespan of a decade or two and exist in parallel to multiple other competitors. That is unless one company is allowed to buy them all, and keep buying them as newer ones become popular.
And Google doesn't even have network effects. All they have is a better search engine than anybody else, which only lasts until that stops being the case. It's hard to complain about it as long as they're giving the results you actually want -- especially when competing search engines do exist and can easily be used by anyone who wants to.