The idea that antitrust law exists to improve "consumer welfare" is a modern one. Until the late 1970's, antitrust was about exercising democratic control over corporate power.

You mean like the democratically elected President wants to “shut down” Twitter?

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Do you care to expand or just quote a rule without context? Government power is always amplified because it has coercive power. It’s not just about Trump, it’s about any government power.

I'm not trolling but the same way ALL monopolies hurt consumers and the fair market. It is not a hard thing to read on up monopolies across history. And it isn't just FB. We need to stop the M&A activity that is only good for the VCs and not the consumers. We need to start unrolling the ones that have already happened.

But the difference is that "ALL OTHER" monopolies are priced whereas facebook is a free product. Can it be called a monopoly if your product is free? Pretty sure, most lawyers won't have a hard time convincing a jury that it can't be.

Besides, if FB is a monopoly then so are Twitter, Google, Reddit, Quora, etc. Its an oligopoly of sorts with each player dominating a slightly differentiated product and all products are free of cost.

FB's users are not it's customers. It is free for users, in the same way that food is free for cows in a diary. Indeed, the cows did not choose to live that life, but increasingly [not] having a facebook account is not an option.

FB's customers are the advertisers. And they pay very good money, or FB wouldn't have had the money pay for WhatsApp, Instagram and its tens of thousands of employees.

>> but increasingly [not] having a facebook account is not an option.

but so is the case for google maps, gmail, linkedin, twitter, uber and a zillion other services. Facebook is just like any other web service at the end of the day.

>> FB's customers are the advertisers.

Even if that's true for arguments sake, I don't see how FB becomes a "monopoly" in that case. There are potentially large # of advertisers buying advertising space from potentially large # of website owners. How does FB have a monopoly on advertiser spending?

> but so is the case for google maps, gmail, linkedin, twitter, uber and a zillion other services. Facebook is just like any other web service at the end of the day.

Google Maps, Twitter and a zillion other services give me service without requiring an account, so it definitely is an option (I don't have a twitter account; I do have an old gmail account but I use Saerch, Maps and Youtube logged out and have for ~20 years).

I can hail taxis -- in fact, I'm now staying in a country where Uber is a regulated taxi, and there's no advantage (cost or otherwise) to using an Uber.

Linkedin is trying to force an account on me, but they haven't reached saturation anywhere that it impairs me that I don't have one.

Facebook events, however, and WhatsApp/Messenger, have become in my experience (and most people's by all account) the sole distribution point of a lot of timely and important information e.g. about kids school activities. So it's not just "another website".

> There are potentially large # of advertisers buying advertising space from potentially large # of website owners. How does FB have a monopoly on advertiser spending?

FB and Google have a duopoly due to user reach. It's really as simple as that. It's not illegal to have a monopoly, mind you, and some monopolies are "natural" (e.g., Google's search has classic[0] network effect, yet everyone I know who switched off it came back due to quality issues). But once you do have a monopoly, some generally acceptable actions become illegal.

[0] The fact that Google's users give feedback to Google about the result quality (by virtue of notifying Google which link was actually selected) is a weak network effect - but it only makes the network value linear in the number of users, whereas FB has more of a metcalfe square-of-number-of-users value.

If M and A becomes harder, why would VCs invest?

There have only been two YC companies that have ever gone public. I doubt that YC invested in any of its companies to produce “lifestyle businesses”.

If M&A became harder, more companies would go public; or stay private and distribute profits as dividends.

But the problem is not M&A on its own; the problem is that through M&A, big players are able to stifle competition. I'm sure it's possible to define a reasonable law (about company size, market size and kind) that would make it much harder for today's Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon from acquiring potential would-be competitors, without making it harder for two $100M companies to merge, or one $100M company to buy a $20M one.

Apple buys a company at least every couple of weeks. Most companies that Apple buys would never be successful products as an IPO. They were never products that would have ipo’d

You conveniently ignored the "or would have stayed private" part.

So in what world would most of the money losing companies that Apple bought remained private and profitable?

Instagram had no business model when it was acquired.

Could any of the chip design companies remain private? What would have happened to the company that Apple bought that made Workflow - that is now the Shortcuts app - if Apple had just built it in house? Would that have been a better outcome for consumers or the company behind Workflow?

In the case of technology companies, do you also want the government to stop acquihires?

If the government stopped acquisitions, the bigger companies could still just poach all of the employees.

> Instagram had no business model when it was acquired.

They would have created one, by doing the obvious thing. Selling ads.

I don't think they would need FB to figure out that they need to do that.

If they hadn’t run out of money first. Also advertisers don’t want to deal with every mom and pop website. If they did, you wouldn’t have the pervasiveness of as networks.

What are the chances that they could have grown organically? Do you really want the government to tell founders that they couldn’t accept Facebook’s $1 billion dollars? Would you want the government telling you who you couldn’t sell your property to?

That’s already the case that the government limits these transactions, and for good reasons.

Democracies and free markets are good at many things, but staying free is not one of those things. If Google and Facebook decided to merge tomorrow, the government would stop them, for good reasons. If Verizon and AT&T decide to merge, similarly so.

I was only suggesting that these restriction apply more strictly; and indeed that would dramatically change the market - similar time how existing regulation change the market so there’s no googbook or veriso&t

You mean like they stopped Sprint and T-Mobile?

Like they should have in my opinion, yes.

According to Wikipedia[0], """On August 4, 2014, Bloomberg reported that Sprint had abandoned its bid to acquire T-Mobile, considering the unlikelihood that such a deal would be approved by the U.S. government and its regulators""", that is, the government effectively banned it, but Sprint pulled out ahead of time saving everyone time and money.

They recently approved it -- a mistake in my opinion -- but again that just proves my point: This is already the rule. Your position appears to be that the government shouldn't have this power at all, mine is that it should be applied more strictly to enhance competition.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Sprint_Corporation_a...

Sprint has been losing money and users for over a decade. Their chief backer was tired of pouring money into it. The alternative wasn’t four major carriers or three major carriers after a merger. The alternative was three carriers, one out of business and the other three buying the spectrum.

Instagram is now worth something like 100 billion dollars.

If FB was offering them 1 billion, I am sure that there would have been many investors willing to out some money into it.

Instagram is worth 100 billion because Facebook leveraged its advertising network and integrated it heavily with FB proper.

I've been thinking about that lately, since you're right that the way anti-trust law is currently interpreted there has to be a consumer harm. I think the solution is something like this: consumers use not just Faceboook, but other products and services as well, some of which are not invented yet. By buying up early stage companies that potentially harm Facebook's core business, or by leveraging its large network effects or vast amount of data that no one else has access to, Facebook is harming long-run consumer welfare by preventing or handicapping future innovative businesses and services.

So who would buy these companies if not some other company where the a acquisition would have “synergies”? Why would VCs invest in companies if they didn’t expect an acquisition? The chance of a company actually making it to a successful IPO is slim.

Doesn't that just demonstrate that the market is distortionary then? If they can't IPO and they can't be profitable on their own then they aren't creating real value and so the existence of Facebook and other companies that act as acquirers is value destroying rather than value creating.

Are you willing to say that YC isn’t creating anything value?

Both Android and iOS were the results of acquisitions of unprofitable VC funded companies. How many people who participate on HN are employed by a VC funded, unprofitable company? How many startup founders right here or desperately trying to get VC funding?

Every major feature of the iPhone is the result of an acquisition - multitouch, fingerprint sensors, Face ID, Siri, maps, chip design, Shortcuts, etc.

No, I'm not saying that at all. Obviously some acquisitions have been tremendously valuable. Many of those acquisitions could also have existed on their own. But the net effect of something can be negative even if individual things are positive.

My criticism was scoped only to the practice of big tech companies buying up competitors and unprofitable businesses. I think this is value destroying over the long term, though it obviously creates value for the people involved.

See page 31 of the paper [1] discussed in the article, under the heading "Harm to Consumers."

[1] https://www.omidyar.com/sites/default/files/Roadmap%20for%20...