This one is substantively different. Amazon claims it is a market and not a store, and is therefore not legally responsible for things like the quality of products sold there or how they are represented. They claim that both buyers and sellers are their customers, unlike an actual store where only the buyers are the customers.
So when Amazon decides to set up its own logistics company, no problem. When they use private market data to place their own products into their market, that's a different matter.
The garden department at your local department (Wal-Mart does this. So do most home repair places) store is operated by another company. So too is the salty snack aisle, soft drink aisle and many other departments where an outside vendor is basically renting shelf space, and paying the rent in margin at the register. In all of these cases, the store also has a house brand that is in the same aisle, competing with the big brands. So, what Amazon is doing is really the same, but in an ecommerce format. BTW, department and grocery stores were running their own logistics company long before Amazon even existed.
Amazon claims this, but at least in California they still face product liability: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/california-court-appeal...
While on its face the outcome doesn't seem surprising to me, this may nonetheless turn out to be a very important national precedent as California was, IIRC, the first jurisdiction to both clearly establish strict product liability for manufacturers and also extend that liability to intermediate sellers in the distribution chain.
The California decision makes a lot of sense.
Looking at their business model with their ownership of the customer relationships, control of the payment methods, and the co-mingling of inventory, it's hard to claim that Amazon is just matching buyers and sellers.
I'm not really in the "break-up big tech" camp. We already have the laws needed to make companies play fair, we just need to enforce them.
That said, the whole Amazon Basics model is kind of questionable. I could see that being split off and forced to operate without access to private market data or preferential placement in the marketplace.
Ben Evans shares a lot of good arguments here: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/12/amazons-mark...
When people say they got a solution to “the problem” for me this sounds every time like they not even started to understand anything they are talking about.
FAANG is a sui generics case. And looking at Amazon’s service, I believe they do a lot of things right that others do not. And that’s part of “the problem”.
> The same reason you can’t put software you want on a Xbox/PlayStation/Switch.
The iPhone is a general purpose computer, not a gaming toy. You do finances, email, chat, dating, games, spreadsheets, GPS navigation, photos, video - your entire life, all one one device.
For half of Americans, this is the only computer they own.
For half of Americans, Apple controls what software you can use, and it extorts a 30% cut.
That's mafia behavior.
Gamers can choose between Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, PC, Steam, Epic, and dozens of other platforms. There's lots of choice, and this is just one industry with a very narrow impact on consumers' lives.
Mobile computer (aka smartphone) users get to choose between Apple and Android for the entirety of everything they do, and both of these companies try to butt into everything. They even want to control banking and payments.
The App Stores aren't given to us benevolently out of the good will of a loving Apple and Google. They're means of exerting control and extracting profit in a monopolistic fashion. They both need to die.
> For half of Americans, Apple controls what software you can use, and it extorts a 30% cut.
30% (or even 15%) of $0 is $0.
Apple gets nothing from me for my finance apps, my email client, my chat apps, my spreadsheet apps, or my GPS apps, because they are free.
I can’t comment about dating apps as I’m not using any. Complaining that Apple charges for gaming, however, is weird given you choose to reject them as gaming devices.
To which the two biggest counter-arguments are:
1. “So don’t allow black box algorithms”
2. “This is why the search engine company should be separate from the company which owns all the other products”
> 2. “This is why the search engine company should be separate from the company which owns all the other products”
This doesn’t solve the problem. They can still alter top listings to push things for “preferred partners and truths”.
Anybody with Search experience confirm or deny this claim?
Pretty redundant if you ask me: black hat, SEO and crap.
/s
We here know that, politicians don’t seem to and they set the rules.
Regardless: the fear here is that Google itself is gaming its own algorithm — or just directly bypassing it because they can. I make no claim about the validity of this fear.
If society wants to make sure algorithms are fair, it may decide one option is to ban black boxes algorithms — if DNNs can’t be comprehended, that means no DNNs. Alternatively, if society says the only way to have a black box is to not compete in the domain the black box judges, then Google et al will have to change their business models.
The other problem with transparent algorithms is that they are trivial to game. Gaming is almost certainly worse than obscurity.
B. Hence the alternative of “don’t let the company which runs the algorithm benefit from the results of that algorithm”, which I’ve phrased differently in each post on this topic.
There are really clear conflicts of interests, even if you believe (as I happen to) that they are not exploiting their positions to the detriment of consumers: Google has products and services which people search for using Google’s own algorithm; Apple gets to write and enforce the rules of the App Store while having products in that store; Amazon sells both e-book readers and owns a e-book brand & platform, and would benefit from the Amazon.{com|co.uk|de|etc} stores listing the Kindle devices higher than they might otherwise be.
Again, I am not claiming they are actually engaging in anti-consumer behaviours (that would be outside of my expertise, and anecdotally I don’t feel like I’m being harmed by any of this), I’m saying it’s a conflict of interest and society is suspicious.
What reason is this? As far as I'm concerned you should be allowed to install whatever you want on game consoles as well.
I’m just fine with saying this thing is an appliance that does what it does, including only accepting paired cartridges (gate-kept apps).
Consumers buy toasters instead of open grills for valid reasons, same for mobile devices. Forcing the toaster maker to support open grilling is over-regulation, the opposite of letting markets decide. If consumers don’t want a no muss no fuss appliance, they can buy something else.
Stop using this argument, its daft and convinces noone.
Furstly, which law or court case actually establishes that those business practices are right and proper?
Secondly, which law or court case establishes that smartphones can be equated with game consoles? There is a huge body of law that governs mobile connectivity, spectrum, emergency services, etc. that has no bearing on a gaming device.
> Stop using this argument, its daft and convinces noone.
Letting anyone put any software they wanted on an Xbox/Playstation/Switch would diminish the platform's value by eroding security and trust.
For instance, compare online cheating ecosystems between those three platforms and the PC (where you can run any software you want). The PC is a much, much worse platform in terms of cheaters, scammers and account hijacks.
I have no problem with people running whatever they want on the hardware they purchase, but extending that to "I should also be allowed to be trusted when I do this" does not logically follow. In other words, feel free to reflash your Xbox, but don't expect to be able to play games or connect to your Xbox Live account from that hardware after your jailbreak.
This about not allowing competing browsers as a blanket policy. If this was trully about security, Apple can do as many security audits as they want. They can even charge for them. They can require affidavit, security officers, insurance policy, indemnity, etc.
But they dont because this is not about security, it is about controling the market
For instance, to be competitive in terms of performance, a browser almost certainly needs to JIT Javascript. If a platform prevents apps from generating code and enabling the 'X' bit in PTEs then this isn't going to work. Even if the platform provides JIT services (e.g., pass in an AST, out pops a few pages of callable code) there is still a ton of added risk.
Designing and maintaining the security of a platform is a ton of work and a big investment (assuming it's done well). Security teams are already quite busy, and adding whole app categories that are suddenly able to break previously established design decisions is not easy -- "just do a security audit on a handful of titles" is a phrase that we've all heard, many times, and it sends shivers down our spines. Having seen it tried, and been on some projects that did it, I think it's impossible to do well even at a small scale.
Been there, done that, seen projects canceled because PMs couldn't internalize the nature of the risk to the platform.
A large part of Apple's brand, at this point, is security from snooping, personal privacy, etc etc. It makes sense to control the browser on the iPhone for privacy than it does to seek to eliminate browser competitors. Safari isn't a crucial part of their revenue, devices with the security promise are. Furthermore, the browser seems to be the key space where use privacy is violated from, via cookies and other tracking software. If Apple want's to say they have a pro-privacy device, controlling the browser makes sense for that goal.
It just doesn't make business sense for Apple to be attempting to control the browser market. Maybe you mean they are controlling some other market through the browser, though.
Moreover, when one is selling something that involves transferring all rights in tangible/real property being sold to be transfered. Here apple is reserving the right to decide what can and cant run on the device. This clearly is a violation of property rights. Last I checked apple did not have people sign rent/lease agreements for the hardware.
I'll be the last one to prevent you from running your own software on the hardware you bought. So, knock yourself out: Wipe all the nasty, evil Apple software off of that device and have your way with it. I would not expect any help from Apple about how to do this.
This argument is straight up disingenuous- Apple is actively preventing you from running whatever you want on your property and they are preventing you from repairing it. You cannot get them to remove their crap from it.
Conjuring up some arbitrary boundary constrains device maker innovation, reliability, security, and other consumer value.
You are free to pick your own water line, find a device that draws the line there, and vote with your wallet — or make and market your own thesis.
The question in court will not be "is money laundering illegal" or "is taking money from random people illegal". The question in court will be "does this amount to money laundering, or is john just an idiot and it was not his responsibility to know".
Similarly, here we are discussing not "is market manipulation illegal", but "does the activity carried out by Apple amount to market manipulation"
Comparing Apple to game consoles is basically: "stop selling drugs" - "John does it too, and he is not in jail, so it's fine."
That argument only works if John has been to court and a judge has ruled that he is innocent. That's case law - it established that previously, in similar circumstances, a court has rules that this was / wasn't a crime.
Mens rea ("guilty mind") itself is not a uniformly applied principle. But it's the name of the concept you were attempting to address above.
See also actus reus ("guilty act").
And note that in tort liability (as opposed to criminal liability) other standards may apply. "Strict liabilty" is more typically applied in civil law, though there are (I learned responding here) some applications in criminal law as well. In the latter case it seems to be similar to my understanding of prima facie violation. That is, the fact of a thing is a violation of law, regardless of intent.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3500919
I first seriously discussed how Google is a systematic internaliser with my cofounder in 2003. The next year Google together with a consortium of major publishers abandoned and wrote off a $350MM initiative to enable trading in traditional and print media and the Advertising Age piece even reported specifics why they were disbanding which read close enough to what we began doing since 1996. The reasons involve a lot of micro market theory and since there's a involved corporate history that's about as much as I can say other than it looked very clear to us that Google merely found that the traditional media had managed to stitch up their markets in similar ways without any theoretical appreciation for their actions.
definition :
> They don’t. Amazon and Facebook both make a fortune from ads.
Yes, but they own search ads and a large percentage of web ads (though the non-siloed web is becoming less and less relevant each year), and they do everything in their power to put people into their ad funnel.
They control 50% of the mobile OS, 70%+ of the browser monoculture, and nearly 100% of search. They can order sites according to which ones use AdSense or AMP, neuter ad blocking (especially of AdSense), and collect behavior across the web even when website owners don't want it.
They're fucking up an entire set of technologies to further their goals.
That's not monopolistic. That's horrific. I don't think we even have a term to describe this yet, it's so bad.
We're all getting Big Teched.
You can call any company as a monopoly if you define its market narrowly enough. The hard question is making a good argument for your choice of market. Google is absolutely a monopoly in search advertising. But is search advertising the right market to consider? Google would argue the appropriate market is advertising as a whole, where they are clearly not a monopoly.
The ultimate question at hand is whether and to what extent consumers are being harmed by anti-competitive practices. I think in Google's case that's a hard case to make. It might be a bit easier for e.g. Facebook or Amazon, though.
It’s completely unfair that Starbucks is taking away consumer choice by not selling Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.
They take their blood money.
Because this is a Gish Gallop of weak individual reasons batched together to make it seem like a stronger obvious argument when it’s not.
> How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it?
They don’t. Amazon and Facebook both make a fortune from ads. You need to be more specific.
> How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace?
Go to a store, this is what Walmart, Albertsons/Safeway, Costco, etc have been doing for longer than any of the FAANGs have existed.
> How is Apple allowed to disallow any other web browsers on their mobile devices? We already went through this with Microsoft in the past but suddenly it's different?
The same reason you can’t put software you want on a Xbox/PlayStation/Switch.
> Why is Google allowed to rank their own products in front of more general results?
Because it’s their algorithm to do with what they want. If they want to erode public trust by using it to advertise their products, that’s their choice. Other things they adjust the algorithm to do: filter malware, filter porn (by default), filter unreliable sites, etc. You’re going to have a really hard time defining what’s “fair” for a black box algorithm to do.