(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28255798, which we've merged hither)

...

> This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores on the smartphones they sell and service.

Insane reading.

Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE. Despite Adwords' incredible profitability, Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits... Their Revenues @ were far lower than proportional to their market share, and costs are the opposite. Better to just take your share of monopoly profits than work hard competing, unless you expect to win their place.

This stuff is the norm. Maybe we should switch to being surprised (delighted?) when these guys compete at all.

^https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...

It's actually between $8-12 billion now. [1]

> Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits.

This is an exaggeration though. MSFT made nearly $8 billion in revenue last year from search (mostly Bing), and the business has naturally high margins so it would be extremely surprising if it was unprofitable on an operating basis. [2] The reality is that search is so huge that it's worth competing in, even if the incumbent has 30X your market share.

[1] https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428416856038072321

[2] https://backlinko.com/bing-users

I personally can’t see them switching any time soon, as DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible and I’m not sure they can do much better without collecting more data.

I would like someone to make some objective research on that.

My experience is the reverse, so I strongly suspect our reticence is just one of changing our habit more than an real thing.

I switched to DDG years ago and it took a few weeks to wean out the tendency to compare searches, usually brought on by the fear of missing out something.

I very rarely have to resort to a !g search and usually if I can't find it on DDG, I won't easily find it on google either.

I don't feel like missing out on anything and I always find what I need (and if I don't, I can't find it in other searches either).

Other platforms have some strength in some area, like Bing and Google have more tools for image searches, and it's possible that one of these is better than the others at some specific domain, like research papers or patent searches.

But after switching to DDG, all these options are still available and -at least in my case- 99%+ of my needs are met with it.

Still, no matter how much I like and promote DDG, I'm definitely not in the 'I always find what I need' camp. I don't know why but DDG is simply bad in some aspects. Sometimes it can be circumvented by altering search terms, but other times I have the impression after all those years its crawling or database is still lacking. I encounter this almost daily, most recent example: searching for 'preamp for hypex' Google and Bing (in private search windows) immediately turn up posts from audio forums I expect to have these topics. DDG just doesn't have those probably, because instead it automatically "Includes results for amplifier hypex" (which I find extremely annoying in any case, and makes no sense in this case since the word 'preamp' is key) and after forcing it to quote each term instead then it still doesn't come up with the expected results.

This means at least about half the time I end up with a !g I'm my DDG search.

I don't think bing will be a useful competitor in the long term, but a company that focuses on non-English national/linguistic markets, especially those with own character sets can compete in that area, innovate and hopefully also branch out on the EN market (see Yandex - RU; Yahoo - JP; various CN players).

But the reverse is true too. DDG is now my default, but before, when Google didn't find something, I'd switch to DDG.

There is an implicit learning curve switching search engines. The way one crafts searches differs in subtle ways I don't understand on a conscious level.

Last I checked, DDG's search results are just Bing (aside from the infobox-type stuff which is from their own data sources), and Bing does collect data from Microsoft's browsers and toolbars https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/

It's scary how the web feels much more narrower.

BTW I wish any stackexchange sites are under single domain.

I think this is closer to a 50B problem than a 1B problem. Not impossible, but I don’t know anyone who has 50B that they would want to spend fighting uphill to kill google.

Say, you manage to recruit the top-30 engineers who know all the in-and-outs of the google search engine. Add to that, their recent replacement of trad AI methods with full NN I believe, and I can't realistically believe it's not more than a 1B problem.

One of the reasons Google is going horizontal because their search engine can't be "magical" forever, this applies to their ad platform too.

* how many people worldwide keep their google places information up-to-date and not their local government office or their website.

* how advertisers can get value for their search ad campaigns; how to convince them of this

* how much google ad/targeting intelligence comes from off-site (eg Adsense, partner programs, xml ads)

* how many websites and website owners focus obsessively on their google presence making sure that even where Google’s tech gets it wrong they can get it corrected.

* how valuable the feedback loop is: google ads literally tells google what pages and terms are useful, what people like, and what to do more of at scale

* giving away free email and chat to build a whitelist of “good shares”

And that doesn’t cover video or the inverted index you need to provide governments access to emails and search terms. And so on.

These are largely not-software problems.

Hell they can even throw a spin on how it's about "privacy" and not about taking another way to bank on their walled garden monopoly and the Apple crowd here will gobble it up with "we are finally free from Google spying, praise Tim and his holy father Steve in heaven".

I've been arguing app stores are a monopoly for years now and the amount of cultist here that were like "Apple is doing it to protect me from bad software" and "I would not use my iPhone if there was an option to install a different store" was staggering.

Apple's shareholders won't.

They'll want to know where their 10bn (ish) USD went that Apple currently gets from Google.

Is Apple going to increase their device sales substantially because of an Apple search engine? I think everyone who is going to buy Apple has bought Apple, so I think not.

On the other hand, if Apple sells ads on Apple search, and they charge the same fees Google does, they'll still need 50bn in turnover to drop Google; Advertisers aren't going to double their marketing budget, they'll split it based on the ROI, and unless Apple ads convert as good or better than Google, this is a net loss.

Nobody else has this, and until they do, they won't be able to recreate Google.

You do NOT get added benefit from big data by taking it from millions to hundreds of billions. It becomes just a lesson in scale, without bringing any added benefit of insight.

You can see that yourself with Google by searching for something obscure (eg. "how to unblock a drain jammed with cat fur") and getting three friends to click the 2nd search result. Come back in a week, and suddenly the 2nd result is now the first result! (ignore the videos and answer box)

It turns out just three new data points is enough to influence ranking for that query. It even affected related queries if you change the word "jammed" for "gunked".

Google is valued like "real estate", it's the best address. And then you need the advertising network for it be worthwhile.

Apple, like Microsoft, can replace google as the default search, but that alone is not a big chunk of the market. It might not be worthwhile.

Otherwise, of course it can be done, and for even less than that.

Apple started to ship this operation over to India 5ish years ago, and their contractors over there produce much worse results as they are not hiring professional geographers with degrees like they did stateside.

I love answering questions on Maps and providing information for others (in my eyes: effectively working for them, not Google). Google Maps seems like it has a significantly larger user base, so my contributions help significantly more people.

It's very much a help-and-be-helped community, too. I can ask questions about businesses and have answers from other people in just a couple minutes. I don't imagine I'd have the same quality/speed asking questions on OSM (if they even have that feature?).

It doesn't really help OSM that its home page is considered just an example of what can be done with the data and not positioning it as an alternative to Google/Bing Maps is somewhat intentional.

$8bn in revenue might not mean profitable. Google certainly spend a lot more than this on search and advertising, and well... software scales.

In any case, whether they make $1bn in profit, losses or something in between... This is <1% of market profits. Apple is making $8bn-$12bn, all profit, just on defaults.

We don’t know if Bing’s profitable but GP is merely saying that with the circumstances above it is an interesting market for Microsoft to pursue.

Cooperating and accepting a slice of Google's monopoly profits is far more profitable that competing would be, in all but the most bullish scenarios.

IE, MSFT would need to be outright challenging Google's 1st place position in search marketing to have a hope of earning more than Apple do by doing nothing, spending nothing, investing nothing and taking no risks.

Also, what would it take for MSFT to compete with Google in earnest? For one thing, Microsoft would need to outbid Google for such deals. They'd need to pay Apple, Telcos, and such more than Google do now.

Apple did none of those things with respect to launching a search engine. Apple did all of those things with respect to building an audience of daily engaged (often affluent) users. That’s the investment Apple made to earn the position to cash Google’s check.

Buying a default spot is the interesting aspect here. Google spending more than Bing's entire yearly revenue just means they want that thing, and tells you their relative wealth. I figure this applies just as well to corporations as it does to individuals: if you're going to look askance at Jeff Bezos etc. you may as well keep an eye on businesses with similar disparities of scale relative to their market sector. Not like we haven't seen all this before.

https://www.google.com/search?q=People+of+the+same+trade+sel...

It's a very well-known quote. IMHO the language and phrasing are too archaic to come across as an opinion, even to someone it isn't well-known to. The curious will google (though it doesn't hurt for you to add attribution).

I hope you'll appreciate that my reply was helpful and charitable - though it too seems to have missed the mark!

I don't think this analyst is aware that DDG already has a lot of Google influence and isn't for sale right now...

> Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.

> Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

A few years in federal prison for the CEOs of Apple and Google might change the situation.

> Jail sentences have also traditionally been lenient. For example, from 1890 to 1970, only nineteen individuals actually went to jail for pure antitrust violations for a total of 28 months. Thus, during the first 80 years of the Sherman Act, the average jail sentence was approximately 1.5 months.

https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2020...

They're literally a cartel.

Why the hell does Apple have a film studio? Why does Google have a game studio and cloud? If they keep going, they'll be the MGM and Whole Foods too. (Oh, wait!)

Famgopolies also shouldn't be allowed to dictate their payments stacks, software distribution systems, app approval processes, browsers, or monitoring. Especially not if they're going after every single possible market, snuffing out all of the oxygen in the ecosystem.

If a famgopoly does over 100 things, it shouldn't be allowed to keep growing like the blob.

I really don't want my startup to be a gazelle at the savannah, waiting for the lions to bite at the jugular because they like my idea and market. If I put so much on the line to innovate, only to have these titans duplicate and crush me, what's the point?

I never thought I'd ever cheer for patent suits given all of the trolls, but I was genuinely happy that Sonos won over Google recently. We need more of that.

Edit: incoming famgopoly downvote brigade.

Personally, and I know that this is a very controversial opinion, I believe that the biggest problem is the concept of advertising itself - an attempt to distort consumer behavior, whose natural endpoint was always what we're seeing today: massive data collection, use in politics, manipulation on all available channels.

Cancer is completely natural, too.

At some point you have to examine whose interests you wish to serve, and why. Nothing new about that.

Most anti-trust actions have nothing to do with monopolies.

ok that's fine

Famgopoly is just a play on words to describe these never before seen emergent phenomena. You're right - they're not monopolies. They're something new the world has never seen before.

Famgopolies.

If someone can trace that directly to pricing ... well price collusion is definitely illegal.

Doesn't absolve them of terrible business practices, just shows that they caught up with them pretty fast.

We're verging or even past 2 decades.

Hard to believe, but Google Play (nee Android Market) was pretty damn shabby until about 2013 or so.

With those powers behind her she can do some harm, otherwise I'm afraid she'll be just a sitting duck in front of FANG's lobbyists.

Here’s an FTC commissioner explaining the history of it and why we should probably change it. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...

Even the judge in the case said that Microsoft executives had "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing." [1]

This new situation may be a slam-dunk, but no dunking may actually happen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

This was Judge Jackson, who had his decision overturned by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Also "the appeals court judges accused him of unethical conduct." A lot of grandiose things were said by people during these trials, many looking to enrich their careers.

Absolutely they were, that's what it means that most of Judge Jackson's ruling was overturned, and a new judge was appointed to determine penalties. Jackson wanted to break Microsoft apart and slap them with operating restrictions.

Where is it said that, "most of Judge Jackson's ruling was overturned"?

If you are referring to the link I posted, the actual words were, "The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Jackson's rulings against Microsoft."

Then, just five sentences later it says, "However, the appeals court did not overturn the findings of fact."

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/28/business/us-appeals-court...

"In a 125-page unanimous ruling brimming with palpable derision and frustration, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit nullified all three parts of Judge Jackson's ruling in the case and removed the restrictions he placed on the company's business practices, even as it made reference to many of his conclusions."

They even had quotes that showed intent and understanding of the illegality:

> "Schmidt responded that he preferred it be shared 'verbally, since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?'", the Reuters news agency quoted the court filing as saying.

https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-google-settlement-idIN...

For a long time Google was the Apple maps provider (exclusive) on Apple - they had near seamless integration there and in a variety of areas (search etc) - very much acting as one company.

They competed in other areas (google photos on iphone has always been very much second class), google music has struggled vs the apple music player etc.

All these monster players - they are so big that if they were fighting each other on every front it would be a huge mess.

Apple both bitterly competes against Samsung (who copies plenty from iphone) while simultaneously working as a big customer to them.

AWS has the same issues in many area - they will do things like cooperate in some areas with enemies (ie, they'll host Microsoft workloads and MS will facilitate) while competing in other areas (AWS vs Azure etc).

The capital scale of these solutions has gotten very to extremely high. That reduces incentives to compete in these spaces.

Apple doesn't particularly care to run a search platform because they can extract much of the value of search in allowing others to serve that market (ie, microsoft or google). Ie, these become high profit plays while letting someone else do hard lifting. I'd expect however they would fight like hell if you tried to take away their relationship with their customer.

Even in places they compete - not 100% sure it's worth it. They are fighting it out in maps at huge expense. You need to deliver a global map to your traveling customer base that is amazing (transit, traffic, local POI etc). This is not a small project. Then you have to monetize it. If you told me a smaller handset provider was going to launch a mapping solution - I'd tell you they are crazy!

That drives cooperation especially if a solution is a high capital requirement. Even intel is probably going to cooperate with TSMC (!!!). Some of these capital efforts are kind of insane - 30 billion per year capex type stuff. How many countries have CAPEX expenditures in this scale (ie, not just on operating costs / staff salaries?). These business are larger than countries in some cases.

Android / Samsung absolutely are competing (and copying) Apple in handset space. Ironically they will first denounce apple (not shipping chargers!). That's ALMOST always a guarantee that they will then copy them next cycle :)! I'm not kidding. I'd love to go back and look at everything from an all screen design (bad email machine), to dropping 3.5m jack (which I hated to see happen) to dropping chargers etc.

This is why Epic is suing them, to have a judge prohibit Google from illegally anticompetitive behavior.

The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thanks to its iron grip on the market until Epic have revealed its arsenal. This is why we need to bring more competitions in the app store market; Even if it doesn't bring any real alternatives, this tiny possibility of competition will force Google and Apple to yield more and more to developers.

The first step should be breaking the Duopoly cartel. It's only possible because Apple has no competitions and Google simply enjoys its follower-ship, enabled by their non-aggression pact. Force Apple to allow third party store and payment solutions to dismantle its unfair advantages against competitor apps thanks to 30% fee. This will force Apple to develop Web and Android version of its services which will effectively nullify the non-aggression pact.

https://mobile.twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428417681351348...

> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

Just incredible.

Why would you even think that after the whole salary fixing scandal? There's no enforcement of antitrust law and no incentive not to collude freely and egregiously.

Had Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Paul Otellini, and everyone else directly involved in the wage fixing scandal, spent a year in federal prison per violation, the situation might have been different.

-Final Fantasy Tactics

Apparently none of the intelligent executives at Apple/Google figured this out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/p970st/after_another...

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/p970st/after_another...

Obviously, I don't claim these two comments are correct. I do claim, however, that people are better served by not quoting random statements from a lawsuit without understanding either the context or the applicable law. Especially when only one side in the lawsuit is quoted from.

If so, what is your best guess as to why the executives (who surely know that) might have chosen to use those words?

Personal feeling after the whole salary fixing case and now this, Google should be forced to move it's head quarters and it's top management to some place like Waco Texas.

I see the exact same duopoly as in Apple-Google world. There's Sony and Microsoft(with no independent app stores). Nintendo isn't in the same market as the other two.

Nintendo might be a running joke amongst hardcore gamers but ironically they're the most successful console manufacturer out there.

The Switch is going from strength to strength and I'd estimate it will outsell the Playstation 4 before Nintendo retire it (it's been outselling the PS4 since 2019 already but that's to be expected given the expectation of the PS5). And from the same trial that bought us this submission we've seen Microsoft admit that they've never made a profit on the Xbox. Let's also not forget that games on the Switch are typically more expensive than the same game on other platforms. And that's without even touching the topic of Nintendo's 1st party games -- they make an absolute killing on their IP. Animal Crossing, for example, was seen by many as the unofficial game of the 2020 lockdown.

I predict Nintendo's market position will only get stronger too. With many Xbox fans giving up on buying new consoles because they're basically just PCs at this point. So switching to PCs that can be upgraded over time and still have access to Xbox content. Plus the struggles Sony have had just shipping their latest consoles and many gamers there saying they might just stick with the PS4. Yet Nintendo have calved out their own corner of the market that sits between the ultra competitive hardcore market and casual gamers who want more than crappy mobile apps. And it's a segment that's increasing in size too.

It'll be interesting to see how Valves offering does. I can't see it competing with the Switch directly but it might take more market share away from Sony and Microsoft given Valves new portable offers the capability of desktop gaming on the move.

So anyway, back to your point. You might scoff but actually Nintendo are in a far more stable and successful position than Sony and Microsoft (with regards to consoles).

I don't think sales numbers are the parent comment's point. Rather, that "Xbox or Playstation" is a common enough question to imply there is direct competition (and there are lots of shared titles), whereas the Nintendo consoles exist more or less in a vacuum.

Also don't write the Switch off for serious gamers either. Most gamers I know who have an Xbox or PS also have a Switch. Why is this important? Because if someone has £50 to spend on a game, they cannot spend that same £50 on both the PS/Xbox and the Switch stores. So even if the Switch occupies a slightly different market, it's still taking money that might have gone to Sony or Microsoft.

I'm not saying its unsuccessful, just that people who play Detroit or Gears aren't going to buy Switch just because PS5/Xbox is out of stock.

A fair number of gamers are disinterested with the latest generation because they don't see the envelope being pushed enough (eg for many, the previous generation largely looked "good enough") but Nintendo offering something totally new (portable plus their own exclusives) offers something more for their money.

Maybe in a couple of years time if/when AAA titles stop offering releases on the PS4 we might see more people pining for a PS5. But a lot of the muted reactions are precisely because there isn't an urgency to upgrade.

Now you could argue that even if they don't replace their PS4 with a PS5, they're still spending money with Sony. But if these gamers also have a Switch -- which many will do -- then their gaming budget is now divided between Nintendo and Sony. Eg if they have £50 next week to buy a new game, they can't spend it in full on both the Playstation and the Switch. Even if they only spend half that on the Switch, it's still a 50% drop for Sony.

So Nintendo might target a slightly different market but they're still affecting Sony and Microsoft's games sales.

None of these stores do my email, dating, finance, math, fitness, banking, web. They're not fitting the computer role like laptops and smartphones.

Games are toys and have lots of healthy competition. Smartphones are monopolistic dictatorships.

Famgopolies are secretly colluding to take over everything and tax it. To make computing encumbered, unfree, unrepairable, and shackled in surveillance.

Who gives a damn about video game toys when the most important devices in our lives are turning into Big Brother meets Stalin?

90's Bill Gates wishes he was this evil.

Google and Apple need to be split up.

You're still missing the point. There is no way to buy a game for Xbox without going through Microsoft's official channels and giving them their huge cut. There is no way to buy a game for Playstation without going through Sony's official channels and giving them their huge cut. There is no way to buy a game for Switch without going through Nintendo's official channels and giving them their huge cut.

Being able to buy the same game on different consoles is immaterial. The stores themselves are the monopoly.

>None of these stores do my email, dating, finance, math, fitness, banking, web. They're not fitting the computer role like laptops and smartphones.

What difference does this make? If they did these things, would it suddenly matter that the only way to get software onto this platform was to give 30% of revenue to the console manufacturer?

Phones are life. You can't do without them. There are two choices, both locked down hard.

PCs went from free and open to Google + Apple duopoly. And the rules are draconian.

Maybe 1995-2005 was an era before your time (given that your username is Zoomer), but modern computing is worse than it used to be. You have no idea what you missed out on, and you're speaking about a status quo that is a definitive downgrade.

Steve Jobs put us in shackles and neck braces. But they're pretty and convenient, so we accept them.

The confusion here is you're reading my comment thinking we're discussing a different topic. So it's not me who missed the point :)

If anything 'hardcore' gamers are more likely to buy a switch since they'll be deeply invested in certain franchises, vs a causal gamers who would be on IPhone

If I’ve been playing Smash Bros since the 90s and I need to play the latest one , I’m buying a Switch. I consider myself hardcore, I probably play( or make ) games at least 30 hours a week

Of course I have a PC as well. I’m personally looking forward to Metroid and Advance Wars later this year.

Like with any product that sells millions, there will be people that fall outside of the target demographic. That doesn't mean there isn't a target demographic or that the company are targeting the wrong group. It just means that either the person is an edge case or the product is versatile enough to be enjoyed by more than just the target audience. In the Switch's case, it's the latter.

In fact that's the point I've been making all along about the genius of the device. Nintendo have not only built a console that captures the imagination of a largely forgotten market, but they've done so in a way that has appeal beyond that market too.

But to be clear, this wasn't an accident on Nintendo's part. They've always marketed their machines as family systems (ie accessible gaming to be shared). That's why their 3rd generation console was called the Famicom in Japan (short for Family Computer). It's why the NES was styled the way it was (a grey box like a VCR so it looked at home in the families TV cabinet rather than looking like a kids toy). It's why the N64 was the first console to have 4 ports built in (ie without needing additional hardware). Why the Wii went down the gimmicky route when everyone else was making consoles for older kids and adults. And why Nintendo's IP is almost always cute and cartoony.

As a case in point, it's clear that Nintendo themselves think they are competing with Microsoft, Sony, and the PC space. They pay tons of money to game developers in order for their games to not show up on Xbox, PS, and PC. That would make no sense unless there was some actual competition. I could mention Hades and Monter Hunter Rise as two recent examples where Nintendo paid money to devs in exchange for exclusivity.

And given how hard Sony and Microsoft compete to pursuade games to be released exclusively on either platform isn't it a bit of different dynamic?

No. Sony PlayStation is almost identical to the Apple App Store in that there’s only 1 way to get your software working on retail units.

In fact it’s a lot worse in many ways, you need two specific types of hardware to even develop software- Sony is quite old school and draconian when it comes to testing, validation and communication.

At Ubisoft we had entire teams of compliance testers for Sony/Microsoft- and if you ever tried to get content outside of their stores (ie; loading after the game launches) they are quite aggressive about pulling the game down.

I wouldn't say visiting any of thousands of reatil stores around the world, or ordering online from any of thousands of online retailers count as "only 1 way".

Want to release only on physical media for PS or XBox? Have to go through platform cert anyway.

It doesn’t really matter who resells them, unless it’s a used copy then Sony has been paid — and it doesn’t mean that I as a publisher have an alternative “store” on the PlayStation or that I can print my own disks, which is what the parent stated.

The only thing I see that’s slightly different in your example above is the ability to resell the game once you’re done with it.

If it is the same, why doesn't Apple allow third party stores even to re-sell apps from app store, competing on price and convenience? As this is what Sony does.

I'm by no means fan of Sony, but these are two completely different situations.

There’s no alternative to PlayStation getting their cut.

And it doesn’t matter anyway because brick and mortar resales are going away, PS5 has a “digital only” version of the console, and Xbox had the same thing last gen.

It is different. Both Sony and MS buy studios that end up producing exclusives.

Meanwhile, in desktop land, there are real alternatives because almost everything you’d want to do runs in the browser well enough (for regular home users at least). But on mobile the browsers are locked down, so the web is not a credible mobile app strategy. Linkedin and facebook oroginally tried a mobile web strategy and discovered that mobile browsers aren’t good enough. The lack of real competition, especially on iOS keeps mobile browsers underpowered for apps and maintains the strong gatekeeping function of mobile app stores.

For me a possible solution is to force platform owners to allow real browser competition on their platforms (again: especially iOS) and hope that is enough to kickstart a browser arms race like we enjoyed on the desktop a decade ago, with the end result being that mobile web apps become a real alternative and we weed out much of the bad behavior by apple and google because they have a genuine competition for the native platform.

That's old news =] — now they just purchase all of the studios and "let them do their thing". Probably for significantly less % at the dev end, but, I digress.

True decentralization is impossible without drastic change in human nature. We can only replace global powers with smaller, regional powers, or a single power with multiple ones. Despite cartelization it is better than absolute control wielded by one entity.

Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well.

$gov pays 600eur/day for software developers (which they could hire for less than a third of the price). The pimps renting out these developers have zero incentive to ensure quality in any way. The longer a project takes, the bigger their cut. The developers don't care, they're being grossly underpaid by their pimps, so they ride it out until something better comes along. $gov has zero IT competence, and doesn't realize (or doesn't care) it's being ripped off. Government IT project failures are commonplace, with hundreds of thousands wasted per project, sometimes even millions. $gov can't hire software engineers directly, because governments have ridiculous rules about employment and wages and degree requirements. They can't pay developers as much as they could make elsewhere.

I think it would be a great idea for any government (local, regional, national) to start insourcing their own software developers. Starting small. There would be great value to having a few dedicated teams, in the true sense of the word, instead of a ragtag bunch of consultants. This will require changes to government employment laws. But in my book, it would be worth it.

Long story short: governments can't even get their own software in order. I don't see them promoting "home grown" software any time soon.

„Why anyone would expect better decisions to be made by third parties who pay no price for being wrong is one of the mysteries of our time.“

I have also wondered the same, especially seeing not just the massive spying, but also the shoddy quality and extortionate prices that characterize government software auctions all over the world. Especially as multiple regional and local entities often pay for exactly the same management software. It would seem a no-brainer that a national/regional software institute would produce huge savings, better quality, and strategic advantages if it created a national/regional software stack that could be used everywhere.

Alas, I believe that cronyism, market veneration, lack of understanding of software, and the high initial costs are acting to prevent any such effort from even seeming a thinkable idea.

So yeah, that's the reason.

It doesn't help that the way to win elections now is to start a culture war, not to make the country they govern a better place (see the UK).

20 years later, Apple and Google bundle not only their browsers, but whole irreplaceable app stores with no legal consequences.

I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.

That reductive summary is repeated but isn't accurate.

Microsoft didn't get in trouble for adding its own IE web browser to Windows. (Software companies always add new features and enhancements.)

The key nuance that triggered the government lawsuit was anti-competitive actions such as using obscure/undocumented Windows API functions to cripple Netscape and forcing computer manufacturers to avoid other software when licensing DOS/Windows. All of that is in the long document: https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...

This is much more serious that the Microsoft case.

Even more so when you consider how much larger these companies are set to get yet (Google will double in size again within ~5-7 years). It's the Microsoft case if Microsoft had been allowed to continue to build its power out for another 10-15 years unchecked. In the 1990s a parade of magazines ran stories about how Microsoft wanted to set up a toll road on the Internet, to position itself to take a bite out of all ecommerce. They were of course meant to be scare stories to garner attention as Microsoft wasn't close to accomplishing something like that at that point.

And yet, here we are two decades later, Apple and Google control two big Internet toll roads and are drastically larger and more powerful than Microsoft was in the 1990s. IBM was seven times larger than Microsoft in 1997. Microsoft of the 1990s looks downright quaint by comparison, an emerging big tech company playing at being giant (back then there were still far larger and more powerful corporations); today, Apple and Google - big tech broadly - are the most powerful and largest companies. Caterpillar, GE, 3M, General Dynamics, GM, Ford, Honeywell, etc look like sad jokes standing next to Apple or Google.

Google for its part has three monopolies which have amazingly been left entirely alone: search, YouTube, Android. They must have signed one helluva protection deal with the intelligence apparatus back when PRISM was getting set up, they got a ten year get out of jail free card (it's in the interests of the intelligence community to have these giant intel-hoovering companies that sprawl and span the globe).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v....

It was a choice, but most decided to cave in and only sell PCs.

Here that isn't the case, most shops selling iPhones also have other brands available. Customers aren't forced into buying iPhones.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...

In a more reasonable market, like smartphones or phones in total, Apple just does not have a monopoly. There are alternatives.

From the linked documents:

> If Android competed with iOS on app transactions, the market competition would make Android apps cheaper for users and attract developers to launch their apps first (or even only) on Android. [...] After a meeting involving senior executives of Google and Apple, notes of the meeting were exchanged between the two companies. The notes reflect: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

Epic's lawsuits are alleging that both Apple and Google have engaged in anti-competitive behavior here, albeit sometimes in different ways. Even bolder, they're claiming that Google and Apple engaged cooperative anti-competitive behavior that benefited both companies. What consumer-ready alternatives exist for users outside of Apple and Android? If a developer announces that they're building a smartphone game, and that it won't work on Android or iOS, do you think it's reasonably possible for that developer to make money with that game?

Apple has massive amounts of competitive leverage over the smartphone ecosystem; they control the most profitable app store. And the vast majority of non-iOS phones are running the Google Play Store. In that context, locking down the hardware has much bigger implications than it would in a truly competitive market. I think the question is, do we actually have a competitive smartphone market when it comes to smartphone app stores and OSes?

I do shudder at the day of seeing websites that only work on Chrome for iOS, an app that I will never use.

By that measure, there is very little competition in the smartphone segment—it is highly concentrated and so the major players (both Apple and Google) should face greater antitrust scrutiny.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman...

A monopoly is not needed for anti-competitive behavior to be illegal. All that is needed is significant market power.

Apple has 50% of the smartphone market. Which is around where courts have stated that anti-trust laws start to apply.

50% of a highly concentrated market is not a slam dunk anti-trust case, by any means, but it is within the realm where courts might rule against it, depending on numerous factors.

Have any references where someone was sued for antitrust while having <50% marketshare (of course, using the market determined by the court at the time)? If what you say is true, is the cutoff for antitrust action just "when media outlets report on it long enough to actually be put in sight of regulators/congress"?

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

The cutoff is as follows "Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors"

If you want statements from a judge, regarding the 50 percent specifically, you can look up the following court cases and read from the primary source.

"See Hayden Publ'g Co., Inc. v. Cox Broad. Corp., 730 F.2d 64, 69 n.7 (2d Cir. 1984) ("[A] party may have monopoly power in a particular market, even though its market share is less than 50%."); Broadway Delivery Corp. v. UPS, 651 F.2d 122, 129 (2d Cir. 1981) ("[W]hen the evidence presents a fair jury issue of monopoly power, the jury should not be told that it must find monopoly power lacking below a specified share."); Yoder Bros., Inc. v. Cal.-Fla. Plant Corp., 537 F.2d, 1347, 1367 n.19 (5th Cir. 1976) (rejecting "a rigid rule requiring 50% of the market for a monopolization offense without regard to any other factors")."

But yes, typically, if a company has less than 50% of a market, anti-trust law does not apply. But the word "typically" does not mean "always". (And Apple has 54% of the US market)

And whether it applies, would defend on "other factors", as according to the quote I linked, and there is a good argument, IMO, that a duopoly would be a reasonable "other factor".

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/

"In 1955, the date of this merger, Brown was the fourth largest manufacturer in the shoe industry, with sales of approximately 26 million pairs of shoes and assets of over $72,000,000 while Kinney had sales of about 8 million pairs of shoes and assets of about $18,000,000."

And even more relevant:

"Another important factor to consider is the trend toward concentration in the industry. It is true, of course, that the statute prohibits a given merger only if the effect of that merger may be substantially to lessen competition. But the very wording of § 7 requires a prognosis of the probable future effect of the merger.

The existence of a trend toward vertical integration, which the District Court found, is well substantiated by the record. Moreover, the court found a tendency of the acquiring manufacturers to become increasingly important sources of supply for their acquired outlets. The necessary corollary of these trends is the foreclosure of independent manufacturers from markets otherwise open to them. And because these trends are not the product of accident, but are rather the result of deliberate policies of Brown and other leading shoe manufacturers, account must be taken of these facts in order to predict the probable future consequences of this merger. It is against this background of continuing concentration that the present merger must be viewed."

Are smartphones a natural monopoly? And at what levels? Hardware (including plugs and jacks, physical button locations and functions?), software, data federation? Like where do you draw the line?

If smartphones must allow alternatives, then why not gaming consoles? It's a similarily integrated device. Would Microsoft be forced to allow unlicenced 3rd party software on the Xbox?

One may argue that people rarely need a gaming console to pursue job opportunities, for instance. A smartphone, on the other hand, has become practically mandatory in many industries.

But in reality, in the wake of 9/11, USA thought it was more important to have extremely large companies, and it let them grow.

(And MS’ EU fine was related to not giving the API doc, and perhaps using fines as a political weapon).

Clearly, if US applied the anti-monopoly laws, it would shoot its own companies. In my opinion however, no single entity should dominate, govt or enterprise, and we must parcel large ones to keep competition fair, replacements rolling, class mobility high, the american dream possible for new entrants and more importantly, so that governance of our daily life is regularly given to the next generation.

Can you give any evidence of what changed after 9/11 in terms of pro-corporate policy?

Antitrust enforcement has more to do with the party in power than anything else. The Bush Administration wasn't interested in suing businesses, and now the Biden Administration is again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#2.5...

> 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.

I’ve seen people saying in these comments often that you have to use safari. I am using ff on my iOS device right now, what am I missing?

But if you can’t tell the difference, does it really matter?

Firefox on Android supports add-ons, in particular uBlock origin. Firefox on iOS does not. That's a huge difference.

Apple standing against that is important for the open web.

However, Apple isn't extending its dominance in the smart phone area (Apple has 53% market share of mobile devices, Microsoft had above 90% market share for intel compatible PCs https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f... ) to its licensees for iOS.

Apple not forcing Samsung to bundle Safari on the Samsung branded iPhones to the exclusion of Chrome.

Yes, Apple isn't licensing iOS to others and that's a key difference. Furthermore, Apple has half of the market dominance that Microsoft had in its day.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman...

With 53% market share, Apple alone contributes over 0.25 to the HHI. 0.25 for the entire market is regarded as highly concentrated.

> and when they're colluding with the "competition".

Unless you have evidence for that, that's just libel.

> 'After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."'

- Mac OS X Public Beta (2000)

- SUSE Linux 7.0 (2000)

- Debian 2.2 (2000)

- OpenBSD 2.7 (2000)

- Solaris 8 (2000)

- AmigaOS 3.9 (2000)

- and so on... [0]

Hardly “no alternatives” in my humble opinion.

And in office space, MS-DOS was still a thing for quite some time.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_operating_systems#...

Firefox worked, as did Flash (hello NewGrounds!), Java (RuneScape), you could do a ton and be nigh invulnerable to all the malware on the internet of the early 2000s.

It's interesting to think that the project has survived for so long, even if nowadays the Libre office variety is more widely used.

The 2001 decision was comparing desktop options at a time when they weren't any. Today's mobile users have plenty of options, plenty of brands and OSs to choose from.

Android is Linux under the hood. It just doesn't use any of the cruft that desktop Linux usually has, like Xorg.

Non-google app stores cannot automatically update aps, side-loading is hidden in menus behind scary warnings.

IOS forcing you to use safari no matter what, and there is no way to side-load apps, nor any non-apple app stores.

chrome de facto sets web standards, giving them slight edge over other browsers - and they do use chrome specific APIs to cripple other browsers - like YouTube working worse on Firefox due that reason.

And that's even without taking into the consideration all the tracking in form of telemetry on the devices, coupled with their own ads markets.

They can in Android 12.

> side-loading is hidden in menus behind scary warnings.

The warnings are minimal.

-- 1) Open Chrome.

-- 2) Find and Download APK. https://i.imgur.com/ZFZb1uE.png

-- 3) Accept warning and Open APK.

-- 4) Go to settings. (This only has to be done once) https://i.imgur.com/R8FzTzP.png

-- 5) Toggle Install Unknown Apps for Chrome. (This only has to be done once) https://i.imgur.com/K0ADO2q.png

-- 6) Click back (This only has to be done once)

-- 7) Click install. https://i.imgur.com/xVSndex.png

-- Done. https://i.imgur.com/fyasTK9.png

Once you do this for the first time, the process reduces down to 4 steps each time after: Open Chrome, Download APK, Open APK, Click Install. Done.

The ZOMG SKERRRY WARNINGS only show up once when you toggle the permission for that app and if you look at the screenshot, it's a reasonable disclaimer.

We have plenty of things to bash on Google here for... the sideloading process, however, is not one of them.

> chrome de facto sets web standards,

Chrome became the most popular browser simply because it is better.

If Mozilla could get their shit together, they could potentially reclaim their number one spot... but Firefox lost that spot multiple times. Not because of subterfuge, but because they continually drop the ball.

Chrome didn't exist in a vacuum and it didn't have the advantage of having a host operating system that had it installed from the start. There's a reason it's the primary engine now. It actually works better.

If that bothers you, use Firefox or De-Googled Chromium. Or if you really hate yourself... Safari.

Mozilla never had #1.

And I don't know what world you live in, but Google has pushed Chrome with the equivalent of billions in advertising. There's simply no way Mozilla can compete with that considering the kind of budget they're on.

If you want a fair estimate, look the time it took for Firefox to slowly grind market share from IE6, despite an abyssal difference between the two browsers.

At its peak it had 90+% of the market share.

Firefox nearly overtook IE until Chrome was released. If Firefox had not been consistently a dumpster fire, I think it could have maintained at least 50/50 with Chrome.

I switched to Chrome not because Google had good advertising but simply because it was _better._ Firefox has always had issues and Mozilla can't seem to make a browser that doesn't shit itself every now and then.

It took 6 years for Chrome to gain 50% market share. In 6 years, firefox had barely taken 25% from IE.

If you're arguing that this difference in success is explained by the technological gap between chrome and firefox being much larger than the technological gap between firefox and IE, you need a reality check.

Otherwise, you need to acknowledge the fact that Chrome had something firefox didn't have, and it was not a technological advantage.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/internet-browser-market-sha...

Chrome took more away from IE initially than it did from Firefox.

And yes, I'm arguing a technical difference. I've used every version of every browser when it was still new, all the way back to Mosaic.

Chrome introduced per-tab instancing which was a HUGE leap ahead of everything else and Firefox took years to catch up to that one feature alone. Firefox was bloated, slow and unstable.

It still is.

Apple on the other hand has a vertical monopoly, they control the whole stack from hardware to software. While their influence on iPhones is absolute, they don't have outsize influence on other phone vendors. Also while popular iPhones don't have a majority of really any phone market.

Antitrust considerations are different for different monopoly types. Unless a company with a vertical monopoly also had a market monopoly position and used that position to actively influence/harm other companies it's really hard to legally pursue them. You can't fault a company for building their own products and trying to make money from selling them. If a Samsung washing machine has some cool feature when paired with a Samsung dryer, just because Samsung has a monopoly on Samsung appliances doesn't mean they're violating some antitrust laws.

If anything Google is in bigger danger of antitrust suits since they have a more horizontal position in the phone market. While they have token entries in the hardware market they're an OS and service provider. Which is likely why they're supportive is sideloading and alternate app stores, if they behaved like Apple but with a horizontal monopoly the DoJ would be all over them.

Apple isn't exclusively a hardware/OS company. They compete horizontally with digital media services like Amazon (books), Spotify (music), Netflix (video), etc. They use their OS and APIs to squeeze out weak competitors and suck up to stronger competitors. They make more money from apps than hardware.

Keep in mind, it's not just current competitors. It's also the potential competitors that don't even bother to start due to Apple's predatory practices.

You're forgetting how that ended. Remember, the DOJ threw the book at Microsoft. It was an intensely publicized trial, with pretty much all the country hating Microsoft and Bill Gates. Waffling over the word "ask", the infamous "knife the baby" email, the Halloween documents and Embrace-Extend-Extinguish. That all came out as part of the DOJ antitrust suit. It's hard to remember how visceral the hate for this was. During the height of that, The Simpsons decided to portray Bill Gates on the show, not positively [0]. A game developer released a title called "Microshaft Winblows 98" to positive reviews and very good sales [1].

The judge makes their final verdict. Microsoft clearly stepped over the line, there were no easy answers. They were too big a company, the only possible remedy is to break them up. Into at least two companies, but probably more; at the very least, the apps and OS needed to be split up into the "Baby Bills", they were going to be called.

Then George W. Bush comes in, guts the DOJ to a fifth of their size, and basically all but tells them "never do that again, please". The case quickly and silently went to appeal, where it was reduced from "Microsoft needs to be broken up" into a small fine [2]. And after other tragedies in the early 2000s, the nation quickly forgot.

So, no, despite the fanfare, despite the judgement and ruling, the DOJ antitrust case had very limited effect on reality. And the message from above seems to be "try that again, and get your budget demolished even more". That's, uh, why antitrust isn't a thing anymore.

Except, well, it did have one effect. In the midst of everything, Bill Gates was basically forced to resign and go into philanthropy to clear their image, resulting in Ballmer taking over. Some believe that was the true punishment for Microsoft.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_SZRhWr1s [2] https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/bush-administration-a...

They got a massive fine and were and forced to do things like open up the client server protocol used between Windows Domain Controllers and Windows Clients.

They came pretty close to being forced to open up the Office document formats, but the EU backed down from that one.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_forma...

sounds like a win-win to me.

Apple literally has banned competitors. Google at least allows them, even if they make every effort to keep them out, it's still possible to install them without hacking your phone (which hasn't really been possible on iPhone for years).

I just hate that they're grouped together as if it's equivalent.

Apple and Google aren't. You have a choice between iOS and Android, both vibrant and thriving.

It really is that simple. And it's not just the legal but common sense definition of monopoly too -- do you control the market or not?

Now you might have other criticisms of app stores, but basing them on the Microsoft-monopoly-argument isn't going to be helpful or useful. You're going to need a different legal foundation for that.

But app platforms are not commodities. There is considerable vendor lock-in, by design. It's not like one just takes an iOS app and instantly ports it over to Android when Apple's terms no longer suit; there is considerable sunk cost. Platforms cleave the market into captive audiences that can and are abused.

And what to do if you are little guy who invested everything in one of those two platforms and didn't have the foresight to write your app in a way that it was easily ported? Well, screw you.

So these platforms actually compete with each other to offer "value adds" which are really just like traps for vendor lock-in.

Anti-trust laws are full of flawed and antiquated reasoning that is unable to deal with the realities of the 21st century marketplace. And there is precious little understanding of these technological issues in courts and legislatures.

It was a mess for other reasons too, but it felt at the time like it represented a turning tide against anti-competitive behaviour in software.

* Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is no monopoly.

* Microsoft had no effective competitors.

You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for a stronger case.

They effectively have a monopoly over their customers from other customers and can leverage that monopoly to control their vendors.

And Google and Apple secretly working together as "one company" literally defines trust behavior:

'After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."'

They also conveniently had the exact same app store fee for years. Doesn't make much sense if they were actually competing with each other

I'm not disagreeing with the conclusion -- I agree that they are colluding -- but the logic isn't right.

Economists are poor because there isn't any competitive advantage. Any competently-run business of any significant size should have plenty of people able to apply basic economics. Engineers who don't learn basic econ are at a disadvantage, on the other hand.

Wow they are really bad at this then. 200-400k without even requiring a college degree is pretty wild. It’s about what my brother made as a doctor and he had an undergraduate degree, medical school, an internship, a residency program…

not sure why doctor wages are brought up, supply and demand determines prices. Google and Apple tried to artificially distort the labor market

Anecdotal, but once you get some years of Big Tech experience under your belt, I do think you become comparatively more valuable to smaller companies.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/anti...

>> You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for a stronger case.

The realities of being a primary OS, App Store, or browser vendor today are both more significant, and more well known than in the 90s. They have financial consequences many times greater.

I don't see how you can come to an intelligible concept of monopoly, market power and such with a general, legal-friendly theory of monopoly. The logic needs to be reversed.

NEW UNDERPANTS PLAN:

0. Forget about proving a monopoly exists to strengthen your case that X is acting as a trust.

1. Use evidence that X is acting as a trust, as to make the case that monopoly exists instead.

2. ???

3. Profit.

The problem is that we don't have a step 2. What happens when markets mature into an monopoly dynamic? We need an answer, because some have.

From the article: After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

As I understand it, the law sees detrimental effects on consumers.

I know because due to that incident we had to follow online formation every god damn month about antitrust. You don't have to have a "monopoly" to trigger antitrust legislation. The mere mention of "deals" or "cooperation" or "understanding" in the same conversation that involves competitor can be enough evidence to cause huge trouble.

Why aren't they getting hit hard by antitrust?

I guess the reason that megacorps can get away with even worse behavior is that the system is corrupt.

[source needed]. The only tariff change Apple ever made was ... due to a real threat of an anti-trust lawsuit. And Google followed straight away.

I can't recall any competition between both companies, they just have their own distinct market.

At least on Android you can install you own market if you're so inclined. I have yet to find an alternative app store for ios though(might be just me not knowing where to look though).

Edit: Forgot to add that when you're talking about Apple vs G I don't see it as 1 big "smartphone" market. It's 2 different ones. Apple hardware running iOS vs generic hardware running Android.

"Our vision is that we [Apple and Google] work as if we are one company."

There was a report yesterday that showed Apple's lawyers threatening to pull out funding of a minority education school if the state considered any sort of App store laws.

Apple I agree with.

Microsoft got out of that, though. They barely paid a fine. I don't disagree that there are antitrust concerns with all sorts of big company behavior. But this is the world we live in. If you want the government to regulate this stuff for you you need to elect a government willing to do that (or rather, willing to appoint judges willing to do that).

Let's make a point of starting here. There's room for the legalistic standpoint, especially if we're trying to understand legal processes... but this isn't a law forum. It's near impossible to discuss antitrust usefully from a mostly-legalistic perspective. The laws, precedents, legal doctrines and economic doctrines they relate to are extremely patchy, flimsy and often barely exist.

I think a core part of the problem is a weak, badly grounded antitrust framework in the first place. Key definitions like "monopoly" use contradictory conceptual frameworks, from different eras. Generalizing from one instance to another is difficult. A lot of key concepts don't have definitions at all, or really wishy washy ones.

I think the nature of monopolies has a lot to do with this. One possible definition of monopoly is an singular market entity... IE not generalizable, by definition. Are courts supposed to be punishing violations, or structuring markets and doing industrial policy? Are they supposed to be regulating monopolies, preventing them, or declaring their existence so that a different set of regulations kick in? Is monopoly a normal occurrence in market maturity, or market failure?

At some point, Peter Thiel gave away the game when he said that "monopoly is the goal." If you read microeconomics basics, but conceptualize it as software companies instead of a auto manufacturing... you tend to think of monopoly, rather than commoditization as the equilibrium point that's never quite reached. Successful tech companies don't try to make money by competing in a level field with lots of competitors. That's for appstore app developers, salesforce plugin consultants, spotify artists and such.

The whole premise of the tech miracle is that monopolies are the bull case. How else to expect/justify/realize tech company valuations.

Imagine pitching an investor like Thiel on your idea to spend a billion dollars making youtube content for ad revenue? That's all wrong. Your bull case is that you'll temporarily profitable, if successful. Even if you're very profitable, its temporary. There are zillions of youtubers and squillions who could be. They'll copy you, or maybe your content will just get stale over time. A youtube policy change could wipe you out. In the turbulence of youtube's free market for online videos, profits don't last at scale. To get Thiel's attention, you need to go for your own monopoly.

"Commoditize your compliments" has long been a tech motto. Well... what's the corrolorary? Monopolize your market segment.

Commoditize PCs. Monopolize the OS.

Commoditize smartphones. Monopolize the OS.

Monopolize consoles, Commoditize games. Platform/Content. Market/Vending. Users/Advertising. Data/Advertising.

By platform, I mean an ecosystem a private entity creates which they monetize through content created/uploaded/deployed by external parties.

AWS and others fall under this definition too. The truth is, cloud computing should be a low margin industry in the long run. Yes, software has close to 0 marginal cost of production, but the same is true of your competitors. Basic economic principle implies that in a competitive market, the price to customers should be close to the cost of production.

In the old days, the economy was largely physical goods based, so it was very easy to simply buy a competing product if you don't like the one you have now. That by and large didn't entail becoming entrenched in a whole ecosystem.

Laws need to be updated to tackle the inherent monopolistic elements of platforms, social and so on. China is taking this path, so it will be interesting to see how that develops.

It's important to recognize too, that leveraging a monopolistic position to produce excess profit is effectively a direct transfer of wealth from the littler guys to the bigger guys.

e.g. Apple taking a 30% cut on the app store directly takes from app creators, who may raise prices 30%, which ultimately hits customers.

The free market ethos, IIRC, suggests that all industries should be low margin in the long run, no? Innovators and shuch are supposed to be compensated with high margins, but not perpetual high margins. The whole idea is that 25%> margin do not exist in perpetuity.

The same should be true in software, regardless of how cheap it is to produce an additional unit. Of course, because it's cheap for anybody else to produce that additional unit too.

The reason we see such high margins in software is a combination of "first mover advantage", pseudo-monopolistic like elements to the business, and the fact that industry is so new, VC money does not tend to go towards creating direct competitors as there is ample opportunity elsewhere.

In the short run, first movers and innovators will be able to generate high margins of course. And sometimes business X really does produce a better product than the rest, as some would say Apple does. But given that software is cheap to maintain once built, you would expect many viable and roughly equivalent competitors to be built in the long run.

At the end of the day, legislation should be written to foster "competitive capitalism", as that produces the best result for the public at large.

For example, it should be as easy to switch between SaaS providers as the flick of a button. Apple should have to allow competing app stores and not give preferential treatment to their own... And so on.

If you think about the App store example in isolation, the fee they charge is a direct transfer of wealth from app creators and app buyers to Apple. Would they be able to charge 30% if there were competing app stores? Maybe, but I doubt it over the long run. Certainly at least they wouldn't be able to charge Epic that amount, as Fortnite is big enough to entice people through side channels for loading the app.

Looking at it as choice of Apple or Android is not an appropriate level of granularity for anti-trust IMO.

We must recognize that markets created within a platform also must be competitive, not just the gateway into that ecosystem. Cost of switching becomes high, which leads to de facto Monopoly power by the platform owner.

In these cases, generally, the law acts when other parties push it. Mainly big actors. The app stores are generally build by those major actors. May be regulations will happen in several years.

Also, there's nothing antitrust about bundling web DLLs in an OS, or using the web shell for applications. That's what a Chromebook did.

What MSFT did was abuse its monopoly position to take advantage of other companies and customers.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...

Regulatory capture.

Edit: Not sure why accusation of corruption is downvoted? It's a very difficult crime to prove and requires resources to pursue, so there is no appetite to prosecute. Big companies and civil service know that. If these companies pay off developers, they would have no reason to pay anyone else in their way and that would unlikely result in any consequences.

It's pretty easy to see that FAANG-esque companies are totally dominant at this point, and have many pseudo-monopolistic elements about them.

Beyond specific names, there is a vast difference in both the scale, and the "ecosystem" or "platform" nature in modern software that effectively invalidates the applicability of anti-trust law as it is written.

Going even further, many laws protecting private companies likely will change in the coming years to account for different paradigm that software brings. Sometimes difference in scale is also difference in nature.

If you look into the aims of a lot of China's recent regulations, they are actually setup to create a competitive market, rather than have a few tech companies become dominant. Competition is ultimately good for the public, as it leads to lower costs to the consumer, and more incentive to innovate (once entrenched).

I don't suggest we go to the same extremes, but it's inevitable we'll start heading down that path, whether it be the next few years, or decades.

In my view, the market dominance of the big players has led to a new type of hidden taxation and a "winner takes all" Internet economy. Almost all digital markets require you to pass through large companies to get visibility or offer your services, and they get increasingly good at extracting every bit of profit you make. This really needs to stop.

If there is going to be competition for the big players, it will come when closed markets like Russia or China develop enough to threaten them. It is possible that Europe at some point will also follow their example.

There are two options:

- We have to wait for the next technological revolution.

- It is simply just more costly to be an entrepreneur. It's not about throwing together a website or app, it's much more costly to break through the existing monopolies. While you can still make a website or app yourself, I think you do need more and more capital to market it.

The US which only regulates rail safety but not the market, has a bunch of local monopolies and calls that a market, being in total denial that markets need to be regulated to actually allow competition.

I guess this will be the same.

In 1998 I remember having to dial 1521 or something before the number I was planning to dial to use the cheaper minutes with the competitor. I also remember having to learn to use 8 digit numbers for everyone instead of using 5 digit numbers locally.

Annoying, but forgotten 4 years later when you didn't have to prefix numbers anymore and we got cell phones with contact lists.

Same will happen with rail I guess. Annoying today, but I guess 4 years from now no one on their right mind will ever want to go back.

Oh, BTW, the same with the mail monopoly. A lot of complaints, but the result is I can now get my packages shipped overnight. I literally contacted my broadband provider on chat a Sunday afternoon during the last 30 days and had a new modem in my mail as I woke up the next morning.

No way that could have happened with the old telecom and mail monopolies in place.

Want to advertise? You had to go through radio stations with license monopolies. Or maybe you had to go through a newspaper, historically there were usually one or two that thrived per city, and usually one dominant super paper in a given city (2-3 times larger than its smaller competitor). Or maybe you had to go through one of the few big broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox). Just a few behemoths dominanted television.

Want to transport goods? Say hello to the railroad oligopoly, going back more than a century now.

Maybe you needed a lot of vehicles for your business, circa the 1950-1970s. Say hello to the GM and Ford oligopoly, your dependency.

Maybe you wanted to buy airplanes, it's 1971 and you're starting a version of Fedex. How many choices do you have? How many suppliers are there in terms of dependency?

You want to get something on a store shelf across the country? Let me introduce you to Sears, Pennys, Kmart, Woolworth, WT Grant, Genesco, Allied, McCrory's, May. That's 50 years ago, they owned retail.

The new boss, same as the old boss (today some of them are even bigger, that much is true). You can't escape it. Unless you own all the platforms, you will always have to go through other platforms, other gate keepers. The best you can hope for is to intelligently diversify your risk exposure, so it takes more than one of them to cripple you.

what you 're describing is NOT a monopoly, because the winners were local, physical separation prevented monopolization, and crucially there was more than one dominant player. There is a whole new world on the internet where for every verb there is one, single monopoly for the entire world. In the end , one can look at the money flow: How many people were employed in newspapers vs how many people are in googleplex

And regulated as a common carrier[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

Tech monopolies will likely fade away over time like the early industrial revolution monopolies did just at an accelerated pace due to things working at internet speed. Even Google can't compete with a decentralized worldwide developer network.

Google literally built their business on a decentralized worldwide developer network.

With an open ecosystem where anyone can add features and create new apps that complement the existing use cases the amount of utility and innovation will likely outstrip organizations like Facebook which is already becoming bogged down in bureaucracy and losing ground to networks such as TikTok. In the Web3 world the equivalent of Facebook and TikTok wouldn't be directly competing as they are part of the same network and function as networks of two different user groups while allowing further experimentation of use cases that might compose different aspects of both systems into something new without users needing to re-create everything from scratch.

The lower barrier to entry for developers to innovate and UX improvements for end users stemming from a seamless unified ecosystem seems like a better experience for everyone. It'll be interesting to see how everything plays out.

This is also why Steam has mindshare: I just plain don't really want multiple "I am your games platform" apps - to the point I ignore new releases till they're on Steam.

So if someone creates a decentralized platform that can provide those things more easily, that'll win - but, I'm pretty skeptical it'll happen: decentralized platforms have been atrocious at providing the type of services companies actually need, like a payment system that is just "I enter my credit card number and you give me services I requested" or "being easier to use".

But one place to get everything? That's a killer app.

This project was built by a team of maybe a dozen people but is rather complex and needs a stablecoin (DAI from MakerDAO), an interest bearing account (Compound), an account system (Ethereum public/private key), and the running of the protocol (the smart contacts are run free for devs by Ethereum and users pay to perform actions) to make the system work. All of these dependencies took other teams years to build and the small Pool Together team leveraged that to make a cool little product by just adding a small amount on top. The ability for small teams to make functional products which can then be used by others to quickly spin up their own experiments and products is incredibly exciting to me and it's a much better method of development then the traditional closed vertically integrated tech giant where innovation is limited by bureaucracy.

> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

> That is a damning little piece of evidence.

Looks like it’s exactly the meritocracies Google and Apple claim to be, nothing monopoly-like to be found here... /s

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

At least in that context, as a mentor, I thought it was a decent message for the students. Work together to get the robots as good as possible so that you had an enjoyable competition.

https://www.firstinspires.org/

This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail, etc. It's an industrial structure. The competition is competition for monopoly, a superior & highly profitable market position of some sort. Those are what make Google, FB & so profitable.

Google competed with Yahoo & Microsoft for years in search marketing. I don't believe either ever made significant profits. Their "market share" in terms of users may have been 10%-20%. But, their share of market revenues was a fraction of that. Their share of profits was negative.

OTOH Google pays (for example) Apple $7bn per year to make Google Search default. That's better than best case scenario profits MSFT or Yahoo could have hoped to make, unless they managed to replace Google in the no. 1 position.

Competing is just a lot less profitable than cooperating in a lot of cases. What is Apple supposed to do, say "keep it, we're good?"

I disagree - governments legislate their markets so it is absolutely punishable if defined as such.

Right now, tech companies are massively overvalued because the risk of government regulation is viewed to be nonexistent. A market correction is overdue.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/break-ups-and-stock-price...

The same could happen with big tech. The market correction could be upwards, just spread across lots of new stocks.

Many of our current, data & user centric monopolies are more complex. Price setting, monopoly rents and economies of scale exist, but they're often not the main point.

"Economies of scale," for example, tends to work backwards these days. Google & FB have access to a ton of advertiser-relevant data, and a ton of users. That makes one unit of Google output better, not just cheaper. The dollar value of a Google of FB ad is much higher than MSFT's or a 2nd tier social network.

It might also be cheaper to run, because of economies of scale. Often though, that's very "in theory." IRL, FB probably spends more per user than most of their competitors. They have it to spend. Reddit is a competitor to FB, for example. The defining aspect of "scale" in their rivalry is not that FB can spread their costs across more users. FB makes many times more revenue per user, because they are bigger.

just like parking /speeding tickets arent considered structural problems

I don’t see any of these two assumptions to be true today, and if the point is to apply heavy enough fines that Google’s behavior radically changes, we’re not that far from for instance just breaking them up or applying specific restrictions on them.

I think the only way out of this for companies - and governments - is to build AGIs and put them in charge.

I realize this will sound radical today, but we are getting closer and closer.

If we can carve a path where the AGIs see us as similar to parents, and we "teach" them similar to our kids, I can see how this could all work out (writing about this elsewhere).

My two cents.

This is like another layer on the stack of dysfunction in the contemporary (mobile) gaming market.

If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when.

If your application is taking payments directly through the app (not using ads, and the app is no extension to the primary web portal) then a split community could cause havoc to the already struggling app developer.

There is a reason most developers do not create versions for the Amazon Fire, and this might end up being similar situation (if it goes the worse way possible)

If only Google had acted as a good faith steward of Android instead of pushing vendor lock in and closed source APIs in ways that make Bill Gates green with envy. Who am I kidding, their hilariously named "Open" Handset alliance even has a kill switch in the licensing agreements for anyone even thinking about competing with its services.

It's not just about the public knowing: Legislators and regulators aren't privy to non-public judicial information, and this is key evidence that Congress needs to pass strong laws that break the backs of Apple and Google.

Edit: I understand during the legal case, employees can have life changing implications for commenting on it. Well the cases can end up dragging for years. So for all those years, are we just going to keep silent? I mean if our moral compass is controlled by how corporate thinks of it, I guess we are not free after all. The next big decentralised thing is a compromised dream already.

Also if you want to really make an opinion, for those who feel like voicing but cant, make an alt account. Every voice matters.

Disclaimer - I am a Googler.

P.S. Rather than passing snark comments about what others do, maybe try talking to any of them. Any employee of a significantly sized company could have guessed that.

100% this. Even if we come here and express our opinions, or even express them internally on discussion forums and email, or chat, any of those communications are open to discovery by the plaintiff. If the plaintiff sees any value to anything an employee of the defendant company says, said employee could then be pulled into the lawsuit, be deposed, and many other non-fun things.

Well I'm sure there are many googlers out there that would love to comment on this, for our own sanity, we likely wouldn't.

Is this true? I know this to be true for actual parties involved, and I'm sure you can't speak on behalf of Google, but I'm not aware of any law or even company policy where private citizens are barred from voicing their own opinions, without divulging non-public information, in a legal matter where they aren't a party (though their employer may be).

As for "fear of retaliation" from your employer, that applies regardless of whether this is an ongoing legal matter or not.

Edit: I did not mean to dictate what anyone must do, but as a person you are entitled to have an opinion, to stand up. If you are going to base your moral compass based on what others decide. May be one day, you wont even bother having it. Im not hatching a big conspiracy here, but we must always keep some actions in mind irrespective of what courts decide. Courts are run by humans too, and humans make mistakes.

this is pretty standard. even in personal matters your lawyer will probably ask you to shut up.

And, you're free to not care about pointless comment threads on the internet.

To keep it more simple, think of how US let its telecom companies have so much power over its communication needs. How it’s affecting people.

> Do you think we would’ve had chrome and firefox, if IE used obscure APIs

IE did use obscure, non standard APIs. It took web developers to get tired of MS' shit and starting to code to the standards to dethrone IE from its monopoly. This also kind of implies that IE was there before Netscape which is not true.

Facebook started forcing companies to use Facebook Credits and then forced a 30% cut. Zynga balked. Zynga and Facebook came to secret arrangement. If you were smaller, you were SOL.

EDIT: https://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/zynga-history/11/

Netflix didn't want to pay Apple the 30% cut. Apple tried to keep Netflix. Eventually, Netflix got rid of new app store subscriptions.

EDIT: Apple offered Netflix concessions. https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase...

Look at Amazon's bookstore which forces sellers to not offer their books at a lower price elsewhere.

EDIT: https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/bookstore-files-antitrust-cl...

I'm struggling to articulate a payola analog for internet. I'll revisit Stratechery's Aggregation Theory, see how closely it fits. https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/

Meanwhile, if the tech titans want to claim the protections for platforms afforded by Section 230, they should probably stop acting like publishers. (aka having your cake and eating it too.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

Project Hug.

Your antennae should go up whenever you hear phrasing like this.

The new info is that it is now available for legal action. The optimistic view would be that Epic is enough into it to bring more changes than Microsoft’s default browser ballot.

Is that materially different than this case? (Is it that Google already has a strong market position and Epic is an upstart?)

It's easy to complain, but if that's all that ever happens, how do you expect anything to change?

   Thu Aug 19 17:54:55 +0000 2021
   1428415009860714500

https://t.co/gq0m2tIVry

Google has a secret initiative originally called "Project Hug" that offers app makers like Activision Blizzard special treatment in exchange for paying the 30% fee and being quiet about it.

Read Twitter without a Javascript or browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491

HN then changed the thread not to point to Twitter but to the Verge.

Case closed, no?

Yet tons of people continue to believe in and join the chorus about the wonders of capitalism, the free market and competition whenever any sort of government antitrust intervention or regulations are proposed. Its easy to defend capitalism in black and white terms as opposed to communism/socialism while completely ignoring the vast middle ground between 0 government oversight and total control. I hope these stupid tactics are one day broadly recognized by voters..

At any rate, the idea that companies with people who would collude in such a major way don't have any employees willing to manipulating discourse on a site like HN... that doesn't even pass the smell test, there is no way that this is the case.

This site should have all votes and flags by all accounts made public. No more guessing, no more squirming.

I am not affiliated with either company.

Now if Google has a program to make happy its customers so that they don't leave... I wish all companies strategies were like that!

If Google moved to exclusive deals, then that would mean that they would be paying game developers, 10s of millions of dollars, instead of the other way around.

The current situation is the reverse. Game devs are paying google 10s of millions of dollars. If the opposite happened, then that would be much better.

> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

if it will be proven in court it's a firm base for anti monopoly/cartel case

In many cases, it looks like there's some mutual competition-simulation going. Google launches Google+ to pretend Facebook isn't the only social network, Microsoft launches Bing so Google can say "we don't have a monopoly on search", Google finances Firefox to say the same about browsers, Apple creates Apple Maps to pretend Google Maps has competition etc, but they always seem to put in no more than the minimum effort required.

Of course, they could be honestly trying to compete and they just suck at doing those things their competitors do really well. It just looks suspicious, and quotes like that add weight to that impression.

And apparently there are a whole bunch of lawsuits against google, in multiple countries.

My money is on them losing at least one of them, in some way.

All that needs to happen is for them to lose a single lawsuit, somewhere, for the statement of "its in their right to do that" to be wrong.

- it should be illegal to lock down a device against its end user

- governments should stop protecting companies and helping prevent adversarial interoperability

Do you realize that given our current laws in the US, that this is pretty much impossible?

When two companies collude, it's illegal. When countries do the same, it's perfectly legal and is called a "trade agreement" because it's them who write laws.