Robert Reich — Break Up Facebook and while We’re At It, Google, Apple and Amazon
I don’t often disagree with Reich, but this is definitely an exception.
1) Stop reading Galloway. 2) It’s Alphabet not Google. 3) FAANG … HOW COME Netflix is off the hook?
4) Why?
@JohnPhilpin A couple thoughts:
1. How does one break up Apple? Plus, it's main selling point is intergration.
2. Netflix has a ton of streaming competitors: HBO, Hulu, Showtime, Amazon, Disney's, CBS. It takes a lot of money to compete, but that's always been the case for TV.
re 1) .. you don’t re 2) ... agree
I added Netflix onto the list - because people generally talk about the FAANG sticks - though admittedly Galloway only talks FAAG
Personally - I call them FAAA stocks .... but that is the pedant in me.
None of them should be broken up without thought and proof.
If Apple is on the list ... it should be last on the list.
Facebook shouldn't be broken up - it should just be closed.
@JohnPhilpin why exclude other giant media/attention conglomerates like AT&T, Disney, etc.? Ironically, this seems like a clickbait headline phrased to get more attention, rather than a reasoned argument from a trusted public intellectual.
@JohnPhilpin in other words: if we took your quite reasonable advice and closed Facebook, we’d be one step closer to a world where articles like this wouldn’t get as much traction.
@JohnPhilpin I think there are reasonable arguments for breaking up Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook. They’ve all leveraged monopolies in one area to enter another. Split Instagram and WhatsApp out. Separate AWS from retail. And Alphabet is already a conglomerate. Apple and Netflix don’t seem to have monopolies (unless one considers the App Store a monopoly, but I think that’s pretty questionable as the iOS devices are not).
@jamesdasher @JohnPhilpin I think there’s a good argument for breaking up the cable/media companies. If the pipes are run by different companies than those making things online, it goes a decent way to protecting net neutrality without super intense regulation.
@JohnPhilpin @Bruce Alphabet and Google should be broken up. Google own 90% of search traffic in US, higher in some other countries. Break them up. I'm not so sure Apple needs to be broken up. The tides could turn on them any year.
Telecom ISP's? Cringley thinks 5G will doom cable and DSL I suspect that is why Comcast et al are buying up broadcast production companies. They see the end coming.
@bradenslen and Google owns a practical monopoly on internet advertising, since the DoubleClick acquisition years ago. And 5G, etc., only “dooms” wired providers if the 5G providers and wired providers are the same, so that wired providers don’t have to upgrade their infrastructure to compete. In other words, it’s cheaper to buy the competition than to upgrade the fiber in the ground.
@JohnPhilpin @bradenslen OK just read that Cringely article. My guesstimate of what’s animating the acquisitions is unchanged, nor is there any obvious solution but to break up the firms and restore competition. Because if Cringely is right (reasonable assumption :) about the goal of 5G, how is 5G going to destroy the cable providers if the 5G network providers already own or are owned by the cable providers?
@jamesdasher Even with breaking up the companies, the pipe providers would still have incentives to charge for fast lanes, etc, so some regulation would still be needed. But without the possibility of self-dealing, the government could use a lighter hand. (Or really increase competition and let alternative internet providers use the pipes at a fixed rate. With enough different companies competing, I think some would try to differentiate themselves by providing strictly neutral service).
@Bruce yes, exactly! And there’s precedent: the Gingrich congress set the price at which ILECs could resell the “last mile” to CLECs at $8/end point. And if Republicans could foster healthy market competition through sensible regulatory regimes, anyone can do it.
@jamesdasher 1. We need some antitrust regulation and Alphabet and Google would be the first on the chopping block. 2. Maybe the telecoms will buy up the cable guys maybe not. All I know is I have no choice but Comcast cable and I'd like some competion for high speed internet. And I'm the lucky one, there are parts of my town that have no broadband access at all.
@jamesdasher As unthinkable as it was in the '90s, today's GOP has gone so far off its rocker that I don't think they would support such a free market alternative. It would take the Dems taking power and then an intra-caucus fight between the liberals and the centrists. (One reason I really want a sane Conservative party. I'm basically a social democrat on most things, but there is a potential regulation free way to net neutrality, which would be a win-win).
@jamesdasher I would hope that would not be allowed to happen. In a sane world it would not be allowed.
@Bruce I haven’t really understood the GOP since the truth about the 2nd Iraq war became common knowledge. But the straight line through Palin & the Tea Party to the fetishization of Donald Trump by the white religious right is ... really weird.
@bradenslen and yet, in my state, a cable company “donated money” to enough members of the state legislature to outlaw municipal broadband networks after a municipality financed and built a network that served the whole town at faster speeds for less money.
@jamesdasher Our town is talking about installing a fiber optic network. Some of our light industrial businesses have maxed out bandwidth with Comcast Business and need more. Anyway all of a sudden Comcast has decided they would connect that part of town that they have been ignoring for years.
Rural America is in worse shape. I'm thinking we need a system like Rural Electrification during the Great Depression and form Co-ops for either wired or wireless broadband for both rural areas and towns and cities. The free market only wants to serve the low hanging fruit and they always want a monopoly.
@bradenslen Exactly. The equivalent of the TVA would do a lot to make staying in or moving to rural areas much more viable. And remote tech workers in those small towns would then support a lot of other jobs. Coal mining isn't coming back, but that doesn't mean Appalachia has to depopulate.
@Bruce @bradenslen people always forget that Adam Smith was not an economist, he was a Calvinist moral philosopher. People also seem to forget that the market he advocated for had a powerful sovereign to maintain order and right relations. If the sovereign builds and maintains roads, why would the sovereign face objections to building out other infrastructure that is being neglected by various private enterprises?
