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'The End Of The Level Playing Field' (avc.com)
Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson writes in a blog post: When the Internet came along in the early 90s, we saw something completely different. Here was a level playing field where anyone could launch a business without permission from anyone. We had a great run over the last 25 years but I fear it's coming to an end, brought on by the growing consolidation of market power in the big consumer facing tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc, by the constricted distribution mechanisms on mobile devices, and by new leadership at the FCC that is going to tear down the notion that mobile carriers can't play the same game cable companies played. It is certainly true that consumers, particularly low-income consumers, like getting free or subsidized data plans. There is no doubt about that. But when the subsidies are coming from the big tech companies, who can easily pay them, to buy competitive advantage over that nimble startup that is scaring them, well we know how that movie ends.
else will pool and that's not good.
No we don't know because that movie isn't on Netflix yet, you insensitive clod!
#DeleteFacebook
You can make money up to a certain point, but if the big companies notice you and can't buy you out, they will destroy you with legal proceedings. The broken patent laws are enough to put anyone out of business, pretty much everyone is breaking some unknown law.
and by new leadership at the FCC that is going to tear down the notion that mobile carriers can't play the same game cable companies played
Isn't that mostly a local problem in the single country where the FCC has authority?
So many people will end up with a modern version of AOL where I think they belong. As long as techies can still get the real deal, not everything is lost.
its almost like you could describe it as a cycle of sorts, funny that....
see here for more info - www.inc.com/encyclopedia/industry-life-cycle.html
It's also harder to start a car company today than 100 years ago...
The Internet was in the era of the gold rush, where independent sorts rushed out into the wild to try to make their fortunes. Several did, many didn't. Now we're in the era of the company towns and robber barons. The ending of that era came in part when government set rules with teeth, and in part by the rise of unions.
This isn't a new item. In the 1990s, you could have a conversation with a VC, they were willing to fund a venture into completely uncharted waters, even it meant a miserable failure later.
These days, a VC won't plunk money on the line unless you have a way for them to immediately exit with them being richer. You have to run your startup yourself, then what will happen is that some company will make you a "deal you can't refuse" and your startup will be bought out. You also have to either be into analytics (i.e. have a new way to suck data from the end user), or advertising (pushing stuff at the end user) in order to have a chance at succeeding, much less having your startup become a unicorn.
subsidized data plans.
Does anyone really think these exist anymore?
These companies haven't ungraded their infrastructure in years. They are probably all fully depreciated and every penny they bring in above and beyond the maintenance costs is pure profit. They don't invest in network upgrades, as evident that most neighborhood still language as early DSL speeds, or in the case of cable, their over crowded loops.
I have a 100mbit connection with "Spectrum", but fully 1/4 of the time I'm look at 0 to 50kb download speeds and messages that there is no internet connectivity,only to rebound back up to 100mbits. Funny, it happens mostly a peak traffic times on the neighborhood loop.
Fuck them.
>> Random Venture Capitalist says "there's nothing new to invent"
Says a guy about to hang it up, right?
Seriously, a venture capatalist is complaining about the state of things? VCs created this very environment so that they could profit from it. It was only possible by tying up all of the IP and suing everyone into oblivion if they infringed over the smallest detail.
You reap what you sow.
He who has the gold makes the rules. You should be far more concerned about cash-rich companies that can afford to hire lobbyists who will effectively tilt the playing field in their direction through regulations that only they can afford to deal with. Deregulation is the playing field leveler.
But there is a more insidious, a more disconcerting tilting of the playing field is happening. Before big-data and this level of data consolidation, commerce/trade happened between large mass of anonymous consumers and service/goods providers. The price information was public, and a few diligent consumers who compare prices, the informed consumers were mixed up with general public. Now the companies are able to cherry pick diligent informed consumers and give them special coupons, special deals and then raise the rack rate, the posted prices. So much of the consumer behavior is being captured, analyzed and the power of the general consumer is getting increasingly diluted.
So the established big companies are not only able to keep competition away by giving away most common services people want, they are also able to find the consumers who are likely to look for alternatives and keep them in the fold too.
This kind of power is not similar to cable tv operator vs giants in 1980s. It is more like 19th century London traders who had information about rainfall and estimated harvests from all over the world, and were dealing with uninformed local farmers in various parts of the world. Especially cotton and sugarcane. Say a bumper crop of cotton in South India might be happening while Egypt and south USA were hit by drought. But the Indian farmers might be selling to the agents of London traders at pennies instead of pounds. Today the companies can price products knowing exactly how much they can push you individually not as part of a large collective mass. The implications should frighten people.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
When the Internet came along in the early 90s
Don't mistake when you personally became aware of it with the beginning. I was on the net in 1983, and it wasn't new then. I know a person who was on arpanet in 1979, and it actually started circa 1969 or 1970.
But yes, it is becoming more centralized, centrally controlled, and proprietary all the time. That's being driven by the choices of several billion non-technical users who don't grasp how critically important it is to maintain openness and decentralization. I do not believe Facebook would have succeeded with the tech-literate users of the 1980's internet. It took the eternal september crowd to make that happen.
Some applications get our admiration because they give us our previous interests and predisposition. These reinforcements of ourselves corral us into similar minded groups, who then get similar non-conflicting information. We become tribalized. That can further understanding in the tribe of astronomy. In internet social arenas, we can become like Belfast, Ireland, where protestants go to protestant schools, catholics go to catholic schools, and the two tribes learn to hate each other. Tribalizing science is efficient. Tribalizing politics, religion, and empathy is destructive.
All we need is more government power and even more rules and regulations. That will make everything better!
</SARCASM>
Anyone who thinks government rules and regulations "level the playing field" doesn't understand "regulatory capture" and how it favors, ahem, large companies.
Not for long. The US is very adept at exporting its horrible laws to other countries by writing them into trade agreements.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
The topology of capitalism is that it will always self-organize into a pyramid with money only flowing upwards and power gets consolidated near the top where the money flows.
Tech companies have never played fair. They break laws until they are big enough, then close those loopholes behind them.
Like around 1999 I sold stuff on eBay. All sorts of stuff. I sold Electronics, designer sunglasses that I got "gray market," shoes (brand name and otherwise), soaps, and basically every piece of plastic garbage made by humans you can imagine. I had over 100,000 feedback at one point and revenues of like $3.7 million per year. I had 4 employees. It was a nice little gig. But around 2006 you saw Chinese fakes start abounding, and they changed their fee model, and it really wasn't even the fakes that were so much the problem as just Chinese sellers happy to take a 5 cent profit per transaction where even if I moved my warehouse to the lowest cost hell hole in the US I still couldn't compete. So I got out of that business entirely because my margins were down to like 3% and for 3% I could just but a rental building, rent out apartments and not bother having to wake up at 8am anymore. When your competition is happy to make $700 in an entire month you have no choice but to leave the business and do something else. I was old enough and rich enough by that point to not care anymore but I feel really bad for your average AMERICAN person today because efficiencies have killed not just the mom and pop store but even mom and pop online sales. It is impossible today to get into online sales unless you have $100k a month to gift to Google/Amazon to get you to the top of the search and a very unique product on top of that. Selling commodity goods is just impossible since you will be on page 25,975 somewhere where no one will ever see you. On Amazon you have to give up insane amounts of freebies to "reviewers" just because the freebies (not so much the reviews since they eliminated reviews from non-buyers) bump your search rank since they count as sales. Basically -- show you have $250k in inventory to give away or don't bother selling on Amazon because they only want large sellers. They don't want to deal with mom and pops. For about a decade you really could make a lot of money just selling online. Now - forget it.
Dear God, you are stupid.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Hopefully, Trump will first direct the FCC to stop enforcing the net neutrality rules, and then Congress will permanently remove FCC authority over the Internet.
Oh yeah, what could possibly go wrong by removing any kind of regulatory oversight? Surely none of the large, multi-billion dollar corporations would ever unfairly use a lack of regulation to their advantage.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
This is utter nonsense. Netflix and Google will simply pass down any cost increase they are forced to swallow by ISPs onto you. ISP's are common carriers. Their profit margins should be regulated down to the last nickel because they themselves do not innovate. They buy 3rd party gear and roll out a network. They are rent seekers with a simple fixed capital cost model and monopolistic rent seekers at that. There is no reason not to enforce a strict profit margin on all them just like we do with insurance carriers through Medicare style fee schedules. Google already tried supplanting them with Google fiber and what did they do? They pressured regulators to kill Google fiber and Google fiber is now dead. They should have no additional bargaining power against any 1 customer than they do against another precisely because of their very nature. They are bottom feeders. The worst kinds of capitalists.
It is certainly true that consumers, particularly low-income consumers, like getting free or subsidized data plans. There is no doubt about that. But when the subsidies are coming from the big tech companies, who can easily pay them, to buy competitive advantage over that nimble startup that is scaring them, well we know how that movie ends.
I really object to this person's writing style, which repeatedly seeks to put words in others' mouths rather than proposing facts and backing them up with cites as appropriate. "We all know" that that's the writing style of someone who may well be running a spin game rather than an information dissemination game. I want to be informed, not pushed into going along for the ride.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
At least for the next 47 months, we don't have to worry about the United States exporting bad laws quite as quickly if President Trump continues his stated preference to deal with other countries one at a time in bilateral treaties, not en masse like the TPP was supposed to do.
I imagine that without economies of scale, ISPs offering "a modern version of AOL" are likely to either cease offering "the real deal" or charge hundreds of dollars per month for "the real deal", making it cost-prohibitive to become a freelance techie.
The Internet over time has become more and more corrupted by businesses (and trolls, and other wastes of bandwidth) to the point where it's so ho-hum that it's not worth spending much time on anyway. About all I use it for anymore is email, occasional research, a little shopping (I still prefer to be able to walk into a store and pick up what I want, though), and the occasional pirating of some TV show I managed to miss an episode of. If they managed to price it out of a reasonable range for me, or make it difficult to use for my purposes, I'd just stop paying for it completely and go back to the Old Ways of doing things: Library, encyclopedias, etc. For similar reasons I wish I could get rid of a cellphone, too, but a landline costs exactly the same anymore, and is frankly less convenient.
When the corruption of the Internet reaches a point where you can't even send packets from point-to-point without having to pay for some extra service or go through someone else's web presence to do it, then I'll bail out of it. In other words: Most of what I pay for in Internet access is the ability to send and receive data; if it gets to the point where you can't write your own software that does that, and it has to be through someone else (who monetizes you, either directly or indirectly) then it becomes useless.
Of course the way things are going in the world, the Internet is possibly going to get broken for good, anyway. Governments keep censoring the hell out of it, and more and more seem to be moving in the direction of walling themselves off, like China did. If we reach a world where most countries are walled off from the rest of the Internet, like a bunch of AOLs, then the Internet will be done for.
Usually, the large, multi-billion dollar corporations are unfairly using regulation to their advantage.
Why do you think Netflix and Google are so keen on net neutrality? Out of the goodness of their hearts?
Same thing that "went wrong" last time we removed the Internet from common carrier status and FCC regulation, back when it was run by AT&T. If that is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Ah, well, that settles it! Your insightful analysis has clearly shown the error of my ways!
Let's give Google and Netflix what they have been lobbying for, because obviously what they really want is more competition and lower prices for their competitors! What other explanation could there be?
Behind every sleazy lawyer there's a sleazy client. The real enemy is the laws that the lawyers use. But then perhaps trial lawyers are the enemy to the extent that the American Association for Justice contributes to legislators' election campaigns on the tacit agreement that said legislators will keep statutes and regulations complicated.
Why would I spend insightful analysis on an idiot?
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
all of that grass-roots activity you're rightly extolling exists at the sufferance of corporations that can and will pull the plug in accordance with their own desires and profit-driven agendas.
fucking idiot fails to realize that google, bing, yahoo, amazon, netflix etc are successful BECAUSE their customers are free to use the internet to share information with each other.
Yes, they will hit google and netflix "on the backbone" and then google and netflix will hit the consumer "on the tailbone."
Well, actually turns out many of them are not niche, like board games which have raised millions in the last year alone.
a bespoke board game is the VERY DEFINITION of a niche market
Fred is easily one of the stupidest people I've ever interacted with. You shouldn't waste your time reading anything he's got to say. Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day, doesn't mean you should spend 12 hours looking at it waiting for something correct to come from it.
What if you are wrong? What is the mechanism to put an incorrect legislative and oversight choice right again?
And no, it's not simply to elect a new President. Even if that happens and the new President decides to return to net neutrality as a policy, the ISP's will howl that their competitive positions, profitability and growth prospects are being harmed. Are you against jobs?! No one can be against jobs and growth! They will say that and then demand to be compensated for their lost profit prospects.
Also, if this position is FUD then an astonishing number of people believe that FUD. If everyone believes the FUD except those wannabe monopolists, then maybe the FUD isn't so much FUD as, "an astonishing amount of common sense and an unwillingness to believe everything you hear."
Conspiracy Theory: Vincent Cerf while employed for Google argues for a 'level playing field' that ultimately helps Google escape the transportation costs of it's massive as-snooping traffic that the NSA considers a benefit to national security. Perhaps less sellable under Trump than Obama post-Snowden. Because despite what the FCC said in 10-201 about the nature of the 'level playing field' I always said to myself that I'd believe it when I saw it. And I've never seen it.
https://lwn.net/Articles/657561/
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7522219498
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-k121024.pdf
https://www.wired.com/2013/07/google-neutrality/
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/google-accused-of-betraying-its-net-neutrality-stance/ (some facts wrong in article)
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers/
Dude, no business absorbs costs with their profits. Well maybe as a Band-Aid fix but not as a regular policy.
When media & telecoms start charging each other, it WILL be absorbed by customers. Hell, even my trash company has a 'fuel recovery fee' for them to even come out & bless me with their service. I fill their gas tank separate from the actual service, (which is a robot arm). Companies WILL find a way to fee you, (while keeping base prices competitively low naturally). Keep in mind I'm right in the middle of the city- not some far away place they must sacrifice to get to & me reimburse them for their pain.
Net Neutrality will prevent barriers and corporate collusion, read cartel. They are not in your best interests. I'm even a telecom guy, mainly fiber. And I don't even like it.
So enlighten the rest of us.
ISPs aren't going to start charging the little guy extra delivery fees, they aren't going to create barriers to entry, that's not in their interest.
Yet they do exactly this by zero-rating the selected services.
A free market isn't free. If we want a free market to persist thru generations, we need to outlaw monopolies and make sure the playing field is level for everyone. For those who wish to do their own analysis of how economies actually work, here's a koan to cogitate on.
Either billionaires produce a robust economy OR billionaires are a product of a robust economy.
The Libertarians had this idea that we could all buy insurance to protect each other, but they didn't actually explain how we can guarantee the insurance company stays in business AND stays profitable AND meets its obligations.
Myth #2. Rich people don't build factories because they are rich. Rich people build factories in order to sell stuff in a market. You cannot force the creation of a market by allowing the majority of the money the economy produces go to people who are already so rich they have no need to buy anything else. In terms of economists, you can't push on a string.
Example #3. How can we invest in America? If private roads were as profitable as the Libertarians believed, corporations would be building them and making money hand over fist. Since private companies cannot make roads and bridges profitable, how does a community invest in itself? America in the 1950s had a 90% tax rate.
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Usually, the large, multi-billion dollar corporations are unfairly using regulation to their advantage.
And they would behave more benevolently and fairly without any regulation? What planet do you hail from where this is the case?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You are stupid. We already know Verizon was throttling Netflix. We already know cable companies throttle content from sources other than their own. We've already seen ISPs create barriers to entry via state and local laws. We've already seen how carriers do the things you say they won't do.
Again, do you think that Netflix and Google are pushing for net neutrality because they are benevolent and fair? Of course not. They push for this out of naked self interest.
The planet in which I have lived through several telecoms deregulations and seen massive benefits from that, both in the US and in Europe. Eliminating common carrier status for internet access and getting federal regulatory authorities out of the way was probably the single most important factor in the massive expansion of online services.
And the problem isn't even so much in the principle of net neutrality; per se, it's somewhat market distorting, but companies and markets would work around that. The real problem with net neutrality is that it is ill-defined and administered by the FCC; with that, the FCC gains enormous power over the market, power they will abuse for the political ends of whatever administration happens to be in DC.
Why would anybody care what a Dutchman has to say about US politics, or anything at all?
It's obvious why you avoid substantive discussion: given your educational background, you're simply incapable of it.
Judging by almost every comment you've ever written on Slashdot you really don't seem to enjoy civil discussion. Perhaps you should hang out on websites where discussion isn't the main idea.
Correct.
There is nothing to "absorb". Net neutrality doesn't change the total cost of providing Internet service, and hence, as you point out, it doesn't change the total amount of money people pay for Internet service. What it changes is who pays for it. In particular, with net neutrality, people who don't use services like Netflix and Yahoo will be forced to subsidize those services.
Quite the opposite: net neutrality forces people to subsidize services they aren't using. Even worse, though, net neutrality creates massive regulatory and legal powers by which powerful lobbyists and rent seekers can then use the FCC to screw competitors and customers.
I'm sorry you're such a special snowflake that you think idiots should be handled with care. In fact, you are so sensitive that you don't even dare put your own identity to your comments.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
You know first inviting comment, and then going sour grapes, is just proving what an idiot you are?
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?