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'Break Up Google and Facebook If You Ever Want Innovation Again' (theregister.co.uk)
Hal_Porter shares a report from The Register: If the tech industry wants another wave of innovation to match the PC or the internet, Google and Facebook must be broken up, journalist and film producer Jonathan Taplin told an audience at University College London's Faculty of Law this week. He was speaking at an event titled Crisis in Copyright Policy: How the digital monopolies have cornered culture and what it means for all of us, where he credited the clampers put on Bell then IBM for helping to create the PC industry and the internet. Taplin told his audience that he'd been moved by the fate of his friend Levon Helm, The Band's drummer, who was forced to go back on the road in his sixties, after radiation therapy for cancer. Helm died broke. Today, Taplin points out, YouTube accounts for 57 per cent of all songs streamed over the internet, but thanks to a loophole returns just 13.5 per cent of revenue. "That's not a willing buyer-seller relationship," he said, referring to the UGC loophole that Google enjoys, one not available to Spotify or Apple Music. But it isn't just songwriters and musicians who are poorly paid. The average person "works for two hours a day for Mark Zuckerberg" generating a data profile. Taplin pointed out that Bell held patents on many technologies including the transistor, the laser and the solar cell, that it agreed to license, royalty free, as part of a 1956 consent decree.
Taplin saw history repeated with IBM. Under the 1956 (again) consent decree IBM was obliged to unbundle software from hardware in the 1960s. But competition authorities again opened up an investigation in 1969 which ran for 13 years. Caution made IBM ensure its first microcomputer, the IBM PC, launched in 1981, was an open platform. IBM chose three operating systems to run on the first PC but clearly favoured an outsider, from a tiny Seattle outfit originally called "Micro-Soft." Then Microsoft got the treatment. "Every 20 years we have this fight -- and we're about to have it again," Taplin told the audience. Antitrust was necessary "not because they're too big, but because there's no market solution" to Google and Facebook. The barriers to entry are now so high nobody is going bust open the ad duopoly. Taplin cited Snapchat an example of a company that tried to innovate, but refused to take Facebook's buyout offer. Facebook has simply copied its features.
Taplin saw history repeated with IBM. Under the 1956 (again) consent decree IBM was obliged to unbundle software from hardware in the 1960s. But competition authorities again opened up an investigation in 1969 which ran for 13 years. Caution made IBM ensure its first microcomputer, the IBM PC, launched in 1981, was an open platform. IBM chose three operating systems to run on the first PC but clearly favoured an outsider, from a tiny Seattle outfit originally called "Micro-Soft." Then Microsoft got the treatment. "Every 20 years we have this fight -- and we're about to have it again," Taplin told the audience. Antitrust was necessary "not because they're too big, but because there's no market solution" to Google and Facebook. The barriers to entry are now so high nobody is going bust open the ad duopoly. Taplin cited Snapchat an example of a company that tried to innovate, but refused to take Facebook's buyout offer. Facebook has simply copied its features.
In the past it was all about OS and brand market share. What a person in the USA did on that network was protected by generations of expected US freedoms.
As the new SJW backed social media becomes global every other nations laws and traditions, faiths get considered by the SJW.
The freedom of speech and after speech was replaced by SJW demanding to ban accounts, users and then report people to their governments.
Just for speech.
Dont mention a new movie in a negative way or accounts banned.
Search terms and news sites get removed from search results and placed at the end of each results due to politics and the demands of SJW.
At least in the past, freedom of speech and the freedom to use the internet was one thing that was a given. Walled gardens, pay to access, OS lock out, DRM was the issue.
Freedom of speech and ability to find, share information online was just expected as that had been part of the USA and a tradition of freedom.
The only easy way out of this is to abandon social media to a role of been a way to talk to governments, big brands and the SJW who like supporting big brands and big gov.
Move the rest of the fun internet to better encrypted services. Search will work again nd find results, not just what SJW allows to be found.
User supported if needed and well away from social media ads, tracking, big gov, SJW efforts to contain, report, ban and control speech.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
15 years ago the vast majority of desktops ran Microsoft's operating systems. Microsoft Office was dominant and virtually everyone felt obliged to exchange editable documents in its formats.
Today that hasn't actually changed. Microsoft was unable to move its monopoly to the new portable computing markets, but desktops remain the dominant computing platform, and Microsoft continues to dominate it.
What is arguable is that the interventions multiple governments took part in may have at least made sure Microsoft was unable to control the portable computing market: the EU in particular took action to ensure Microsoft didn't have a browser monopoly, and the actions of the Clinton administration were enough to ensure that Microsoft stopped doing serious development of IE after IE4 for a few years. When Microsoft resumed development, releasing 5.0, 5.5, and then 6, the EU got involved and again Microsoft felt obliged to pause development.
Without Microsoft's control over the web, both Apple and Google were able to produce devices that Windows would never have been suitable for, that were useful and fit into the existing ecosystem.
So, yeah... Microsoft still owns the desktop. But it doesn't really own anything else. It doesn't own markets that literally would not exist if Microsoft had been able to control the web as it hoped to. A mixed result, but overall, a positive one.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Taplin cited Snapchat an example of a company that tried to innovate, but refused to take Facebook's buyout offer. Facebook has simply copied its features.
If someone can put you out of business simply by copying what you are doing, maybe it means you're a shit company who isn't doing it very well.
Taplin cited Snapchat an example of a company that tried to innovate, but refused to take Facebook's buyout offer. Facebook has simply copied its features.
If someone can put you out of business simply by copying what you are doing, maybe it means you're a shit company who isn't doing it very well.
Snapchat has managed to rack up losses in the hundreds of millions for the last few years.
In their IPO filing, they stated they may never turn a profit.
Naturally, they valued themselves north of 20 billion dollars.
The problem is far larger than some company with an overinflated ego. The entire concept of valuation has turned into a fucking shitshow, and is completely devoid of common sense. If you want to blame something, blame the idiots who sustain that kind of fucking financial wizardry.
I don't know, when just two or three companies have such a big chunk of the online space, government forcing a break up may be the only option. Three-quarters of online traffic goes through just the top two companies, CompuServe and Prodigy. Oh sorry, not anymore. Those companies went away when someone else offered something better. Three quarters of online traffic flows through AOL and Yahoo. No sorry it changed again. Yahoo has been beaten out by Altavista, and AOL is the main ISP. Fuck it's hard to keep up. You say Altavista, the mighty Altavista is gone? So it's AOL and who that run the whole internet now? What? No AOL? Dang the government should has done an amazing job breaking up all the online powerhouses.
Most small businesses are in this situation. There was a time when small software companies dreaded the call from Microsoft: they'd get an offer to buy the company, and if they didn't accept it then Microsoft would ship a competing product that they were able to throw more engineers at and a lot more marketing money at.
The problem with Facebook and Microsoft as competitors here is that they already typically have access to a superset of your customers. If you were developing Windows software and Microsoft wanted to compete with you, not only were all of your customers already their customers, but all of your potential customers were as well. This put them in a far stronger position than you, even if they were developing the product from scratch. Facebook is often in a similar situation.
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Funny to see the devolution of communication, 1st there were social media sites like facebook, then twitter came along that limited you to 140 char, then snapchat where conceited twits just swap selfies with maybe a word or two caption. I can't wait to see what the next devolution is, maybe we will start posting grunting sounds?
Plus the words are being replaced with emojis.