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Tech Giants Like Amazon and Facebook Should Be Regulated, Disrupted, or Broken Up: Mozilla Foundation (venturebeat.com)
The Mozilla Foundation has called for the regulation of tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. From a report: Though tech giants in the U.S. and companies like Alibaba and Tencent in China have "helped billions realize the benefits of the internet," the report calls for regulation of these players to mitagate monopolistic business practices that undermine "privacy, openness, and competition on the web." They box out competitors, restricting innovation in the process, Mozilla wrote today in its inaugural Internet Health Report, "As their capacity to make sense of massive amounts of data grows through advances in artificial intelligence and quantum computing, their powers are likely to advance into adjacent businesses through vertical integrations into hardware, software, infrastructure, automobiles, media, insurance, and more -- unless we find a way to disrupt them or break them up." Governments should enforce anti-competitive behavior laws and rethink outdated antitrust models when implementing regulation of tech giants, the report states.
... of the Mozilla Foundation. Sit down and shut up. Stop ruining firefox.
Should be defunded, lose their 501c(3) license, and go the way of the Mozillasaur :)
Seriously though, on the privacy front Mozilla needs to face as much scrutiny as the companies they are throwing sand at. Let he who casts the first stone be judged first and all that :)
Is Mozilla no longer dependent on the teet that is Google? Sure was nice of Google to let Mozilla suckle for so long and now that Mozilla is all grown up it can rebel against its parents. Human nature at its finest. This is just teenage puberty. Move along.
>> Mozilla Foundation has called for the regulation of tech giants like Google - "break them up"
Without Google's $330M/yr (!), Mozilla is really reminding me of a jilted first wife. ("If I can't have my old lifestyle, NO ONE will ever be happy again!")
https://www.cnet.com/news/firefox-maker-mozilla-we-dont-need-googles-money-anymore/
The Mozilla Foundation has called for the regulation of tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
If they want to have this happen they have to show how CONSUMERS are being harmed in some tangible (mostly financial) way. The mere fact that those companies have simply out competed their rivals is not sufficient and it's clear those companies have provided a lot of value whatever their flaws might be. None of those companies are monopolies or if they are they are extremely narrow ones. Amazon may be the big gorilla in ecommerce but they aren't a monopoly. Facebook may dominate social media but proving that harms consumers is going to be a tough argument.
Plus is it really realistic to call for regulation when the party that breaks out in hives whenever they hear the word controls both congress and the presidency? Never going to happen. This is the same party that seems to think net neutrality is some communist plot to reduce profits of big business. This is the same party that hasn't issued a single enforcement action out of the CFPB in over a year. Regulate? Not bloody likely.
A colon *PRECEDES* a list or a more detailed explanation of whatever was immediately before it. It can be used to indicate that someone said something, but then whoever said it should come before the colon, not after.
I'm pretty sure, thus, that the headline should actually read "Mozilla Foundation: Tech Giants Like Amazon and Facebook Should Be Regulated, Disrupted, or Broken Up".
While one could argue that this form of headline might be acceptable because one can still figure out what was probably meant, I am not convinced that is an acceptable reason to discard notions of proper grammar and punctuation usage.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Maybe I'm alone, but its felt to me that increasingly the large tech companies have created internal structures which have resulted in their inability to execute on a product and see it to completion - to great fanfare they release half-baked products but never seem to complete, polish or iterate on them.
Pure speculation - they're rewarding employee that work on new products to a greater degree than existing ones which results in people skipping from project to project.
...not sure where rage against Amazon is coming from. They run their own store, they run a market that others can rent space in, they run some TV distribution, they run ebooks and an ebook reader to varying degrees of success. They also have a cloud platform that anyone could rent time on.
None of these are monopolistic. I disagreed with the idea of a patent for 1-click shopping, and it sounds like they could do a better job with their warehousing picking staff (ie, they should be on the clock as they are stuck waiting to go through security because security is their employer's problem, not theirs) but I don't really have a lot of other complaints with them.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Never for the ones promoting new laws, new regulations. Facebook wants new regulations to keep out the competition. Mozilla wants regulations to hammer their competition and gain market share. Always using the $4 Trillion government power to get what they want.
When will people figure out oligopolists love being "regulated"? Get ready for any potential future competitors in the social media space to be nickel-and-dimed out of existence, hope you like Facebook.
I'd rather share my data with 1 Google than with 10 independent Googles.
Whether it is mere perception or not, companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc are seen to be anti-competitive and a net detriment to the overall market. But perception is usually the basis for laws and regulations despite the best intentions.
These guys need to get out in front of the perception and "do something" (I have no idea what that would be), or when the Democrats eventually do regain the majority (and they will...it's all a cycle), we will end up with an incomprehensible mess of regulations and restrictions that nobody wants to deal with.
It is highly likely that your little website selling wooden birdhouses would end up having to file/certify/abide by some stupid regulation that in reality has nothing to do with wooden bird houses. That is just how Washington works.
So take heed, Facebook, Amazon, and Google. What befall you will befall us all.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Whoever is saying "so they are almost monopolies, what is the big deal?". Well, it is a big deal. The government in the US is starting to pay more and more attention. They don't want to hurt business in general, but they also do not want these near-monopolies to rule the US and much less the planet.
Mozilla is making this statement to educate the people. As much as I hated history as a youngster, the cliche of history repeating itself is very real. Go see how the public eventually is guaranteed to get screwed when there is a monopoly. Basic econ 101 states that monopolies will eventually charge more for crappier services because there is no competition. Smaller businesses are snuffed out, so those guys hate monopolies. Employees are taken advantage of, think Walmart employing so many in the US and the poor wages. Consumers get less choice, worse service, and higher prices, think one ISP in your town.
Sure, we could break up the American tech companies, but that would just leave the Chinese tech companies at the top of the heap.
They are businesses that grew through the use of disruptive tech.
being in force everywhere. It's a great start. I loathe surveillance capitalism and it should be stopped.
The fixed costs of regulation are spread against the total scale of the business being regulated. The larger the fixed costs, the more this implicitly helps the largest incumbents and disadvantages upstarts with small market share.
The GDPR is 261 pages of incomprehensible legalese (and people still can't figure basic questions about it), which will cost you the same in lawyer fees to understand whether you have 1M customers or 1B.
So yeah, Facebook has no damned problem if you regulate and probably stands to gain in the long terms whatever they lose in the short term.
Why not Google?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Amazon - There are still local shops and individual web stores a like. There are even other major everything store - AliExpress for one (dubious as that might be). Don't like AWS Microsoft and a whole tone of other guys like Rackspace offer compute and storage.
facebook - Many tentacles sure but few 'essential services' You can still login pretty much everywhere without a facebook account, you communicate without facebook using e-mail, WWW forums, and for you nerds IRC and news.
On the other hand just try and do anything on the net without Google something or other. If nothing else half the pages you visit probably use googleapis. You have essentially one other smart phone vendor to choose from if you don't want a Google account. Even if you do use another e-mail provider, chances are good your recipient is on GMAIL or Google for Domains. Search is there any serious competition that isn't re-branding Google? Bing? sort of if you don't care about getting terrible results comparatively.
Of the big three Google is nearly impossible to avoid, Amazon and facebook can be avoided with some effort if you desire to do so.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I'll use the same argument I used to make about Microsoft: having an 800 pound gorilla in the room is very good for driving standards. Google brought us Android. Amazon prospers by having enough money to throw a bunch of ideas at the wall and see what sticks; they don't actually have a monopoly in any one industry. Facebook will go the way of MySpace and Yahoo in a few years anyway, no need to worry about them, but what we need is an open source universal login to replace what many web sites use Facebook for now.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Whether it is mere perception or not, companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc are seen to be anti-competitive and a net detriment to the overall market. But perception is usually the basis for laws and regulations despite the best intentions.
These guys need to get out in front of the perception and "do something" (I have no idea what that would be), or when the Democrats eventually do regain the majority (and they will...it's all a cycle), we will end up with an incomprehensible mess of regulations and restrictions that nobody wants to deal with.
04/8/18 – Facebook censors Diamond and Silk’s page, labeling them “unsafe to the community.” The outspoken sisters were were provided with no reason why their videos were labeled as unsafe.
11/2/17 – The president’s Twitter handle, @RealDonaldTrump, is deactivated for 11 minutes.
10/9/17 – Twitter shuts down Congressman Marsha Blackburn’s campaign’s ability to promote her announcement video because of pro-life statements.
09/9/17 – A pro-Trump YouTube star has her song “Make America Great Again” taken down from YouTube. The company refuses to comment on this specific case.
10/12/16 – Google’s YouTube censors conservative video channel by labeling it “restricted adult content.”
06/22/16 – Anti-Hillary Clinton game removed from Google Play Store, but “Punch the Trump” game remains.
06/10/16 – Investigative video released showing how Google manipulates search results to favor Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.
06/26/06 – Google begins to prioritize its own services over those of start-up competitor Foundem.com in search results.
They are already doing something!
Teat. Or "tit" if you want to be rude about it....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
won't market forces save all those poor Americans......
so called editors.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Zuckerberg could not explain why Facebook thought "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" and "Diamond and Silk" were such gross violations of "community standards" that they had to be banned. He also could not think of a single time that someone in their community guidelines enforcement had nuked a prominent left wing group on Facebook.
If a business as easily replaced as a local bakery cannot choose to impose its own standards on how it does business, a business as uniquely situated to exploit the market and block competition as Facebook sure as shit should not be able to do that. By law. (And before anyone cries "well what about a gay couple in Appalachia that can't find a baker." To that I would point out, if a gay couple can't find a baker willing to work with them where they live, they might want to first consider the OPSEC issues with having their "wedding" in that region if it's really that opposed to their orientation)
Gee - what a great source. Let's restructure our entire economy now! The "source" says we should.
It really sounds to me like the few people still remaining at the Mozilla Foundation are expressing some passive aggressive bitterness, over their own loss of prominence in the market. Firefox (and even more-so, Netscape before it) was once a genuine player in the browser market, but now they've been relegated by most measurements to a weak second (or third) in the desktop market, and a veritable non-entity in the mobile market.
You had your heyday, Mozilla, but that's in the past and the digital world has changed in several strong leaps and bounds, since that time. Regardless of what you think the reasons were, there's not really much point in griping about the guys who now have what you lost... and no amount of finger pointing and gesticulating is going to change that.
Fuck the Zuck! #DeleteFacebook #FuckZuck
We need a major browser that is not webkit/blink, trident/edge or gecko based. The only ones out there are niche browsers like lynx/links/netsurf which have 0.01% market share.
"Our Goog checks cleared. Yep, FB = BAD."
They are pulling a 'oh look at them... they are so evil'... set of remarks because they are pulling a cambridge.
The amount of re-engineering they pulled off to spy on users even more is impressive. Now they are worried they may be in the hot seat.
Quick... look over there!
I'm not even sure I understand what it means to try and break up a monopoly in a global economy. It's not as simple as the US Congress making some law, why would China care ? Likewise if Chine passes some anti-Facebook legislation does the EU give a shit ? The waters become even muddier when there are two companies each proxies for a major power, e.g. Baidu and Google. Does the US really want to hurt Google and give Baidu an advantage, anybody anticipate China breaking up Baidu and giving Google an advantage ?
..because all social media is cancerous. Late-stage symptoms of the disease include incessant attention-whoring and rampant social justice warrior behavioural patterns. Early detection of the disease is key in it's treatment, which involves router-level blocking, behavioral therapy by way of closely-monitored internet usage, and in some extreme cases, a pair of wirecutters to the ethernet cable.
If you think about these companies and their service as 1 computer per company (now called a cloud) we can get back to the old saying that 6 computers would be enough fore the whole world.
IBM was right all along.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It wasn't all that long ago that people said IBM was too powerful, same with Microsoft. We don't hear that talk anymore. The world changes, in a few years the same thing will happen to these "monopolies".
The problem is, people want to use the best product. On the Web, selecting the best product is effortless - type in the URL. So whichever product is better, people will abandon the previous and move to the new. I mean, Yahoo and Dogpile and Microsoft have search engines - who uses them? It is effortless to select them. Remember MySpace? Abandoned for Tumblr and Facebook.
Break up Google, get 2 search units, the better one will again balloon and the slightly inferior one will wither.
It's the nature of Web services.
Imagine a mesh network of protocols, where by you can use whatever client you want (web, gui, or text application) with whatever look 'n feel you want. Want to post some thoughts, post them tagged for relevance. Want to see some thoughts, query them based on relevance.. recency.. individuals or whatever.
It is a travesty that we have given others control of our user interfaces and computing resources so they can show us what they want us to see and they can use our computational power and memory for what they want... How did we get here?
Comcast
Charter-Spectrum
Verizon
AT&T
NBC-Universal
Time-Warner
Hearst
Separate content providers from content carriers.
Make is so that *NO* carriers can have any financial or other ownership, management, decision-making ties with any content-provider.
Make is so that *NO* content-providers can have any financial or other ownership, management, decision-making ties with any carrier.
Any carrier that currently is also a content-provider must divest themselves of the content-providing entity.
Any content-provider that currently is also a carrier, must divest themselves of the carrier-service entity.
No members of the MPAA or RIAA (their management, board of directors and majority stock-holders) can have any financial or other ownership, management, decision-making ties with any carrier service.
Then, and only then, can we have a true and open internet, and even-playing field for access to content.
As their capacity to make sense of massive amounts of data grows through advances in artificial intelligence and quantum computing
Wow! I had no idea quantum computing was ready for prime time!
I thought it was still a lab experiment of a handful of bits, with nobody sure if it was even working or not.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Say cut the patent length in half it is transferred or companies above a certain size may not hold more than a set number of patents.
That'll keep them from building up a war chest of patents to smack down their smaller competitors.
I'll go farther, much farther. To prevent the "too big to fail syndrome", and excesses of corporate power, any big company should be broken up, or forced to divest. Pick a size, based on turnover, or market capitalization, or whatever.
Set that value relatively low. If market cap, then no more than $100 billion, possibly a lot less. Hitting that value should be extraordinarily painful, possibly including immediate closure. That way, that companies will divest voluntarily, in an organized fashion, long before they hit it.
As a corollary, I think acquisitions should be severely penalized. Too many big companies buy up the small companies that would eventually be their competition. Which makes the big company bigger, and stifles innovation.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I've been using Firefox since nearly version 1 and for more than a decade have been a "Firefox evangelist." But in the last few years, Mozilla has abandoned what once made it great and has turned into a political outlet.
Driving out Brendan Eich, partnering with George Soros, and making a bunch of political publicity statements (while simultaneously getting nearly ALL of their revenues from Google and other default search contracts) is hypocritical and has distracted from the original mission of building secure FOSS.
For Mozilla to call for going fascist Teddy Roosevelt against Big Tech, while simultaneously pulling all of their revenue from Big Tech, is a joke. Yes, Big Tech is a big problem, but the solution is in better engineering. To the extent politics should be involved, it is only to deregulate barriers to entry and crony deals that have ALLOWED Google and their ilk to become so powerful with the government's backing. But "regulation" just means one of two things: either the big players WRITE the regulations (making it harder for smaller competitors to overtake them), or the government becomes even more powerful than it already is. Gee, great idea, Mozilla: a bigger, more powerful government will surely give us more privacy.
They've talked about creating a membership program for Mozilla. Why would I pay for membership? So Mozilla can virtue signal with my money? I'll never pay one penny, and frankly, I can't wait until Eich's Brave browser hits version 1 so I can ditch Firefox for good.
What you describe is "basic econ 101" is a flawed model peddled by John Maynard Keynes.
The much smarter Murray Rothbard correctly pointed out in his magnum opus, "Man, Economy and State," that the only genuine monopolies are derived from the government. In other words, government privileges and protections artificially create "monopolies" by backing up favored firms with special rules that benefit them and hurt would-be competitors. In a truly free and unregulated market, no business, regardless of how big it is, can be an actual "monopoly" because a superior competitor can undercut them on price or quality at any time, forcing big business to constantly stay competitive and truly SERVE the customer. Where government privilege exists protecting favored companies, that is what creates monopolies. Government is the problem.
Here's some free study material:
https://mises.org/library/study-guide-man-economy-and-state
Your definition of a monopoly is poor.
Not my definition. It's the definition used by the US government. If you think it is a poor definition your argument is with them, not me.
Also monopolistic behavior is what is regulated (in theory) in the US.
For it to be monopolistic behavior by definition the company has to be a monopoly first.
You would say Standard was not a monopoly because there were other producers.
Strawman. Stop your pathetic attempt to put words in my mouth. I said nothing of the sort nor did I even imply it.
Amazon is definitely big enough to do things as Standard Oil did.
That is irrelevant. They would have to DO the sorts of things that Standard Oil did. Merely being large does not equal being a monopoly. And whether a company is a monopoly depends strongly on how you define the market they supposedly monopolize.
Google is big enough to do such things and HAS with the help of government institutions. Under the guise of a great central library, Google basically obtained complete immunity from copyright laws in order for them to copy anything ever published.
Except almost none of that is actually true.
I see you haven't implemented DNSSEC DANE TLSA yet in Firefox. Firefox could be the first major web browser to do so. Doing so would actually differentiate you from your competitors. The lack of DANE is a critical security flaw in Firefox (and all web browsers).
...says a less successful competitor. Uh, huh.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Word, I said.
Let me repeat that.
Google is *NOT* a monopoly.
Why is that?
Google doesn't "force" users to use their service.
It's about personal choice.
People choose to use Google's services because "more people choose to use Google's services".
Do you see that?
If more people chose to use DuckDuckGo, then by golly, DuckDuckGo would be the king pin.
A monopoly is something where only one vendor provides the only solution or product in the realm where that solution or product is suited.
There are many online search solutions and companies.
There are many online advertising solutions and companies.
People are free to go where ever they want, use whom-ever they want.
The fact that a majority of the people "prefer" to use Google only means that Google provides the best product.
Apple is a Monopolist, in that in their environment, they and only they can make the hardware (clones aren't allowed). Apple and only apple can offer an application store. (side-loading is not-allowed in as much as Apple can enforce this). Apple, by being the one and only vendor for their gated community, steals 30% of every sale made on their app, music and movie services.
Does Google steal 30% of every sale? Nope
Does Google disallow side-loading? Nope
Does Google prevent other App stores from working? There are/were B&N Nook app stores, Amazon Fire tablet stores, Samsung app store, etc...
Now that Facebook is locking out 3rd party data analysis, guess what, they're going to profit even more, because they and only they can provide the services that 3rd parties were offering.
I'd go so far as to say that FaceBook intentionally allowed all of this to come to light just so they could lock down data access so they could "monopolize" all of it by themselves.
reality though is Mozilla is on a lot of bandwagons and does things to make Firefox suck more all the time. How many clicks does it take to add an add-on? OK? OK? OK? YES OK OK YES? anyway more than that sucks now.
Will the foreign copycats be broken up? Looking at china.
Quantum computing isn't even able to find its way out of a closet. No, really, quantum computing? Is this bullshit? Fake news?
This buzzword needs to die a horrible death.
Mozilla is cancer and should be broken up. Amazon is a great company.
... disrupt.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The problem with saying that these companies should be broken up is that there is that the United States is not the only country in the world.
Companies that operate internationally are all competing on the same playing field, but depending on which country their HQ is in, they are not necessarily playing by the same rules. The reason outsourcing is a thing is because those countries do not have the same labour laws.
My point: TenCent and Alibaba are Chinese companies. Why should China compel them to be broken up, and why should they subject themselves to American laws saying they are too big and should be broken up?
The United States can regulate activities within its borders and impose all sorts of tariffs, but I do not think requiring these companies get broken up is the answer.
END COMMUNICATION
Teat then. I would edit it, but Slashdot.