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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 Governments should enforce anti-competitive behavior laws and rethink outdated antitrust models when implementing regulation of tech giants, the report states.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.
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'
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.
Mozilla makes software for browsers. No monopoly.
They don't squeeze out competition, rake private data, and make the user the item for sale. They don't target industry segments, then low-ball that segment until it drips red blood as mom-and-pops die out, killing and maiming small business.
They don't read your every email for keywords to sell you something. Mozilla doesn't sell your private data to firms that would use it to apply bias to political processes.
Is Mozilla benign? By comparison, hell yeah.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Your definition of a monopoly is poor. Also monopolistic behavior is what is regulated (in theory) in the US. Standard Oil engaged in monopolistic practices when it conspired with railroads to have the railroad levy charges on other oil producers and transfer the money from those charges to Standard Oil. You would say Standard was not a monopoly because there were other producers. It is the monopolistic behavior that is onerous and stifles competition. Standard Oil was a monopoly because it was big enough to engage in that behavior.
Amazon is definitely big enough to do things as Standard Oil did. 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. There is no great all inclusive library available to the public as a result. But the vast library peeking from behind the Google paywall is evident. Meanwhile we go the archive.org for historical reference materials.
So we do need enforcement of anti-trust but the corruption in government is so bad that the government actually facilitates trust and monopoly creation when they give indulgences to obvious monopoly power.
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.
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
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!
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.