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New FTC Task Force Will Take on Tech Monopolies (theverge.com)
The Federal Trade Commission will be launching a task force to monitor competition in the US's technology markets, commissioners announced today. From a report: The task force will include current officials working in the agency's Bureau of Competition in order to "enhance the Bureau's focus on technology-related sectors of the economy, including markets in which online platforms compete." It will also include 17 staff attorneys who will be tasked with investigating anti-competitive behavior in the tech industry. "The role of technology in the economy and in our lives grows more important every day," FTC Chairman Joe Simons said. "As I've noted in the past, it makes sense for us to closely examine technology markets to ensure consumers benefit from free and fair competition."
FTC, Your base belong to the Zuck.
This reminds me of the wonderful idea the Australian Govt had on adding tariffs to Apple products. Lets do it _after_ the boom when the market calms down and everyone has made their money. Brilliant, lets impose taxes and watchdogging after the monopolies have been established. Gotta love politics, you know the truth be known that we should have learned from the Dotcom boom and we should have learned from the EU antitrust on MS.
But I guess this is what happens when Obama came into office, sold communism and unicorns and look where we are now.
The FTC's current definition of monopoly is "a market situation which results in an increase of prices for consumers" and has nothing to do with market power.
I'm a little surprised Trump hasn't just dissolved the FTC entirely, regulating shady monopolies is pretty much the antithesis of his Presidency.
Not that "tech company" is a separate category anymore what with almost every part of industry transforming itself onto a technological base. But every industry from pharma and insuranceto automobilesto appliances is pouring money into politicians with very predictable results. For decades. For centuries. Now I'm supposed to believe the government is actually reigning in capitalism under a Republican president and a heavily Republican-constrained congress? Pull the other one, it squeakes.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
FTFY
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
also crack down on Comcast cable card rules abuse.
They need to stop the X1 only IPTV channels.
dismantle Google and Facebook and break them up into little crumbs.
Signed,
US taxpayer that puts food on your family's table.
That is all.
This is just a convenient cudgel to use against anyone spreading fake new and anti-MAGA-ism.
Please Please PLEASE!!
Apple has a monopoly on 1.3 billion iOS devices. Google doesn't have that with Android. First off users can install anything they want on Androod. Second Google doesn't control all android devices. They don't control Samsungs or Huawei's or even most of the others
We've finally created a new federal agency to target a single entity on the president's enemies list: Amazon! Good luck with that...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Apple's iOS and product line is under zero obligation to be open, emulate Android's bullshit no-wall-garden, or support devices they don't want it to. That's not a monopoly or what it means, that's a product line. You're retarded. FTFY
Android is exactly what you deserve, and good riddance. May your data be everywhere.
FTC, Your base belong to the Zuck.
Perhaps you need to look up the definition of the word monopoly. Nothing prevents users from leaving the site for competing social media platforms, and in fact the younger generation doesn't really like Facebook.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
America is way past the point of no return with regards to mega corporations.
Amazon is the most important monopoly in America at this time. They will have the greatest positive impact on the environment over time. They have the potential to solve world hunger through advanced logistics and delivery systems. They will collapse the entire American job market, but that will come anyway. Once automated order fulfillment and delivery is operational, Amazon will be positioned to pretty much just take over.
Facebook... are they even still around? That's sooooo 2015
Google... they can't be broken up and they can't be stopped. The world is so completely dependent on them now that the best that can be done is to invest extremely heavily into other companies and through government assistance create a contender. If the US government things that Google can be split up, they don't have a clue what big data means.
Unless of course they open up service provision... Common carrier people. It's the only way. And we still have to push for the *miracle of 3D printing* if we want to free ourselves of Intel/nvidia et al.
Their monopoly is the worst there has ever been. They have got to be broken up into a dozen or more companies. Maybe even confiscate all their IP, etc and make them public domain.
Corporatism != Free Market
5... 4... 3...
Apple's iOS and product line is under zero obligation to be open, emulate Android's bullshit no-wall-garden, or support devices they don't want it to. That's not a monopoly or what it means, that's a product line.
Microsoft was found guilty of abusing its monopoly position in the marketplace in spite of not having a literal monopoly. Of course, Ashcroft under Bush decided that they shouldn't be punished. Then Gates put his money into his foundation where it was hard to touch.
Apple does have a monopoly over those devices, which they enforce with anticompetitive restrictions on app stores.
With that said, Alphabet should be broken up. Google search. Google ads. Youtube. Waymo. They should all be genuinely separate, not all under the Alphabet umbrella. Putting them together gives Alphagooglebet too much power and incentive to track people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
New FTC Task Force Will Take Large Sums of Money from Tech Monopolies.
First off, no, Apple does not have a monopoly. They have lock-in, which is far from being the same thing. I'm not saying that lock-in is fine, but we need to stop misusing "monopoly" if we're going to have a rational discussion on the topic.
Second, even if they had a monopoly, a monopoly in and of itself does not necessarily mean action need be taken by regulators. It's when companies abuse their monopolies to gain an anticompetitive advantage that it becomes a problem (e.g. leveraging their monopoly in one market to gain an unfair advantage in another). I'm not aware of any legitimate arguments suggesting Apple has done so with their perceived monopoly.
Third, vendors are under no obligation to eliminate lock-in/make things interoperable unless there are other anticompetitive issues at play, such as what may happen if the vendor happens to also be a monopoly. That's why, for example, AT&T was forced to interoperate with other phone companies several decades back. The fact that Android commands a significantly larger market share than iOS, both in the US and abroad, suggests that Apple neither has a monopoly nor is in a position to abuse their market share for anticompetitive gain. As such, while some here may suggest that they are shooting themselves in the foot by not taking advantage of significant competitive and PR gains that could be made (not to mention the advantages for consumers), there doesn't seem to be a basis to obligate them to make their App Store open. It's their choice if they want to shoot themselves in the foot.
Consumers don't always like lock-in, but lock-in is rarely a problem necessitating regulatory intervention.
"Microsoft was found guilty of abusing its monopoly position in the marketplace in spite of not having a literal monopoly." -That was a different niche of the law. In a way you're right but it's not 1:1.
They only allow their devices, and ironically that's how it's NOT a monopoly. Apple's app store is their own, unlike a locked-in browser choice to access the entire "free" internet.
Their iOS/appstore TOS is apparently legal. If they lied and said a competitor's app was not allowed due to security and that was found to be false, and a whole bunch of supporting emails came out evincing that like in the M$ monopoly case with the browser lockout, there would be much more of a case there also.
Alphabet's tracking is also legal under the current scenario. I agree it's too much, but until there's a law against it I don't see that tack being taken up by anti-trust regulators. There are competitors to google search, ads, youtube, waymo that all work and have significant market share. There's no sign that Alpha is going to be able to use its position to wipe them out, even if it does dominate. The ads-in-search function itself is probably the most ripe for regulation, as Google makes no bones about ranking competitors lower than their own advertisers. When/if the US adopts a GRPD type law like the EU, that's when I think you can expect to see some pushback against Alphabet's data collection - not from antitrust.
They only allow their devices, and ironically that's how it's NOT a monopoly. Apple's app store is their own, unlike a locked-in browser choice to access the entire "free" internet.
That's the opposite of my point. I don't want access to the app store, I want Apple users to be able to get apps elsewhere.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Microsoft was found guilty of abusing its monopoly position in the marketplace in spite of not having a literal monopoly.
Slight correction, they were found guilty of abusing a monopoly position in one marketplace to exert influence over a separate marketplace.
The monopoly position was "desktop operating system" and the influence was exerted over the world wide web.
But that just goes to show Apple is in the same situation between one of their product lines, and the store that is the center of its software ecosystem.
When iOS first supported native apps a decade ago, it not only made sense to force a central app store, but was pretty critical seeing how the carriers handled that in the past, and arguably still do in certain ways (think android OS updates and cell radio drivers)
I don't agree with, but can understand, why Apple would press their luck as far as they have. It's simple greed. But there's no way they didn't see this coming, and they should have protected against it a while ago now.
I think it may be too late for them to do it properly, unless they know something we don't about the enforcement of the upcoming legal landscape changes (aka a lack of enforcement)
All they had to do was in essence start up a new second set of brand names, keeping one closed and the other open. Then it would be much harder to argue a monopoly position or market abuse, so much as force people to argue over the details instead of the over all business model.
It would also give them a decent argument in favor of it all due to reputation.
Imagine 'Apple iPhone", locked to the 'Apple App Store", protecting you from yourself and others providing the best smart phone experience rabblerabble.
Or you can buy the "Apple otherphone" brand, that supports the "super duper open app market protocol 2.0", to give professionals the power to succeed moremarketspeak.
(This one working more like apt-get or the android developer mode handling of appstores)
All the negative press on otherphone being as bad as android on whatever detail of the week, they can spin iPhone as the superior option.
All the negative press on iPhone being locked down, they can spin the otherphone as the superior option.
Market one as budget, one as luxury. Or one as fancy sapphire all glass and titanium and the other as cheap plastic. Their reputations won't intermix with each other.
But I really think it's too late for that at this point, as in even if they did exactly that tomorrow, they are still going to get drug through the mud for the last couple years of behavior, just like Microsoft did.
" I want Apple users to be able to get apps elsewhere." - Well, that's not a "legal right" but in fact, you actually can. They don't have to make that easy for you though :
Jailbreak, or :
"Below are the Requirements for Android Emulator
Cydia Installer in order to install the app.
Non-Jailbroken iOS device.
Active Internet Connection, which is stable enough to run this application
Need have at least 250 MB Free Space on your iOS device
Repository URL is required which is essential.
I hope this answer will help you in installing Android emulator on iOS"
However as Anubis points out succinctly, lock-in is not a monopoly of itself.
3 words came to mind, in the form of a question:
"Not enough lobbyists?"
Somebody in government wants the big companies to throw some money at them. That's what this is all about. End story.
OMG! Does this spell the end of the road for the giant telcos' monopolies?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
" I want Apple users to be able to get apps elsewhere." - Well, that's not a "legal right" but in fact, you actually can. They don't have to make that easy for you though :
Their deliberately making it difficult is restraint of trade, and when coupled with their monopoly over non-difficult app stores for the platform it may well be illegal, that is if the government were actually to look into what effects it has on the market.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
New FTC Task Force Will Take Bribes From Tech Monopolies
Sorry, wrong company. The FTC will be targeting Amazon.
Fought and lost already. Go ahead and put your ante up if you want to try it.
Anyone that is a customer of Comcast deserves the sore ass.
numbnuts
to bad that Comcast is the only choice for some.
Wrong as usual
numbnuts