Big tech? How about big information, 6 companies control almost all media in the U.S.<p>The U.S. keeps consolidating, the "spin" is that it's all about lower costs to the consumer by allowing "scale", when it reality it's just about monopoly power and the ultra rich getting richer and more powerful.<p>A two party government.<p>It's all an illusion of choice.
Calling fees taxes is just bullshit. This is just dishonest politics.<p>By this logic, there is a Grocery ‘tax’, and a haircutting ‘tax’.<p>Spotify ‘Taxes’ you. Netflix ‘Taxes’ you. The New York Times ‘taxes’ you.<p>It’s also a lie to say that Apple charges 30%.<p>It’s 15% for almost all developers except for a tiny percentage of themselves extremely wealthy corporations.<p>Perhaps <i>these</i> are the people who are behind these moves. They are the only ones who will gain.<p>The the idea that paying, 10% less to small app developers will do anything to make Arizonans better off is utterly stupid.<p>There may be good reasons for tech legislation - e.g. forcing Boot Camp style installation of alternate operating systems on hardware.<p>But it’s fairly obvious that all this talk about the App Store is just the result of other middlemen lobbying for a part of the action.
"Big Tech" has become an umbrella term which can mean any of the following:<p>* Big Tech monopolies controlling news and information: Twitter, Facebook, Google<p>* Big Tech monopolies on Advertising/Marketing:
Facebook and Google<p>* Big Tech monopolies on Multimedia content: Netflix and Spotify<p>* Big Tech monopolies on Cloud Technology Infrastructure: Amazon, Google, Microsoft<p>* Big Tech monopolies on Mobile: Apple and Google<p>* Big Tech monopolies on eCommerce: Amazon<p>We could be talking about "Breaking up Big Tech" for 50 years trying to break all of these up. It's kind of insane.
This is logical and nothing new. As a country we faced the same issue in the start of the 1900s when the railroads abused their monopoly access power and created the concept of the "common carrier" to level the playing field. Let's stop pretending tech monopolies are something new or unique. We have dealt with them before (AT&T) and should use the same tools. These companies are now utilities, should be subject to FTC and other rules on common carriers and have their returns subject to regulatory oversight. Just like 90% of the rest of the economy. Time to level the playing field, and be fair to all. Tech companies wanting special exemption from rules is not right.
This appears to be the bill in question, if anyone would like to read it.<p><a href="https://legiscan.com/AZ/amendment/HB2005/id/89532" rel="nofollow">https://legiscan.com/AZ/amendment/HB2005/id/89532</a><p>I'm not sure why it was introduced as an amendment for a bill about distributing federal education funds, but I'm sure there's some justification in the legislative process.<p>Anyway, this is very clearly tailored towards the current Epic vs Apple/Google fight, right down to disallowing "retaliation" from platform providers.
I have to ask why "Big Tech" is a monopoly worth freeing ourselves from now, if we didn't free ourselves from Microsoft circa 2000. Microsoft had way more monopoly power back then (maybe even does now), and barriers to entry into the OS market are much higher. It's relatively easy to switch to duckduckgo.com for example.<p>Isn't this just grandstanding, based on letting Microsoft keep it's monopoly?
I love this, but they don't really call it what it <i>really</i> is.<p>This is the Midwest aiming to break apart coastal software ecosystems and distribute them more evenly across the nation. Big tech firms don't just use their might to unfairly fight smaller competitors, they also use their might to recruit talent to certain geological regions. This causes salaries, cost of goods, among other things to stagnate and hurt their own economies. The real word for it is pushing back against state to state income inequality by attacking the powers and structures that reinforce them, which in this case is technological conglomerates. If you've ever wondered why you get paid $80k to be a software engineer in Oklahoma while someone doing the exact same job with the exact same requirements in Silicon Valley makes $200k+, state to state income inequality is most of the reason, while cost of living attributes a very small sliver of that calculation.
> The legislation would allow web developers to accept payments for their apps without going through Apple or Google’s app stores<p>Is the word "web" there instead of "app" just a mistake? Because web developers can accept payments for their apps without going through Apple or Google, even on mobile. It's one of the things I love most about the web.
Im not going to try to stop you, but if it was up to me setting priorities I'd focus on big consulting like EY, PWC, Capgemini, these companies employ each more then 100K engineers and I wouldn't know what they do with their billions.
two points: phones can be jailbroken, you don't have to go through the app store. Also, bashing dc just lowers the tone of the article. By doing so, the article automatically has to work harder to persuade me. I have not been successfully convinced that their proposals are a good idea.