Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

How about going after Comcast and Verizon first, the actual tech <i>monopolies</i>? I already don’t use Facebook, I buy things online from places other than Amazon, and have email accounts that aren’t hosted by Google. However, all of that goes over Comcast’s network because that’s my only viable choice for Internet service. Also, while FAANG occasionally do things I don’t approve of, they don’t <i>actively lobby congress</i> for things that will make my use of the internet objectively worse (NN, SOPA, etc...).<p>But no, because Comcast has -bribed- donated to way more congresspeople than Google, because they’re better at playing that game.

There&#x27;s precedent to this in the USA. The US Government once passed regulations that caused one of the largest companies in America to break up into three smaller companies. Today those, three companies are entirely independent, employ over 400,000 people combined, and have a combined net work of over $400B.<p>Those companies are Boeing Aircraft (153k employees, $244B market value), United Technologies (202k employees, $148B market value), and United Airlines (88k employees, $33B market value).[0]<p>What most people perceive as a threat to the market is when one company takes over an entire single market. And that is a problem, no doubt. But in the case of Boeing, the problem was that one company had such an advantage vertically- lose money on planes in order to make money on shipping, or vice versa, as needed. It meant it could win in whichever market it wanted to and slowly come to dominate all of those markets. The synergies of doing it all internally meant it could win at everything.<p>If one uses that situation as a precedent, one can start to see the parallels in many of the FAANG companies today.<p>[0] &quot;The Air Mail Act of 1934 prohibited airlines and manufacturers from being under the same corporate umbrella, so the company split into three smaller companies – Boeing Airplane Company, United Airlines, and United Aircraft Corporation, the precursor to United Technologies.&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Boeing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Boeing</a>

Comparisons will be made to Microsoft and Internet Explorer but to me the really crucial part of this isn&#x27;t market dominance in the &quot;what app are you using&quot; sense, it&#x27;s data.<p>Facebook, Google and Amazon really do have an unprecedented amount of data on us. And keep vacuuming up more and more of it. Facebook should never have been allowed to buy WhatsApp (and maybe not Instagram though I&#x27;m less concerned about that one). Google should never have been allowed to buy DoubleClick.<p>Question is how you&#x27;d effectively roll that back now. I&#x27;m concerned that the government doesn&#x27;t have enough people with the technical knowledge to really tackle the data question, but I&#x27;m still glad Warren is starting the conversation. And she&#x27;s got some interesting ideas:<p>&gt; Companies with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or more and that offer to the public an online marketplace, an exchange, or a platform for connecting third parties would be designated as “platform utilities.”<p>&gt; These companies would be prohibited from owning both the platform utility and any participants on that platform. Platform utilities would be required to meet a standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with users. Platform utilities would not be allowed to transfer or share data with third parties.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@teamwarren&#x2F;heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-tech-9ad9e0da324c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@teamwarren&#x2F;heres-how-we-can-break-up-big...</a>

To what end? &quot;illegally undermine competition?&quot;<p>She is inferring that Google&#x2F;Amazon&#x2F;Facebook are committing anti-trust crimes? What proof does she have?<p>&gt;Companies would be barred from transferring or sharing users’ data with third parties.<p>That can be done without breaking them up. I don&#x27;t think she realizes that splitting up amazon and amazon basics will do little to nothing.<p>There are other things that can be done. You could require freedom of speech apply to industry leaders for example. However I suspect the democrats would never propose that because it would be bad for them.

&gt; The key components of the Warren plan include passing legislation that would designate companies with annual global revenue above $25 billion that provide marketplace, exchange, or third-party connectivity as “platform utilities” and prohibit those companies from owning participants on their platforms.<p>As a Googler, speaking for myself, this seems like an interesting idea that could positively impact the tech scene.

Does anyone actually believe that the US government&#x27;s interventions against Microsoft made the slightest bit of difference, as opposed to huge shifts in the internet and mobile landscape?<p>You could argue that the emergence of Firefox and Chrome was only made possible by the ability to assign a &quot;default&quot; non-IE browser in Windows, but that ability pre-dated any of the anti-trust stuff anyway; all you got out of that was a mandatory pop-up when you installed Windows asking you if you wanted to use a different browser.<p>The emergence of Firefox was by itself a huge shift, and Chrome another one, against Microsoft&#x27;s browser monopoly. Its OS monopoly got broken (insofar as it is broken) by a combination of the rise of mobile and Apples re-emergence as a viable platform. Its office application monopoly got broken (insofar as it is broken) by a combination of online email systems (especially gmail) and the increased availability of online alternatives.<p>All the justice department did was waste their time; they could have just sat by the river and waited for the body of their enemy to float by instead.

What is the alleged anti-competitive behavior? The article doesn&#x27;t mention it. It sounds like she is calling for their breakup merely for being big and powerful, and if that were cause enough to break up an entity we would logically start with the government.

Google&#x2F;Facebook&#x2F;Amazon have the power to push any startup competition out of the market in ways that are hard to even enumerate. Think about all of the services, devices, and standards that they control.<p>Watching the fanboys defend their favorite tech giant is incredible. These companies are not behaving in the markets or people&#x27;s best interest and they are way too big, at a scale that dwarfs most of the worlds organizations.

I ran across two quotes by Warren that caught my attention:<p>&gt; &quot;unwind tech mergers that illegally undermine competition&quot;<p>&gt; &quot;I want a government that makes sure everybody — even the biggest and most powerful companies in America — plays by the rules&quot;<p>The word &quot;illegally&quot; in the first quote really set off my alarm bells. What have large companies like Amazon, Google, FB, etc. done that is considered illegal in this regard?<p>The &quot;by the rules&quot; in the second quote is confusing too. What does that mean? Which rules are being broken?<p>The way I see it: Isn&#x27;t it the goal of entrepreneurs to be as successful as possible? Let&#x27;s say I found a way to grow a business to that of the size of some of the bigger ones (which would be awesome). To grow a business that big, consumers obviously like what I&#x27;m selling&#x2F;producing. I get the impression that Warren is saying she doesn&#x27;t like big businesses because they snuff out the little ones. And maybe that&#x27;s true, but why is that a concern of the government? There&#x27;s nothing stopping a smaller company (or even an individual) from coming up with a really good idea and trying that idea out in something like his garage, and then reshaping the next generation... kinda like Amazon did in comparison to Sears. Or Microsoft did with IBM.<p>I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;s going to be plenty of disagreements on my stance, but I guess I&#x27;m just not seeing this problem in the same light as Warren.

I think breaking up the ISPs and media conglomerates would be much more impactful.<p>I can&#x27;t think of a single market segment where Google and Amazon lack effective competition. Facebook is already bleeding users, and how would you break up a social media company in an impactful way anyhow? Facebook&#x27;s ventures outside of social media aren&#x27;t even close to being monopolies.

I think we should also consider that even if you do break up a large company like that, you&#x27;d need to make sure they don&#x27;t pull an AT&amp;T and start merging with each other to basically re-create their previous structure.

From Warren&#x27;s blog post:<p>&gt; ... Google’s ad exchange and businesses on the exchange would be split apart. Google Search would have to be spun off as well.<p>I think maybe her team needs to do a little more research on what Google&#x27;s business is. Splitting off Android&#x2F;Play or GCP at least creates potentially viable businesses. Splitting up search and ads creates two non-viable businesses.

&gt; The parallel she uses to make her case is the breakup of Microsoft, which she weirdly calls “the tech giant of its time” (Microsoft is still a tech giant), and holds as perhaps the last example when government went toe to toe with the technology industry.<p>&gt; “The government’s antitrust case against Microsoft helped clear a path for Internet companies like Google and Facebook to emerge,” Warren writes.<p>In what way was Microsoft &#x27;broken up&#x27;? The outcome[1] from that antitrust case seems to be that Microsoft had to publicly expose all of Windows&#x27; APIs to developers (no secret APIs).<p>If anything, the outcome of the Microsoft case seems to support non-intervention as AppGoogBook all flourished despite no serious breakup of Microsoft.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.#Settlement" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...</a>

Planet Money looks prescient again, with a three-part series on how antitrust rules evolved in the US, and how they are changing in response to Big Tech:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;15&#x2F;695131832&#x2F;antitrust-1-standard-oil" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;15&#x2F;695131832&#x2F;anti...</a><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;20&#x2F;696342011&#x2F;antitrust-2-the-paradox" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;20&#x2F;696342011&#x2F;anti...</a><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;22&#x2F;697170790&#x2F;antitrust-3-big-tech" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;22&#x2F;697170790&#x2F;anti...</a>

Even if it were beneficial (argument in itself), Big Government is unequipped to handle the break-up of these companies in way that protects their value to consumers.

Nitpicking here, but in Warren’s post she writes:<p>&gt; Google couldn’t smother competitors by demoting their products on Google Search.<p>Isn’t this already illegal?

Preventing those companies from buying out others and using their incredible size and resources to quashing competition I can support. Splitting into pieces can make sense as well. It looks like Warren&#x27;s definition of &quot;Fair Use&quot; is more in the context of selling widgets and does not appear to be tied to free speech issues. I guess that Elizabeth Warren isn&#x27;t supporting a definition of &quot;fair use&quot; of these platforms that matches the United States Supreme court definition of free speech.

There&#x27;s zero net benefit in breaking up large companies that are driving innovation and improving consumer experiences.<p>If you don&#x27;t like the economic result, redistribute some of the growth. Walmart doesn&#x27;t deserve to be saved by splitting up Amazon if they can&#x27;t compete.

&gt; The story demonstrates why promoting competition is so important: it allows new, groundbreaking companies to grow and thrive — which pushes everyone in the marketplace to offer better products and services. Aren’t we all glad that now we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with Bing?<p>It&#x27;s dishonest to suggest that the outcome of the US vs Microsoft somehow paved the way for Google. I would argue it was pretty non-consequential but looms in the public conscious.<p>From wikipedia:<p>&gt; On November 2, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case. The proposed settlement required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who would have full access to Microsoft&#x27;s systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance.[29] However, the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future ... &gt; Law professor Eben Moglen noted that the way Microsoft was required to disclose its APIs and protocols was useful only for “interoperating with a Windows Operating System Product”, not for implementing support of those APIs and protocols in any competing operating system.

I think the most obvious candidate is to split Google and Youtube.

To my knowledge, American monopoly laws focus more on the welfare of the consumer and whether customers are being negatively affected rather than the companies themselves. There’s nothing wrong with having a monopoly, but where issues arise is when consumers start to be hurt.<p>In this context, how do Elizabeth Warren’s comments mesh out?

This gets me very excited. As a bay area resident, we&#x27;ve seen the income stratification from these companies ruin our way of life. It&#x27;s just untenable.<p>Warren has my vote.

I&#x27;d like to say this is just politics but I&#x27;m not even sure it&#x27;s good politics. How many people are really concerned about the size of Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. If people are that concerned, why do so many people I know have Prime?<p>The fossil fuel industry continues to run rampant. As does the Military Industrial Complex. The former is a key player in the degradation of the planet; the latter is a money sucking Hover that is sucking the life out of infrastructure, education, etc.<p>The environment and peace are much bigger issues than taking down and busting up the tech giants.<p>Editorial: I want to like Liz Warren. I can related to some of her ideals. Unfortunately, as a politician she too often comes off as inexperienced, out of touch and&#x2F;or naive. This is another one of those times.

Is breaking them up really a priority? What benefit would that have that we couldn&#x27;t achieve via properly taxing and regulating them in the first place?

I don’t see how Amazon is such an threat to consumers?<p>Genuine question, can someone explain how they are bad? I might give pushback to help get to understanding other people, but I’m not trying to start a war on here:)

The tech giants are too big, but there are geopolitical consequences for breaking them up. Countries like Russia and China can target smaller companies much easier than the Goliaths.

Reminds me of this post by Richard Stallman, [1].<p>&gt; Amazon has so much market share that its sheer size distorts the market.<p>&gt; We should not allow a company to have a share over around 10% of any market. If in a certain field a single dominant company is beneficial for society, that means it is a natural monopoly, and should be served by a regulated utility.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stallman.org&#x2F;amazon.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stallman.org&#x2F;amazon.html</a>

Amazon is eroding brick and mortar mom and pop stores, but it isn&#x27;t doing that because it&#x27;s a monopoly (it has 5% of retail sales), it&#x27;s doing it because people prefer shopping online compared with physical stores. If you broke up Amazon into 5 competing e-commerce sites, strip malls across America would still be closing, and you&#x27;d just have 5 Bezos billionaires instead of 1.<p>And it will do nothing to help the millions of American retail workers who are going to be out of a job, nor the logistics workers who are going to be automated out of jobs.<p>This is populist demagoguery and scapegoating and not looking at real solutions, like strengthening the social safety net by increasing taxes on these businesses. At least Medical for All, Free College, or UBI have tangible, immediate benefits to people suffering.<p>Or writing laws on Data Privacy can directly address that issue.<p>But simply busting up companies? It won&#x27;t address the underlying economic disruption happening, and if anything, it is likely to simply increase the amount of entities tracking you and risk of hacks.

This is an excellent goal, and Paul Graham has articulated the reasoning pretty clearly: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;paulg&#x2F;status&#x2F;886953410356011008" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;paulg&#x2F;status&#x2F;886953410356011008</a><p>&gt; <i>Here&#x27;s how to explain to people the distinction between fighting poverty and fighting economic inequality. If you&#x27;re fighting poverty, you might say &quot;Let&#x27;s have universal health care.&quot; If you&#x27;re fighting economic inequality, you have to say &quot;Let&#x27;s have universal health care. And Larry, please don&#x27;t start Google.&quot; Otherwise Larry&#x27;s going to mess up your numbers big time.</i><p>Since reading that, I&#x27;ve realized that a major part of my political beliefs is that future Larrys should be <i>unable</i> to start future Googles in their current form, and in particular that I don&#x27;t believe it&#x27;s a just use of the powers of government to enable the creation of future Googles.

I disagree with these proposals, and think the sights should be aimed at companies like Verizon and Comcast, but at least Warren&#x27;s proposals tend to be coherent. Although, it isn&#x27;t too hard to be a &quot;policy pacesetter&quot; on the democratic side these days -- they lack any semblance of unified vision, and so far we have been given 3 magical proposals for legislation for fixing all the worlds problem lacking any coherent way to pay for them other than a bunch of magic handwaving and &quot;let&#x27;s just tax millionaires and billionaires more&quot; -- the most atrocious of them being the &quot;New Green Deal&quot;, and the second most atrocious is the &quot;Medicaid for all&quot;<p>Given recently how AOC and her cohorts were flat out embarrassed by the NY state budget director and given a lesson in basic financial literacy and economics, I think the freshman and sophomore democrats should probably lay low for a while and learn a thing or two from the adults in the room.

What&#x27;s interesting about this proposal is it goes after &quot;proprietary marketplaces&quot;.[1] Anti-trust has historically focused on breaking up huge companies that have acquired&#x2F;merged with their competition. She&#x27;s recognizing that another lever of power in the world: owning the platform.<p>Lots of tech &quot;monopoly&quot; power comes from network effects. Once you&#x27;re Google or Amazon you don&#x27;t necessarily need to buy up all the other search engines or ecommerce platforms. They can&#x27;t even get off the ground.<p>Also interesting: she doesn&#x27;t mention Apple at all. Yet they run one of the biggest platforms, and their cut (which they call &quot;service revenue&quot;) is one of the highest growth categories for them.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@teamwarren&#x2F;heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-tech-9ad9e0da324c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@teamwarren&#x2F;heres-how-we-can-break-up-big...</a>

This is 2019. We have come up with so many correct tech solutions to problems, like inventing the Internet Protocol Suite and so on, where we once needed government. We have email instead of the post office. Desktop printing instead of the printing press. Xerox copiers were a game changer back in the day.<p>Why do we need government’s help to break up these monopolies? When AOL literally was the place everyone went to just be ONLINE, it semed unstoppable. Then came the Web, with its permissionless nature, and over time it completely took over, and led to trillions of dollars of new value. The Web is the plarform on which Google, Amazon, Facebook, built their businesses, companies that would never get permission do that on top of AOL.<p>Now we need something similar to disrupt Google, Facebook, Amazon. I believe Wordpress was an early start, and indeed powers 30% of all websites today. But you need four things:<p>1) Open source and permissionless platform<p>2) A unified Social Operating System with well designed components for user accounts, permissions, realtime notifications, payments etc. like the graphical OSes had windows, menus and so on. A well-designed cathedral architecture like BSD.<p>3) A permissionless plugin system and marketplace where anyone could develop their own components and package them into plugins and apps, and sell them to communities.<p>4) A layer where you could go between many different domains and have a seamless social experience. This is key.<p>I am really passionate about this. I have put my money where my mouth is - my company Qbix has reinvested half a million dollars over the last seven years to build a platform to do just that.<p>What I said is just the surface. Please watch this video to understand in depthwhat I mean:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;OzXnVSZbvAw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;OzXnVSZbvAw</a><p>Would love to hear your thoughts.

I don&#x27;t have any insight into the rationale behind the HQ2 search beyond what was reported in the media, but I&#x27;ve long thought that planning for a potential government-forced break up was part of it. A preemptive segregation of business units will help their case if&#x2F;when this gains some steam.

This seems like a terrible thing to campaign on. There are plenty of other more important issues to deal with. Maybe not everyone, but most people I talk to absolutely love Amazon and the convenience it offers them. Definitely not going to win in the court of public opinion.

Just my 2 cents: Apple currently offers a great user experience in terms of app quality, stability, design, etc... That&#x27;s because they have a total control over what can and what can&#x27;t be uploaded to their app store. They run extensive analysis over each one of the apps that are being submitted to the app store and they reserve their right to reject an app even if the slightest bug occurs. That, at the end of the day, turns into a very positive user experience. My question is: Would it be actually good for the end user if Apple is forced to lose control over the app store?

Enforcing the use of open, federated, interoperable standards when they&#x27;re technically feasible would be a lot more productive than the crude approach of simply breaking up the companies. To the extent that there is a competition concern it&#x27;s due to network effects, and open, interoperable standards would go a long way towards resolving these. Even for Amazon, it&#x27;s only the &quot;UX&quot;-related company that needs to be broken away from the rest. That company would then face an incentive to interoperate will all sorts of suppliers on an equitable basis.

Companies do get spun off all the time, if it&#x27;s determined to benefit shareholders. Why should the government take on this role? It&#x27;s doubtful they would make decisions that are in the best fiduciary interest of the stock holders, the employees, and the customers. Generally it&#x27;s best to let market forces play out. Amazon, Facebook &amp; the Goog are pretty massive <i>right now</i>, but things change quickly. Ten years from now, there may be new behemoths that dwarf these companies even as these companies now dwarf former titans like Microsoft and IBM.

I’m curious what people think this would mean for hiring? If all of a sudden there a 8 or 9 smaller, but still quite large, giants competing for talent, I could imagine competing for talent would hit fever pitch.

You shouldn&#x27;t be resolving such issues after the fact. If the FTC or the DOJ AD weren&#x27;t diminished into such seemingly titular existences, we wouldn&#x27;t have this problem in the first place.

She complains that the problem is lax enforcement of existing antitrust laws and her solution is, instead of enforcement of existing antitrust laws, radical new antitrust laws that do not focus on conduct or evidence of consumer harm?<p>Not only do I think the particular policy is ill-conceived, but the preference for legislation when the entire premise is an assessment that existing law is unenforced rather than defective is even more worrying. And I say that as someone who has up to this point seen Warren as probably the strongest 2020 candidate.

The more I think about this the more I focus on the Amazon case.<p>Amazon&#x27;s core competency is logistics. They would not exist at anything like their current scale if they couldn&#x27;t do 2-day delivery. That&#x27;s what really gives them a leg up vs doing a Google search, finding a small e-commerce ship that sells what you want, and getting the product.<p>Breaking that into an independent service-- if it&#x27;s possible at all-- would have far more impact, and possibly more positive impact, than anything involving house brands or an ec2 split.

I used to work at Amazon and the idea of spinning out Marketplace just seems unworkable. It&#x27;s like saying that Microsoft should spin out Xbox... they are 100% dependent on each other.

I choose not to use Amazon. I choose not to use Facebook.<p>Very difficult to not interact with Google...<p>I choose not to use Verizon... however COMCAST is TERRRIBLE and along with Verizon, they have shut down every mom-and-pop ISP and are responsible for the wholesale elimination of robust, in-place copper from the consumer and business markets.<p>Senator Warren, please add Comcast\Verizon to this list. That would get my vote... either that or slapping Ajit Pai for me next time you see him. Thanks.

The real problem here is the culture that the current crop of entrepreneurs grew up in. No one one wan&#x27;t to take time to build and grow a company anymore as it is unglamorous. Most of them are just looking to generate hype and sell to any Big Tech corp that throws cash at them as soon as possible.<p>As long as this culture remains in place, breaking big tech companies won&#x27;t work. New ones will crop up and everything will continue.

This is one reason I still support Bernie over Warren, his ideas are more sound, and he has a purpose. I feel like Warren can come off fringe on a lot of things, and is really just trying to make herself appear progressive, she tosses out ideas into the progressive ether to see which ones will &#x27;stick&#x27; per se and drops others. Some days she sounds on point and very intelligent, and some days she does shit like this and feels completely out of touch.<p>She&#x27;s also very self-serving and has no sense of loyalty to other left-leaning politicians - else she might&#x27;ve backed Bernie from day one in 2016, instead of play things &#x27;safe&#x27;. Her playing safe hurt her career more than anything else ever will in my opinion.<p>That aside, I don&#x27;t think breaking up google, fb, amazon will do much...if I were to break them up, I think the only thing I&#x27;d do is perhaps have them split their cloud services from their other offerings, and maybe media services -- youtube | amazon prime video, but it&#x27;s small potatoes.<p>I think a MUCH bigger issue is media consolodation -- when 1-2 CEO&#x27;s control 80% of the media and thus the &#x27;message&#x27; that people see, that&#x27;s a much scarier proposition.<p>For example Sinclair Broadcasting I think owns something like 90% of local broadcasting stations now - and they send talking points and control what newscasters say in order to get political messages out - it&#x27;s basically propaganda that they control, and it&#x27;s very powerful esp in the wrong hands.<p>Comcast&#x2F;nbc&#x2F;hulu, att&#x2F;time warner, disney&#x2F;fox&#x2F;espn&#x2F;etc are all companies that probably are more dangerous than google&#x2F;fb&#x2F;amazon (w&#x2F; the exception that FB really needs to get it&#x27;s privacy shit together or just die...), and if you&#x27;re going after big tech why not Apple&#x2F;Microsoft, Microsoft is as big if not bigger than it was when they had their antitrust case, Apple is the biggest company in the world ? Maybe we should also have a 25BN = auto-breakup for banks, since banks caused the last great recession, and are obviously dangerous when they get too big to fail.<p>Or maybe instead of breaking up companies we just figure out ways to tax them better -- esp. on speculation and at the investment layer, so that the money they make that &#x27;you - the politician&#x27; feel they shouldn&#x27;t be making is used for the benefit of society as well as enrichment of the CEO and their ilk.

You might be able to divide Amazon into two distinct pieces (retail and cloud services), but I don&#x27;t know how you&#x27;d even start with a company like Google or Facebook. Most of the services offered by those two are only justified by the amount of data they provide for ad targeting. You can&#x27;t take away those services without ruining their ad-revenue model.

Amazon is a &quot;marketplace&quot;. Like &quot;Google Play&quot; or iTunes. This seems very different situation.<p>As a progressive, I really want to support Warren but her policies need to solid. I am concerned the left is running off the rails with anti-vaxx, anti-GMO, anti-technology, extreme feminist wackadoodle ideas.<p>Can&#x27;t just Bernie just dye his hair and wear a proper suit that fits?

Just wondering how weird would it be if someone at the UN proposed to break up &quot;monopolies&quot; like China it the USA itself. And yet, I suppose a good parallel case can be built in support of this.<p>NOTE: I&#x27;m not dissing the monopolies act and understand the dangers. This is just a thought pointing out different yardsticks for corporations and countries.

&gt; The story demonstrates why promoting competition is so important: it allows new, groundbreaking companies to grow and thrive — which pushes everyone in the marketplace to offer better products and services. Aren’t we all glad that now we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with Bing?<p>Erm. Should we tell her that Google came before Bing?

The $25B revenue cut off seems really arbitrary and ignore different types of businesses. Some business (like Walmart) have super high revenues, but relatively small profits. While others are smaller revenue, but super high profits.<p>I know this proposal is just for tech companies, but it seems like it will create as many problems as it solves.

I know that Facebook has instagram and whatsapp, but wouldn&#x27;t breaking Facebook up leave the still monolithic but waning Facebook proper together? I&#x27;m not saying WhatsApp and Instagram aren&#x27;t massive, but am I wrong in assuming that Facebook is still a monolith regardless if it loses it subsidiaries?

Why is Apple not part of this? The most valuable company!! What apple does with integration of software, hardware, dongle, accessory and walled garden is nothing but a monopoly! The killing of iMessage if you switch etc. Maybe Amazon, Google, FB didn&#x27;t pay enough money to Warren&#x27;s election fund.

This is great because it starts a conversation about monopoly power that&#x27;s long been needed.<p>This I think is one of the understated values of primaries and presidential elections. Even if Warren is elected and unable to get legislation passed, she has moved this particular conversation forward.

Warren&#x27;s original post, <i>Here’s how we can break up Big Tech</i>:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@teamwarren&#x2F;heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-tech-9ad9e0da324c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@teamwarren&#x2F;heres-how-we-can-break-up-big...</a>

While I agree that we should break apart giant companies (and not just Amazon, telecoms too), the first large entity that we should break apart, is the government.<p>The only way to stop monopolies from forming is by getting rid of legislation that heavily benefits large businesses.

“Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy,” Warren said in a statement. “They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else.”<p>True. On the other hand, big tech companies are the only agencies that are taking on big problems, social and technical. Break up big tech and many things won&#x27;t get done. No ubiquitous high speed networks, no practical general purpose artificial intelligence, no indexed access to the world&#x27;s knowledge, no voice interface minions, and so forth. Government seems unable and unwilling to do the sort of things Big Tech does.<p>Breaking up big tech seems to be the wrong approach and is likely to be more difficult and more destructive than it would appear at first glance. Better to enlist big tech to cooperate and make the world a better place.

Of the three I would say Facebook is the most destructive. I don&#x27;t see articles on Live Science or Science Daily decrying the mental health effects of Amazon or Google, just unfair monopoly implications at Bloomberg and other business sites.

I&#x27;m on the fence about antitrust action in general, but here&#x27;s an assertion from the article that I think is completely untrue:<p>&quot;Venture capitalists are now hesitant to fund new startups to compete with these big tech companies because it’s so easy for the big companies to either snap up growing competitors or drive them out of business.&quot;<p>The possibility of being &quot;snapped up&quot; is very good money for venture capitalists instead of waiting a decade for an IPO. So regulating acquisitions by the big players may have a chilling effect on capital and, thereby, tech innovation.<p>In addition, the first mover effect is very powerful and should not be discounted. For example, the competition between Snapchat and Facebook was not as skewed as the outcome would have you believe. Snapchat had and has a large userbase, and is losing because of mistakes (including not agreeing to very good acquisition offers). I can&#x27;t personally think of too many other examples of megatitans successfully squashing innovative smaller companies with an equivalent product.

This is a really interesting conversation but I really want to read the full proposal. As many have noted, what about AWS? Does Apple&#x27;s App Store count as a platform? What does the data clause mean? Etc.

Will there be enough political will to get this done even if she becomes president? It seems unlikely that such severe measures would be able to pass unless the named companies help dig themselves deeper by not caring about the distrust and deep disappointment in them (Facebook for one doesn’t seem to care in the sense of really doing something better).<p>&gt; He (Szabo) added that he also felt Ms. Warren is “wrong in her assertion that tech markets lack competition.”<p>That’s got to be one of those jokes that go viral. Most of the consumer facing services are heavily concentrated among less than a handful (considering specific areas, and not in general).<p>It’s time at least some of what she calls for gets done!

This topic is strongly connected with decentralization technologies since they are the most viable way that we will be able to replace the large networks of the technopolies.

This thread defines &#x27;whataboutism&#x27;. It&#x27;s supposed to be about Warren&#x27;s new 3 page tech regulation bill but has more than 600 comments rehashing telecom regulation issues discussed thousands of times, without engaging a single point raised by Warren. This looks like a derail.<p>There are urgent issues with Google and monopoly, search, chrome, amp, android and youtube and once you combine that with Facebook a toxic predatory surveillance capitalism model based on harvesting and collating private data to build dossiers that is ominous for any free society.<p>But for the tech community on the frontlines of this project the old issues of Comcast and Verizon unresolved inspite of decades of heated debate are more urgent. If anyone doubted Upton Sinclars famous insight here is the evidence.

&gt; &quot;as well as legislation that would prohibit platforms from both offering a marketplace for commerce and participating in that marketplace.&quot;<p>This sounds very fair to me, India has passed a similar law recently - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;26&#x2F;technology&#x2F;india-amazon-walmart-online-retail.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;26&#x2F;technology&#x2F;india-amazon-w...</a>

What about closing Tax loopholes, such that Apple and Amazon pay their fair share and Netflix does not pay zero tax ?

The problem isn&#x27;t the tech giants but how we are seen as cash cows of information and not as people.

Miss the whole point. The world largest is not American firm. Not even in IT.<p>Break yours and let others do it.

What monopoly do these companies have? What customer harm is resultant from their monopolies?

Most people are on the same page about ISPs so I will skip that. Social networks should be public utility companies or else heavily regulated and treansparent to avoid censorship or what is referred to as surveillance capitalism. Networks should be open for third parties in a regulated manner after a certain size threshold. This would for example prevent Amazon from creating a massive delivery network in a competition free environment and then use it to squash any new competition for decades and decades. People might have a choice now to use Amazon or not but as delivery prices decline the options shrink to the point that you might not have any realistic alternative depivery channel. However with current US political system that has money interest and regulations tied in a biased way towards concentrated capital these will likely not happen.

She&#x27;s lost my support with this - too far off the rails.

Breaking AWS away from Amazon might not be a bad thing.

Honest question, not trying to make a statement...<p>Is this really a left&#x2F;liberal&#x2F;progressive&#x2F;dem position and if so why?<p>I&#x27;m mainly on the right and so I don&#x27;t have a lot of insight into why Sen. Warren would be taking this position. To be frank I kinda would have expected something like this from Trump, not from her. Tech companies like Amazon seem to be left leaning (just looking at Bezos and his investment in WaPo). Wouldn&#x27;t Warren want strong left leaning tech companies? Why would she want to go up against them?<p>Again I&#x27;m not trying to trigger anyone or make any political assertions. I generally don&#x27;t understand and would love the input of others for familiar with Sen. Warren&#x27;s platform.

So Democrats are sticking to their guns with their belief that their problem was not going Left enough instead of realising to be more pragmatic and listen to people instead of ideologies.

if you&#x27;re going to break them up, it&#x27;s going to be a lot tougher to keep track of their &quot;anti consumer&quot; behaviour

I like Warren. Also, I believe something needs to be done about these tech companies enormous influence over information flow. I don&#x27;t think the solution is breaking them up.

Does legislature like this actually have a chance at passing? Or is this just bombastic liberal rhetoric to ignite the campaign trail?

Why is Microsoft never mentioned?!

If you came here to read the HN comments about this topic, I very highly recommend listening to this podcast that I&#x27;ve enjoyed yesterday [0], it&#x27;s economist Russell Roberts interviewing Michael Munger; the topic is &quot;crony capitalism&quot;.<p>[0]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econtalk.org&#x2F;michael-munger-on-crony-capitalism&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econtalk.org&#x2F;michael-munger-on-crony-capitalism&#x2F;</a>

Seems like Democratic candidates are clamoring over each other to be further left, and I don&#x27;t quite understand it. I supported Bernie in 2016, and even he is now too far left for my tastes.<p>Democrats lost the centrist vote in 2016, not the left, and if they don&#x27;t take a hard right turn after the nomination we&#x27;ll have 4 more years of Trump.

if they are going to break up amazon why dont spin out AWS?

2008, Financial Collapse, Too Big To Fail, Banks Got Bigger 2018, Facebook Helps Trump, Too Influential, Break Up Facebook?

Posted below, but this just paywallspam for Elizabeth Warren&#x27;s own blog post on the subject: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@teamwarren&#x2F;9ad9e0da324c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@teamwarren&#x2F;9ad9e0da324c</a>

Whoops. Guess she won&#x27;t be winning then...

The US govt has some of the biggest waste I’ve ever seen. Tens to hundreds of millions on failed research thrusts that were extreme long-shots from the beginning. Govt employees that “rest and vest” to extremes, working 20 actual hrs a week at a FTE position and getting pension at 55. It puts to shame actual hardworking Americans who are outside the elitist bubble.<p>It’s hard to argue when the same side benefitting from big govt wants to print money to “solve” all their problems and shut down opposing virwpoints with such vitrol. One side is actively extatic by shutting down tens of thousands of prospective jobs while not getting that funding and revenue of their projects comes from those jobs.

This will go exactly nowhere. I want Cheeto out as much as anyone else but if the democrats put up Warren in 2020 I&#x27;m not going to be happy.

I don&#x27;t exactly like her but this is a very valid point. Not like she will get the necessary support in a bought out congress (both sides)

Big businesses are the drivers of the American economy. Breaking them up will imperil the economy.

Why do we need the government’s help to break up Amazon? We need open source alternatives, line OpenStreetMap to break up Google Maps monopoly.

If you did not build it, you gont get to break it. How about we split Pentagon into 5 pieces instead ?

If we&#x27;re worried about concentration of power, invasions of privacy, and collection of private data, the by far biggest problem is Warren&#x27;s own employer.<p>Once we&#x27;ve broken up the federal government, we can start worrying about these much smaller and less powerful entities!

I&#x27;d have to see the details, but I&#x27;m pro something like breaks up the <i>talent</i> monopoly that FAANGs have, especially in the Bay Area.<p>Early stage startups can&#x27;t compete for talent in the Bay Area. If breaking up giants creates more competition for talent, then I&#x27;m supportive.

Microsoft is now worth more than Apple, and it used to be in the target of government regulators. What has it done right?

Just say &quot;no&quot; to more government manipulation of the market. In fact, we need to rollback a lot of the ways government distorts markets today. See, for example: regulatory capture[1] and patent evergreening[2].<p>Too often it&#x27;s government intervention which <i>creates</i> the very &quot;problems&quot; that they then turn around and claim to be trying to solve.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Regulatory_capture" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Regulatory_capture</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Evergreening" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Evergreening</a>

Anyone who thinks Google is out there demoting Yelp results is a moron. The much simpler explanation that Yelp is a cancer that everyone hates is more likely. It&#x27;s sad that Warren falls for FUD like this and we shouldn&#x27;t forget that these memes originate from Microsoft-funded AstroTurf campaigns designed to mislead European regulators, which worked because eurocrats are gullible. The last thing we need in this election are people without the critical thinking skills needed to see through a disinformation campaign. We need a candidate who can clearly see that Google owning a small thermostat maker is not one of the country&#x27;s main issues.

Here we go, buckle up. With the amount of power democrats are likely to consolidate in the next few elections there could be some serious movement on this if it becomes a priority for the party.<p>I think the big three are way too powerful and need to be broken up, but doing so intelligently is a tricky problem that I don&#x27;t have much faith in government tackling.<p>Zuckerberg integrating all the services yesterday seems to be a transparent attempt to short circuit splitting the company along these service lines, he knows this is coming. I&#x27;ll bet $100 he&#x27;ll soon be talking about how it&#x27;s impossible to split out insta from facebook because of database keys and integrated AI or whatever.

If there has ever been a monopoly, those 3 companies are it.<p>I wont speak for social media and search, but Amazon has a complete stranglehold on retail in the United States. People keep saying &#x27;retail is dead&#x27;, thats bullshit, Amazon has a monopolistic stranglehold on the selling of all goods. If that weren&#x27;t the case, small shop brick and mortar shopping would still be a thing.