Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Angel Eyes on March 08, 2019, 02:57:56 PM
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She wants to break up Facebook, Google, and Amazon:
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sen-Elizabeth-Warren-unveils-plan-to-break-up-13673195.php
"To restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and to ensure that the next generation of technology innovation is as vibrant as the last, it's time to break up our biggest tech companies," Warren said.
Balance of power == the government has all the power.
Also, for the umpteenth time: the U.S. is not a democracy.
Warren's proposal has two key elements. First, the Democratic lawmaker said her administration would appoint "regulators committed to reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers," including Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods, Facebook's tie-up with WhatsApp and Instagram and Google's ownership of Waze, Nest and DoubleClick.
Uh . . . none of that is illegal.
Second, Warren said she would push legislation that would label key services - such as Amazon's marketplace for goods and Google search - as "platform utilities," which would have to be spun off from those tech giants' business on those platforms.
Just made up that term out of thin air, I presume. Since these companies are not monopolies, anti-trust laws don't apply, so she wants new laws (more government power) to break up any company that she considers "too big."
Senator Warren is competing with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for the title "most economically illiterate in Congress."
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Just read about this... seems to me like she's saying that all large companies are bad, so they must be destroyed...
Sounds like something right out of a Bond film. Megalomaniac seeks to obtain power by eliminating others who have power...
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I'm not opposed to breaking up Google, Facebook, and Amazon. From my readings, they (at least Google and Facebook) have been using market power rather than quality/price to prevent rivals from gaining advantage over them.
GIVEN that google only got so powerful because of the Fed coming down on Microsoft, I think it's poetic that they get their turn.
Addendum: people have a tendency to merge like actors together, like the PIIGS of Europe. Be careful how you aggregrate Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
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When I saw the thread title I thought Warren going to grow a big bushy mustache or something
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Just read about this... seems to me like she's saying that all large companies are bad, so they must be destroyed...
Sounds like something right out of a Bond film. Megalomaniac seeks to obtain power by eliminating others who have power...
Stealing for Facebook! That's a brilliant assessment!
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I'm not opposed to breaking up Google, Facebook, and Amazon. From my readings, they (at least Google and Facebook) have been using market power rather than quality/price to prevent rivals from gaining advantage over them.
GIVEN that google only got so powerful because of the Fed coming down on Microsoft, I think it's poetic that they get their turn.
Addendum: people have a tendency to merge like actors together, like the PIIGS of Europe. Be careful how you aggregrate Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
I usually see as FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google).
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Oh, and for the record, I vehemently oppose forcibly breaking up companies. Unless they are government creations. I am however in favor of changing regulations to reduce impediments to competition developing.
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Just read about this... seems to me like she's saying that all large companies are bad, so they must be destroyed...
Sounds like something right out of a Bond film. Megalomaniac seeks to obtain power by eliminating others who have power...
They destroyed AT&T (the original, real, AT&T). Prior to the breakup of Ma Bell, the United States had the best telephone system in the world. Once they broke it up, prices went up rather than down, and service went down the toilet. But at least Ma Bell was a regulated monopoly. Google and Bookface aren't regulated, and are predatory in ways we don't even know about yet. I'm all in favor of breaking them up (but not because Warren says we should).
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They destroyed AT&T (the original, real, AT&T). Prior to the breakup of Ma Bell, the United States had the best telephone system in the world. Once they broke it up, prices went up rather than down, and service went down the toilet. But at least Ma Bell was a regulated monopoly. Google and Bookface aren't regulated, and are predatory in ways we don't even know about yet. I'm all in favor of breaking them up (but not because Warren says we should).
You ain't seen nothing yet :facepalm:
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You ain't seen nothing yet :facepalm:
Oh, yes I have. I'm in one of the states where AT&T sold the landline business to [ugh] Frontier Communications. Frontier's concept of "high speed internet" was a DSL line traveling over copper and delivering 2.46 mbs download speeds on a good day. And a good day would be a day when the DSL connection only crashed once or twice in a day. Last summer, I was seeing brief (meaning measured in seconds or single-digit minutes) outages multiple times every hour. Frontier's "technicians" came multiple times, verified that the problem wasn't in my house or in the wire between my house and the street. They said the issue was an antiquated SLICK (sp?) at the end of my street, about a mile away. And, they told me off the record, there were no plans to upgrade the SLICK.
As much as I loathe and detest the cable company that serves my town, at that point I gave up and signed on for cable internet. Now I'm seeing download speeds in the high 80s to low 90s. Not quite as fast as I had hoped for but obviously a tremendous improvement.
On the phone side, thanks to a friend commenting that when she tried to call me she got a canned, female-voice announcement rather than my customery answering machine, I discovered that Frontier had for some reason enabled a voicemail box on my account -- without asking me or telling me. And their voicemail was overriding my answering machine, which explained why I hadn't seen any new messages in longer than I could remember. I'm guessing that they made the change when I cancelled the DSL service in September, but nobody at frontier has any idea who authorized the change or why it was made.
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I usually see as FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google).
This is true, but Netflix and Apple don't belong there. Apple has such a miniscule presence in my family, it might as well be zero. It has very strong competitors and alternatives. There is no one area it can command market power.
So, too, Netflix. Amazon clearly is its main competitor as well as Hulu and every other channel now. I'd say it has very little market power in any area.
That is why I'm also wary of putting Amazon in the realm of Google and Facebook. While it is a MASSIVE retailer, if it tried to exercise market power in retail, Walmart would eat its lunch. Media? Netflix. While large and powerful, it doesn't command any one area as do Google and Facebook, to my knowledge.
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Oh, yes I have. I'm in one of the states where AT&T sold the landline business to [ugh] Frontier Communications. Frontier's concept of "high speed internet" was a DSL line traveling over copper and delivering 2.46 mbs download speeds on a good day. And a good day would be a day when the DSL connection only crashed once or twice in a day. Last summer, I was seeing brief (meaning measured in seconds or single-digit minutes) outages multiple times every hour. Frontier's "technicians" came multiple times, verified that the problem wasn't in my house or in the wire between my house and the street. They said the issue was an antiquated SLICK (sp?) at the end of my street, about a mile away. And, they told me off the record, there were no plans to upgrade the SLICK.
As much as I loathe and detest the cable company that serves my town, at that point I gave up and signed on for cable internet. Now I'm seeing download speeds in the high 80s to low 90s. Not quite as fast as I had hoped for but obviously a tremendous improvement.
On the phone side, thanks to a friend commenting that when she tried to call me she got a canned, female-voice announcement rather than my customery answering machine, I discovered that Frontier had for some reason enabled a voicemail box on my account -- without asking me or telling me. And their voicemail was overriding my answering machine, which explained why I hadn't seen any new messages in longer than I could remember. I'm guessing that they made the change when I cancelled the DSL service in September, but nobody at frontier has any idea who authorized the change or why it was made.
I suspect, without having any direct knowledge, that in the not to distant future anyone outside of a major metro area will be in the same boat.
As to the "SLICK" is actually "SLIC" or SLIQ acronym for Subscriber Line Interface Circuit". Also referred to as "pair gain". A T1 circuit feeds a remote terminal and the individual lines are split out from there. In such a set up a T1 over a single copper pair can feed up to 28 subscriber lines. Usually they will have multiple T1s or at least a working and protect. Sometimes possibly a T3 circuit and in recent years more are being fed by fiber.
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I suspect, without having any direct knowledge, that in the not to distant future anyone outside of a major metro area will be in the same boat.
I'm going to be keenly following things in that regard.
I've found fixed wireless microwave to be a robust solution, with most providers having no data caps, but it's just not cheap. I have high hopes for the Low Earth orbit satellites. That should give exponentially more bandwidth than fixed wireless, but who know what the costs will be.
Sadly, I think this "great 5G revolution" will be a complete bust for anyone outside of very populated areas. With the amount of repeaters necessary to make it work, anyone who doesn't live in a higher density subdivision is going to be out of luck. I doubt they will even deploy it in subdivisions with only 1 acre lots because the potential customer density will be to low.
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I suspect, without having any direct knowledge, that in the not to distant future anyone outside of a major metro area will be in the same boat.
From what I understand, Frontier Communications started off as a second- (or third-) tier provider of phone service to rural areas that the big boys didn't want to bother with. Then Frontier expanded as the big players wanted to get out of residential landline service to focus on wireless and other technologies. A few years ago, Frontier bought the entire AT&T landline operation for my entire state, and I guess they have done the same in a few states. They made all sorts of promises about upgrading service, but that was all lies -- they haven't spent much money at all on upgrades. They just keep patching the aging AT&T system to keep it functioning [sort of] on band-aids.
I'm of the opinion that they really want to drive residential customers away from themselves and over to VOIP and the cable companies. I think Frontier is only interested in the large, commercial customers, because that's where they can make money. The only reason I didn't swaitch my landline to the cable company when I switched the internet is that they couldn't promise me that their VOIP would work with my fax machine -- and I need my fax machine to be functional. "We can try it and if we can't make it work after a couple of weeks you can always switch back" just does not inspire confidence.
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Google needs to be broken up asap.
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Fauxcahontas actually said the word "competition"? She's the same person who wants the government to take over and run every company that has a book value over a certain amount of millions of dollars. This woman belongs in a nut house along with the rest of the Democrat candidates.
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Google needs to be broken up asap.
Hear hear!