Senator Warren on Amazon and Google
Amazon kills the books
Calling out Amazon for controlling the book market seems a bit ironic considering the Federal courts essentially endorsed the company’s practices while hitting Apple with penalties for its efforts to break into book sales.
The Department of Justice accused Apple and publishers of colluding to artificially raise book prices, leading to a multi-year court battle that led to Judge Denise Cote finding Apple guilty. Apple maintained it never participated in a conspiracy, and that it was only trying to break into a market Amazon dominated by selling books below cost, driving competitors out of business.
Judge Cote’s ruling hammered Apple while at the same time giving Amazon’s tactics a nod of approval. Now Senator Warren is calling out Amazon for using its monopoly strength to dominate the publishing market—something both the DOJ and Judge Cote have already given a thumbs up. She may not like what Amazon is doing, but unless she’s ready to take on the DOJ and federal courts, that isn’t likely to change any time soon.
Google kills the search
It’s no secret Google dominates the internet search market, and some governments think the company is abusing its position. The European Union, for example, is conducting a formal investigation into Google’s business practices over claims the company is violating antitrust laws by gaming search results to favor its own products and services.
Senator Warren referenced Google’s practice of favoring its own business and service reviews platform over rivals such as Yelp in her speech. By pushing its own reviews higher, Yelp and other companies are at a disadvantage without any way to compete, hence her concern and the EU’s investigation.
The question now is how much control does Senator Warren think the government should have over competition in the tech markets? Companies this large don’t topple over night, but over time the can lose their top dog status—as Microsoft and Blackberry can attest. That doesn’t mean the tech space should be an uncontrolled battle ground, nor should it be regulated to the point where companies are buried un bureaucracy. Good luck with that balancing act, Senator Warren.
In reply to skipaq: “Senator Warren has no great love for capitalism.” That’s a huge understatement. She’s a raving socialist. That won’t be happy until your paycheck,
no matter what company, comes through the government first. So, they can get
90% and you get 10%. In her world your earnings are not yours. They’re revenue
for the government to spend.
This woman can’t keep her ethnicity straight, I guess. Why in God’s name would anyone take business or investment advice from her?
Question, before I crash the entire system, can I use HTML markup with the angle brackets and such?
Adam, I am not seeing them on my iPad above the comment window. Right now I am on my iMac. I will take a look again in a bit.
@Lee Dronick, the formatting tools should work on iOS devices. You use them as “toggles” tap once to start the formatting, type what you need, and then tap again to end the formatting.
“Paul Goodwin
June 30, 2016
How come the TMO article pages don’t resize on an iPad any more? Bad, bad, bad.”
And how do we quote, boldface, link, and such on an iOS device?
See today’s Joy of Tech comic
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/2306.html
Senator Warren has no great love for capitalism. Her comments on these tech giants is in keeping with her stand against Wall Street. Her politics are more closely associated with the self styled socialist Bernie Sanders. She did not come out in support of Clinton, who is well known and supported by Wall Street, until the end of the primaries. This is seen as either political opportunism or pragmatism.
Her comments are not in line with Trump’s. He has criticized Apple for outsourcing and failing to assist law enforcement in certain ways. It is hard to imagine Trump being critical of these tech companies for heavy handed dealings against their competitors.
Neither Clinton nor Trump offers much to someone like myself who prefers more of a libertarian approach to governance. Warren on the other hand would be a nightmare.
Is it possible that Senator Warren is trying to woo voters that have been attracted to the policy spoutings from Mr Trump ?
In other news, it’s not as if Google, Facebook & Apple have the monopoly on their respective areas of business.
If someone comes up with a better smart phone, social network or search engine, they’ll attract punters away from the incumbent.
BTW? The pages seem to work better – I don’t get the errors when trying to post a comment.
How come the TMO article pages don’t resize on an iPad any more? Bad, bad, bad.
Hm . . . she is really missing the point, methinks. I don’t know that any of those things represent actual threats – the areas that Silicon Valley is presenting legitimately concerning behavior seem to be beyond her grasp. I’d list Google, Facebook, Amazon, even Tesla Far as companies that are actively engaged in corruptive and unethical practices, to the point of infiltrating the White House. Is everyone in Washington completely 21st century illiterate, or is this just posturing (recalling that it is rumored Warren is possibly vying for the VP position on the Clinton ticket)? Moreover, Apple is the only company that I’m aware of that is actually taking a public stand against those other companies’ business models and presenting us with an alternative.
There are much, much bigger fish to fry, Senator. I remember the good old days when you seemed to care about average Americans and went after Wall Street and the banks. You seem to fail to realize Silicon Valley (not to mention the billionaires that built their fortunes there and insist on sticking their noses into all kinds of areas of American society they have no business being in, largely without repercussions) have more or less supplanted them!