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Comment by sabalaba | Hacker News Reader

Many of the valuable projects that we get from FB (AI Research), Amazon (Echo, Kindle, etc.), Google (Brain, Waymo, GMail, Android, etc.), are due to their strong market position and a product that throws off cash. They have this market position because they are the best at what they do. These companies don't have monopolies because of government mandate, they have them because they make the best products.

It's frightening to think that there are people out there who want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs but comforting that they are nowhere near the majority opinion. I hope it stays that way. I would hate to see Google Brain, Waymo, and Deep Mind go the way of Bell Labs.

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I generally agree with you that they are doing good things but the bigger question is what harm are they doing? We need to stop having these huge mergers. Think what a different landscape we'd have if Facebook didn't own Instagram and WhatsApp. Those companies had a choice, fight FB with limited money or cash out. (I'm not judging them...) Look at Snap. They've said no and so FB threw all their money at duplicating all their features in all their own properties. This is the downside of the products that just throw off cash. All the money and time in the world they can devote to squashing all competition.

It reminds me of the same things that happened with the banks and Comcast. Most people who have Comcast got there because Comcast bought their provider and the investors wanted to cash out, not because people voted with their dollars. The banks got too big to fail, not because everyone rushed to switch all their money to bank X but because bank X bought up all the smaller players with money bet on the bubble.

I think they do need broken up but I would argue all we really need to do is "unmerge" these acquisitions and spin them back out separate. Absolute power has always corrupted absolutely. To be fair, this isn't new. Gates did a lot of the same things but now their foundation is doing wonderful things. However, it is easy to be a philanthropist with spare billions. What I would love to see from one of these founders is to attack one of the world's biggest problems personally and with the same ruthlessness they did their main companies. Musk is the only one who really seems to be "walking the walk".

You lost me at "Musk is the only one who really seems to be "walking the walk"", which is inconsistent with the rest of your theory, but luckily for you that was the last sentence. :)

It's clear Musk is also interested in consolidation and expansion of his empire, probably one day under X.com brand, but I guess since he is good at working on his fan base and talking about imaginary ideas, he should be treated differently than Larry Page or Jeff Bezos.

When you think about it from another perspective (playing devil's advocate here for the sake of illustration), SpaceX is not about going to Mars, it's just another satellite launching business working its underpaid employees 80-hour-weeks with that line; SolarCity was just another put solar panel on your roof business you see a ton of in Costco without any clear differentiation (how about "unmerging" that too, by the way?) Heck, look at Tesla "Autopilot", nothing but a joke.

If what Musk does is Good, I like to point out Larry Page's company had a self-driving car project since ages ago; they tried doing breakthrough work on life sciences, and a lot of other things. Perhaps Larry Page should have dated Hollywood actresses all-year-long to get more positive press coverage.

The point is, yes, there are pros and cons. And you basically agreed to the parent post's when you brought up Musk's example.

What you say is fair, I wasn't saying Musk is 100% altruistic. I think the push for solar and electric cars are good for the planet though even if they are good for his checkbook too. I was using him as an example of someone who is actively working on the projects not simply funding others to do good work. (Incidentally, I don't think self-driving cars is something that I'd call altruistic)

The fraction of income that goes into research is not that large for the companies that you mention.

Lets remember that these are not traditional monopolies, in the sense of Standard Oil. They are much worse, as they are so embedded in the lives of people today. Their status as monopolies will be tolerated by society only as far as they don't exhibit anti-competitive practices.

Top spending by US companies on R&D (latest fiscal year):

  Amazon: $16.1B
  Alphabet: $13.9B
  Intel: $12.7B
  Microsoft: $12.3B
  Apple: $10.0B

For most of these companies, they are spending more than their income on R&D (but less than revenue, of course.)

(Recode/FactSet data)

Revenue numbers for comparison:

Amazon: 136B

Alphabet: 90B

Intel: 60B

Microsoft: 90B

Apple: 214B

----------------

And Gross Income:

Amazon: 58B

Alphabet: 55B

Intel: 36B

Microsoft: 55B

Apple: 83B

So much power concentrated in a single entity cannot be good for democracy in the long run.

For example look at the web. Google has pretty much free pass to crawl and index any website, while smaller players get blacklisted and blocked immediately. Paywalled websites open their door if the link comes from Facebook. If you get black listed by gmail, your emails have no chance of reaching user’s inboxes. And the list goes on.

In the same way the ancient Athenians used to exile citizens who were getting too powerful, it’s a good idea to split up companies that become too powerful. Even if they haven’t violated any laws.

I don’t think that any research gap will left unfilled by smaller startups if they get split up.

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