bepotts

Exactly.

I don't want to get all political, but the people pushing for this definition change are (usually) economic leftists that are naturally worried about the size and power of corporations. It's their default state. There's nothing wrong with that, but be upfront with your motives and don't mask empirical concern with political ideology.

These people would have broken up Walmart in the 90s and Sears in the 70s if they could, and look where both of those companies are now.

What I love most about the EU and Europeans on this site is that they think that all these regulations will mostly hurt companies like Google and Facebook, and sure they'll be hurt. But the US is the largest market for most US companies, so they're unable to really hurt them like they want to. Instead, the people most affected are European companies that become successful enough for those onerous regulations to apply.

There was a Hacker News thread about a new research paper that showed that GDPR is hurting European investment, and there were plenty of Europeans in that thread saying "Good, stop using my data." Like really? Wouldn't it be better to stop data usage without hurting investment? It's such a self own.

I was an engineer at Amazon for a couple years (left about a year ago) and I've never heard of anybody using these services. It's possible that some of the services that we used internally were simply frontends for those AWS services. Having an internal frontend for an AWS service was common.

I don't care at all about Microsoft being the largest open source contributor. It doesn't change my opinion about them one bit. In fact, I use it against them because they constantly talk about it as if it were a big deal.

Microsoft and Microsoft fans just can't let their actions speak for themselves and allow opinions to change naturally. They just have to force themselves on developers and say "wow you don't love me, OKAY, I'll just buy the platforms and services you love so you'll have to love me". I know why they do this though - it's because Microsoft's history is akin to Sauron, Darth Vader, or Lord Voldemort. Microsoft's history is just comically evil and the only reason they've changed is because the landscape shifted in such a manner where Microsoft was FORCED to change. They aren't doing this from to bottom of their hearts and they don't deeply believe in the open source idea and spirit; they are only doing it because, by the grace of God, the internet became the place to do business and not the desktop.

Microsoft would still demand its pound of flesh from all of us if they could; and they'd still be a closed source firm that looked down upon people who believed that free, high quality open source tools were a win for society in general, and they sure as hell wouldn't have let go of Balmer. Microsoft and .NET developers with stockholm syndrome need to stop treating us as if we're dumb for not bending the knee before Redmond.

I have problems with Microsoft, but I'm also annoyed the amount of praise some devs give Microsoft for doing anything related to open source. Some devs just fawn over every little thing Microsoft does, while also expecting Microsoft skeptics to forget most of their history just because of the past five or so years.

The Snowden revelations caused tech companies to implement strong encryption for consumer facing communications. Apple, Google, and Facebook all offer encryption protocols that now piss off the US government and caused friction between the private and public sectors.

People saying "but PRISM" have missed the past five years of US politics. Even Obama was getting mad at US tech.

It's popular to hate the US government and US tech companies, but the US government and US tech companies are far more ethical than the Chinese.

It's ridiculous to assert otherwise.

That too.

Microsoft allows venders with terrible design teams to sell their product and customers associate Windows with these product lines. Microsoft cannot control their brand.

Apple controls the entire stack so they're able to constantly deliver a quality experience.

If all Windows machines were like the Surface Book then this conversation would be different.

Windows just isn't cool, no matter how hard Microsoft tries to rebrand it. It'll never be cool until Microsoft does something to not make it ubiquitous.

Windows is what you use when you're a kid at a public school or have parents that don't have the money to buy a Mac. Macs and iPhones are trendy because not everyone owns them, they're really nice, and they're pricey.

Windows is like Wal-mart while Apple is Whole Foods.

Because people want it? I don't understand why tech people can't understand the most obvious of actions. Apple is popular because people love their products.

Apple may not always have the specs or work best with non-Apple services, but Apple products are consistently high quality, integrate nicely into Apple's ecosystem, and are brand that shows its owners are a certain type of class. Signifying you're of a certain type of class or are "hip" seems to be what so many tech people get hung up upon yet its basic consumerism.

Certain types of people wear Nike clothes or wear Ralph Lauren, or drive a Tesla. Showing you're a HENRY (High Earner; Not Rich Yet) is apart of Apple's appeal.

So no, people know there are Apple alternatives but they don't care because Apple has an appeal that other tech companies have trouble emulating on top of constantly being high quality products. There's almost no Apple product that is "bottom of the barrel" in terms of quality.

> You could use Mac or Linux. Except you wouldn't be able to interoperate with everyone else. This is precisely the situation with Facebook/Twitter.

Still, to this day, Microsoft owns over 80% of the desktop market. Microsoft's dominance weaned not because they lost the desktop market but because the desktop stopped being the place where all the content was. This why Microsoft cares more about services and Azure instead of just pimping Windows.

> Their monopoly isn't on the user side, but on the provider side. If you want your web content to be discoverable, you have to play by Google's rules.

And if Google does something egregious, or uses their monopoly in a manner that prevents anyone from challenging it, then let's break up Google. But Google hasn't done anything like that, so your hypothetical is meaningless.

US antitrust doesn't exist to prevent monopolies or "promote competition" like the EU - it exists to prevent inefficient monopolies from using their monopoly to prevent a more efficient alternative from existing.

Google and Facebook, regardless of what people think about their influence, are offer damn good products. You might not like them, "elites" might not like their influence, but they aren't using their monopolies to harm their competitors. They just offer very important services that are high quality. That is everyone's problem with them. It's completely transparent and US regulators are smart to ignore this.

Which doesn't change my statement in the least. In the internet era, Silicon Valley has been the crown jewel.

Who in the world would trust Donald Trump to manage search across the entire internet?

You'd think that after the Trump administration the nation would have a greater appreciation for federalism and a smaller administrative state.

Silicon Valley is responsible for most of the world's innovation, so as a consumer I'd rather we not dictate where firms wanted to set up shop.

This is a dumb comparison and too many people make this argument. You couldn't use any technology without paying the Microsoft tax. There were no smartphones, no internet-of-things, and the internet was just getting started. Everything you did had to be done on the desktop.

That is no longer the case. You don't want to use Google? Type in www.bing.com. You don't want to use Facebook? Use Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or whatever. Don't like Android? Buy an iPhone.

Microsoft's monopoly isn't analogous to Facebook and Google. Being a monopoly is not a problem - being a monopoly in such a way that harms the end user is; within the United States at least. Nobody is being harmed by Google and Facebook being popular.

Complaining about an open web is just a proxy for complaining about establishment ideas being challenged. You see in Britain with the complaints against the Leave Campaign; you see it in the United States with the rise of Trump; you see it in the European Union with the complaints against far-right candidates. The governing elites don't like it when you challenge their assumptions, and instead of making an argument about their positions or governing better, they complain about Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

I'm American and racists have always been here, Trump isn't new. And in Europe, it isn't insane to want to control your borders and not have rules made in Brussels that you must follow made by bureaucrats that aren't accountable to your nation. It's a crazy idea I know, but politicians have problems with these notions and blame the tools the opposition used to organize instead of being better.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter have problems and they need some reforms, but the rise of companies is not nearly the sinister event people make it out to be.

California and New York are part of the United States. I know people sometimes don't understand this, but the better comparison would be "remove London from the United Kingdom". See how dumb that sounds? That's how dumb "remove California and New York from the US" is.

English is the business language of the world. I highly doubt there's some tech epicenter near Brussels that would rival Silicon Valley (or even New York City, Seattle, or Austin) if only those companies spoke English.

And sure being a Unicorn is everything, but it sure as hell isn't nothing. I have no doubt there there is a company in Europe doing something amazing, but Europe doesn't have a culture that continues to churn these companies out and I can't help but believe that their approach to regulation and taxation is apart of the problem.

They get so giddy about regulation that it's kinda baffling. Regulation should be thought of an unnecessary evil - not some exciting project.

So I keep hearing but not ever seeing. I know people on the internet love to talk Europe up as some leading tech innovator, but there's a reason why Americans worry about competition coming from either inside America or China.

Europeans should worry more about building quality companies and broadening their tax base instead of getting salty about the money saved from foreigners.

I know this gets said a lot, but I live for the day the world sees innovation and quality tech companies from Europe instead of taxation and regulation.

Another reason why all the talk of antitrust against Facebook is ridiculous. Instagram will be in a similar position a couple years from now too.

God help us.

Will there be any independent open source/open source friendly company that isn't controlled by some corporate giant?

Which allows companies that produce superior services to thrive. Want more money? Create better goods and services - don't rely on the government to harm the market leader just to give you a heads up.

America's "hands off" approach to regulation has allowed the country to produce companies that much of the world envies.

It's Google's operating system. Nobody would buy a Samsung, HTC, or Sony phone without Google's Research and Development.

Smartphone manufacturers are in the smartphone business because of Google. If those manufacturers don't like Google's terms, they're free to go Microsoft's route and build their own OS.

Nobody is forcing these companies to do anything.

And regulation didn't topple internet explorer - the free market did.

I don't understand why people keep trying to use the Internet Explorer precedent as an example of good antitrust maneuvers. It's literally the exact opposite.

It reminds me of all the people who like Trump or dislike the EU, and all the people who believe that those people must not understand what's going on in the world; and that if only they learned the "truth", they wouldn't like Trump or realize that the EU is really good for us.

Ya know, sometimes people actually do understand and they just don't agree with you. I'm not a Trump supporter, but I believe people who say they like Trump for reasons that aren't "politie".

These anti-Google and anti-Facebook people should learn to disagree better.

You aren't aware of every little detail about the actions that companies perform that affects the products you use. You don't know everything about water treatment, energy, housing construction, civil engineering, etc. And you don't know about those things because you trust people who do know to do the right thing. That's how society works. That's how billions of Facebook and Google users are.

Facebook and Google should get in major trouble when they mistreat their data (like the Cambridge Analytica scandal with Facebook), but you disliking the data they collect and/or their business model does not mean that everyone else will.

I know full well the type of data Google and Facebook collect about me and I just don't care. There's plenty of people in the tech industry that don't care either.

Exactly.

I think people are too eager to claim Microsoft as one of the "good" guys. Microsoft has been around since the 70's and has not been "good" through almost that entire period. So, Microsoft releases a (nice) text editor, releases a Linux subsystem, partially open sources .NET, releases an open source JavaScript framework, has an active GitHub account (filled mostly with nonsense by the way), and we're supposed to forget the 40 years prior? ExxonMobil has been investing heavily in renewable energy lately; would you tell an environmentalist that they're wrong to dislike Exxon now?

Microsoft changed because they had to. That must be the context in which they are evaluated in. Joining a couple organizations, and open sourcing a couple projects doesn't negate the fact that they were forced into this position because they were losing mindshare, developer prestige, and can no longer force everyone into their playground.

Too much common sense for the internet. I'd love to know the organizations all the Facebook and Google haters work for. No firm is perfect.

It's well known the EU doesn't like Google and Facebook because of how disruptive they are; culturally and economically. Please don't insult my intelligence and say that France would have voted to hurt some of the most innovative (and financially successful) companies in the world if they were French. Be real.

Macron went all "Start up France" and was trying to attract some talent that would have been in the United States but can't due to Trump's habits. Every European country would vote another EU country out of the EU if it meant gaining Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

And Europe is irrelevant when it comes to consumer internet companies. That's just calling a spade a spade.