One of my personal projects that I never pushed forward is a blog "a monopoly a day" (under-titled "keeps the EU away"). The idea is that everyday, I want to show small-ish negative impact of a big tech monopoly, and explaining it. The goal is that the sheer recurrence is enough to convince people of the negative impact on innovation and societal growth big companies have.
(That's with a pretty broad definition of "monopoly", including "user-specific monopoly" like you get with android / ios, notions that I would also try to explain in said blog)
> I believe this one shows how a monopoly can prevent innovation. Blackberry with the Passport had a new form-factor. To make this phone worthwhile, it had to use a mainline OS. At the time, only Android with Google apps was available. However, Google rules back then couldn't allow this.
Would HNers be interested in such content? And in contributing to it? (my knowledge wrt monopolies is in my area of expertise, and let's just say I like being employable, so it's better if it doesn't look completely targetted)
This project would be interesting only to the extent it accurately showed the negative impact of monopolies.
Unfortunately, this subject area is full of strong emotions and opinions that make it hard for people to be objective.
For example the article you link says that Google and Blackberry worked jointly on the 1:1 format phone, and jointly decided to stop working on it. That hardly sounds like an abusive monopolist.
And sure, at that point Android was more popular than the BlackBerry OS. But this actually demonstrates healthy competition. I had a Blackberry for work (edit to clarify: running BlackBerry’s own OS and software), and so did all my coworkers. Blackberry was the dominant mobile platform once. Through complacency and poor decision-making, they stopped innovating and competing. And thus, allowed new products with zero installed base on day one to come in and take their market.
> Unfortunately, this subject area is full of strong emotions and opinions that make it hard for people to be objective.
I actually think it's not possible to be objective on that matter, hence it needs to be properly explained, to understand the limitations of one post (but the goal is to have many posts, so hopefully readers can reject the ones they feel is wrong)
> For example the article you link says that Google and Blackberry worked jointly on the 1:1 format phone, and jointly decided to stop working on it. That hardly sounds like an abusive monopolist.
Let's just say that I've seen a bit of first-hand, and a lot of second-hand of "Google working jointly with XXX", and in the vast majority, Google-side doesn't spend much engineering time on those issues. I completely agree this is not an objective point of view. This can hardly be proved, shown or explained, so I have no issue with you not taking my word for it. Hopefully if other people join this project, there might turn out /some/ people that you do trust?
> And sure, at that point Android was more popular than the BlackBerry OS. But this actually demonstrates healthy competition. I had a Blackberry for work, and so did all my coworkers. Blackberry was the dominant mobile platform once.
I wouldn't exactly call the replacement of BBOS by Android a "healthy competition", when the main reason Android won was that it was an OS completely free of charge, paid for by another recurring stream for the company. (I'm not saying Android was worse than BBOS, that I have no idea, )
> Through complacency and poor decision-making, they stopped innovating and competing. And thus, allowed new products with zero installed base on day one to come in and take their market.
The iPhone came out before Android, was more expensive than a Blackberry at first, but started taking share from RIM. It also caused the Android project at Google to reset (their initial phone was similar to a Blackberry before the iPhone launch).
RIM’s complacency and flat-footed response to the iPhone has been very well covered, and can be Googled. By the time they were trying to partner with Google, it was already too late for them. Android is not what killed the Blackberry.
Except this assumption that there can be only a few winners taking all and the rest end up "killed" is exactly what effective anti-trust would prevent. Imagine the possibility where Blackberry kept making devices that fit their niche of hardware keyboards, running Android, and selling them to their established customers.
The elephant in the room is the heavy natural monopoly on software compatibility/interoperability, and the above thought experiment only makes sense because Android is a purportedly open platform.
Effective tech anti-trust has to work around that and not merely police behavior aimed at restricting competition. Modern tech anti-trust should be focused around mandating open access to proprietary systems (for starters, anything a web user can do, a program running on the user's behalf should be able to do), and privacy legislation to make it so that customers have to be earned rather than everyone being treated as a data subject by default.
Not reset, reprioritize. Fred Vogelstein only talked to one source who was on the Android team for his book, and that source may have had their own agenda.
Other sources, such as Chet Haas's book, make it clear that what became the G1 was already on the roadmap. It was just prioritized.
Yes, I would like that. It's nice to have a place to record negative experiences in a way that might contribute to a positive outcome eventually. Some of the best (and most verboten) content will come, of course, from insiders.
One issue I foresee, similar to how local business groups inevitably get overwhelmed with real-estate agents, is that this venture will get overwhelmed with complaints against ISPs and other utilities.
If you haven't already looked at it, Canada is a great case study and cautionary tale in monopolies and their ills. Look at both our consumer ecosystem (pricing, variety, and service) a well as innovation and industry, and at every turn you will find an economy optimized for monopolies to accumulate money at the expense of regular people.
I’d like to encourage you to advance the project, but with perhaps less of an ideological “this will prove X” slant.
I think it would be very interesting to explore the boundaries of monopoly, and to look at cases where monopolies are probably a good thing.
For instance, trademarks are a monopoly, but I don’t think many of us want any company to be able to co-opt brand names. That seems pretty clear.
Getting less obvious, IP-protected interfaces like GoPro mounts or those dumb Kureig coffee pods. Nobody likes those proprietary interfaces, and they do give monopoly control, but are they economically bad?
And how about console games, where all of the makers subsidize low Hw margins (therefore higher sales) with monopoly control and a cut of game publishing. Would the market be better if that was prohibited?
It’s going to be pretty easy to dunk on obviously harmful monopolies. It might be more interesting to explore more nuanced cases.
> I’d like to encourage you to advance the project, but with perhaps less of an ideological “this will prove X” slant.
Well, my current conclusion with my post is that wording is very very hard :-). What I said is "I want to show small-ish negative impact of a big tech monopoly". It will not prove it's all bad, even though it'll only give examples of where this is bad
> I think it would be very interesting to explore the boundaries of monopoly, and to look at cases where monopolies are probably a good thing.
Let's just say that the current tendency is to think that monopolies are fine, and I'd like to help reverting that. Yes your examples are worst discussing, and I have some of my own.
For instance, I definitely acknowledge that Android's monopoly helped whole unrelated sectors. But I also believe that innovation would be much better served if Android was opensource-in-spirit and maintained by something like the Linux Foundation.
> It’s going to be pretty easy to dunk on obviously harmful monopolies.
If it was, they would already have been ruled illegal? In Europe, I can't really name any "obviously harmful monopolies"
Isn't the whole idea that you would build something new to escape the competition of the current monopolies and succeed? "competition for losers" might be running the show, but it's also the pump in the cycles of disruption. It should always be running the show.
Not when FAANG companies have an infinite war chest to buy out your amazing disruptive startup with the sole intention of killing it or stripping it for parts.
(That's with a pretty broad definition of "monopoly", including "user-specific monopoly" like you get with android / ios, notions that I would also try to explain in said blog)
One example:
> https://mobilesyrup.com/2016/09/27/why-blackberry-never-rele...
> I believe this one shows how a monopoly can prevent innovation. Blackberry with the Passport had a new form-factor. To make this phone worthwhile, it had to use a mainline OS. At the time, only Android with Google apps was available. However, Google rules back then couldn't allow this.
Would HNers be interested in such content? And in contributing to it? (my knowledge wrt monopolies is in my area of expertise, and let's just say I like being employable, so it's better if it doesn't look completely targetted)