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The problem is that most of these companies are created with the intent of growing to a certain size and being acquired. Why do you think they were on the market in the first place. Most like Facebook for years had no concept of monetization and their exit strategy was to get bought for a few billion.
If that would not have been an option many of the companies Facebook and others buy out would have gone out of business or never found funding or maybe never started. Most of these tech startup have no interest in running a company long term.
Exactly. Startups blaze trails, big corps finalize them, nothing wrong with that. If corps became fearful of penalties, they'd stop buying, and startups would occur a lot less often.
 
And I would add Google and Amazon to that list.
I wouldn’t say Microsoft is comparable to the others, although there is a lot to evaluate too.

But they don’t run closed app stores and have much more serious competitors on everything they do.
 
I wouldn’t say Microsoft is comparable to the others, although there is a lot to evaluate too.

But they don’t run closed app stores and have much more serious competitors on everything they do.

Microsoft absolutely runs a closed App Store.
 
Slowly then Suddenly. I seriously think we're seeing the beginning of the end. I know you all have a lot to be skeptical about here but it's going to be a huge party at my place when Facebook is gone.
 
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Too late now.
Facebook also is funding factcheck.org.
Now think about all you consume as "facts" in the news, when the fact checker is funded by a company whose platform is filled with hoaxes and fake news that the company didn't care.

It's engagement man!
 
Mark Zuckerberg’s recent talk of “the metaverse” is all of the proof I need to know he’s aggressively prepping to tell a tale where the business model is something other than egregiously invasive spying for the sole purpose of selling ads.
 
The Feds are just upset that FB knows more about people than the Fed does.

Mind you I think FB is a plague on society, and I wish it would be broken down.

And I say this as never having a FB account on any other FB owned/operated entity.
 
shut down facebook and jail Zuckerberg. hell, we should be jailing the employees who built this monster too.
 
Correct.

I was just pointing out that the claim that Apple is somehow different is false.
Except the comment you were replying to was about Microsoft and this post is about Facebook. Apple is very much not the same as Facebook and the fact that Microsoft also operates a closed AppStore has nothing to do with any of it.

EDIT: Apologies i re-checked the thread and saw that the comment you were replying to did claim Microsoft doesn’t run a closed App Store. That’s on me, I should have paid more attention.
 
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I wouldn’t say Microsoft is comparable to the others, although there is a lot to evaluate too.

But they don’t run closed app stores and have much more serious competitors on everything they do.
As cmaier pointed out Microsoft absolutely runs a closed App Store and has for ages on the Xbox.
Meanwhile, in what Arena does Apple not have serious competition?
PCs? Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc
Smartphones? Google, Samsung, Huwaei
Smart speakers and set top boxes? Amazon, Google, Roku
Digital music? Amazon, Spotify, Google, Microsoft, Sony
Movie/TV streaming? Netflix, HBO, Amazon, Hulu

There is not one major category where Apple doesn’t have significant competition and in most of them they aren’t even the majority holder

The same cannot be said for Google (search/ads), Facebook (social networks), or Amazon (Ecommerce)
That’s the big 3, that’s where the FTC/DOJ focus should be, that’s where the market abuse and/or spread of disinformation is primarily occurring. Apple may not be perfect, but nothing it’s doing approaches the abuse of power of those 3.
 
Yeah, of course Facebook is failing to succeed in mobile world. Mobile client can open images at full res, only thumbnail on web. Mobile can react with more emojis. Web only for those preset ones. Web can filter conversation and mark message as done. Mobile can’t. Mobile can jump through inline replies. Web can’t. These feature disparities don’t make any sense, hence FTC’s allegation of Facebook failing to capture mobile market. But their desktop app isn’t great either. Can’t even load messages that are not sent from said machine.
 
“Accuses”?! That’s kind of like someone “accusing” the Cookie Monster of theft of baked goods. At this point, it’s less accusing and more “accurate labeling.”
 
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Dalton Caldwell had an interesting example of that at the time:

 
Not exactly. Imagine if FB had to compete against IG. Better for the consumer
Years before Facebook purchased Instagram, the startup raised over $70 million in venture capital funding.

I don't think that kind of funding would have been available if there was a risk of anti-trust problems for whoever might buy the startup. The VC industry is all about investing in small companies hoping they are later sold to a large entrenched competitor.

If the FTC makes it illegal for a social network to purchase another social network, then VC money could dry up.
The corporate system the US has right now is far from perfect, but there is a reason why nearly every major tech company in the world was founded in the US and antitrust changes could do a lot of damage.
 
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Ha! Sounds like these big companies are after the small fish. Killing the competition.

Facebook is always playing it dirty. Unethical business model.

Pay the fine, Facebook.
They all deserve to get fined and regulated.
Apple will just be the second one on the list, just like Microsoft that had to be regulated in the 90s browser and media player wars.
Now it’s social media, mobile platform monopoly and privacy abuse wars.
 
If IG wanted to sell, that's their business. I want to instead see an investigation into whether FB uses the threat of copying as a way to force acquisitions. They tried to buy Snapchat, and right after refusal, they copied the entire app within IG. That probably wasn't a coincidence.
On the other hand, should Snapchat have some kind of exclusive right to create a product in that format? I assume they didn’t (and hopefully can’t, IMO) patent the format.
 
If the FTC makes it illegal for a social network to purchase another social network, then VC money could dry up.
LOL that’s not how it works. Rich people will still keep throwing money at things to try and make them more rich. They did that before they’ll keep doing it again if one company isn’t allowed to monopolize.


The corporate system the US has right now is far from perfect, but there is a reason why nearly every major tech company in the world was founded in the US and antitrust changes could do a lot of damage.
Sony
Nintendo
Samsung
Huawei
Nokia
Hitachi
Lenovo
LG

None of them are US companies.
Meanwhile many of the smaller companies bought up by the larger ones have been foreign created.
 
In my opinion, the only reason why it appears Faceebook is buying up the competition is because the competition already have something that is extremely precious to Facebook and that is the personal data of millions of users. It will be interesting to see if Facebook tries to defend itself by saying they did not buy companies to stiffle competition, they bought them so they could migrate their users personal data into Facebook's ecosystem. It does not look good for Facebook either way, they either bought up the competition to stiffle competition or they bought the competition for the purpose of selling users data to Facebooks 'Authourised Partners' (basically advertisers). Neither option looks good for Facebook.
 
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