[mrkurt]

I don't mind startups failing. I would prefer that startups fail. I would prefer big companies fail. It's healthy for companies to die.

Apple and Amazon are more of a vertical integration problem. They expand their market power by monopolizing the vertical supply chain.

Microsoft acquires companies to increase their market power. Skype, GitHub, LinkedIn, now Activision.

[fallingknife]

Monopolizing a vertical supply chain isn't even a concept that makes sense. The point is that with a monopoly customers have only one purchasing option. This condition does not exist when a company integrates vertically.

[mrkurt]

You're arguing the semantics of a monopoly, but you should just mentally replace the word "monopoly" with "market power".

When Apple buys components from a vendor, they have less market power. When they build their own components, they have more market power.

Both Apple and Amazon shipped their own ARM chips. This increased their market power. Because they're the only companies with access to those chips. Meanwhile, independent ARM vendors go out of business about once every 3 months because the biggest companies using ARM aren't part of their addressable market. Which means small companies have limited access to ARM CPUs.

When Amazon builds their own delivery company, they increase their market power. When they buy from Fedex and UPS, they decrease their market power. And, when they do their own deliveries, they limit competitors market power.

You can be fine with all of this. Those of us who are interested in competitive markets worry about it a lot. You don't have to be worried about competitive markets, though. It's totally valid to not think increased competition is a good thing.

There is a lot of nuance here. If you're stuck on the word monopoly, I don't think you're going to really hear the things antitrust folks have to say.

[scarface74]

> You're arguing the semantics of a monopoly,

Yes “words mean things”.

> When Apple buys components from a vendor, they have less market power. When they build their own components, they have more market power

So now you’re saying a company shouldn’t be allowed to build and design their own components? Doesn’t it help competition that Apple, Microsoft, Google, Qualcomm, and MediaTek among others are creating and modifying their own processors?

> Which means small companies have limited access to ARM CPUs.

Any company can buy an ARM processor from Qualcomm and MediaTek. Have you looked at all of the phone manufacturers who sell in China and India and even the US?

> Those of us who are interested in competitive markets worry about it a lot. You don't have to be worried about competitive markets, though. It's totally valid to not think increased competition is a good thing.

Every market you mentioned has a competitor that third parties can go to - ARM chips, delivery companies etc.

[fallingknife]

Vertical integration doesn't decrease competition, it increases it. If there are N companies in a market, and a company that purchases from one decides to vertically integrate.and enter the market, now there are N+1.

[mrkurt]

Only if they sell into the market.

Almost no one who vertically integrates competes in the market they just shook. You can't get Amazon to ship things for you, so they don't compete with Fedex and UPS. You can't by an M1 chip from Apple.

Vertical integration is all about shrinking markets, not adding to them.

[shagie]

So what would your market look like?

What can Apple make? What must Apple buy from other suppliers? How much are investors allowed to punish Apple's stock price (like they are currently encountering https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2023/01/08/why-is-apple-sto... ) or can they buy everything a company produces? Are others allowed to buy a company that only has Apple as a client and raise the prices?

Can Amazon work at improving distribution center efficiency with technology that they create? Or must they buy it from someone else?

Must Google create a business unit to sell its highly customized routers?

[scarface74]

Yes because Skype and GitHub are market leaders and it’s really hard to change your git origin.

How is Apple “monopolizing the vertical supply chain” while having only 13% of the global cell phone market?

[shagie]

One could argue that they are purchasing companies to incorporate them into the company's product directly rather than relying on a 3rd party vendor to supply it.

Two examples: AuthenTech and Kiva

https://www.fromscratchradio.org/show/scott-moody

https://www.fromscratchradio.org/show/mick-mountz

The argument (I believe) is for leaving those companies as stand alone and having Apple and Amazon rely upon them not going bankrupt or getting purchased by some other competitor and disrupting their own company.

You've seen that happen before - BigCo is using a 3rd party vendor, someone buys it and then turns around and starts charging BigCo lots of money.

To prevent that from happening, BigCo should have bought the company when it started using it (if possible) to prevent that disruption in its systems, products, or services.

[scarface74]

And because Apple bought Authentec, it cornered the market on fingerprint base authentication…oh wait.

[mrkurt]

You're not really making coherent points here. No one is arguing that vertical monopolization corners a market on components.

When Apple bought Authentec, they increased their market power and reduced the market power of competitors.

As an independent company, Authentec could sell to Apple AND Apple's competitors. Apple obviously won't sell components to their competitors. They were incentivized to purchase Authentect to restrict competition.

[scarface74]

So no one is arguing that a “vertical monopoly” corners the market. In that case, what are they monopolizing?

> When Apple bought Authentec, they increased their market power and reduced the market power of competitors.

The existence proof is that there were fingerprint authentication methods before and after the acquisition. Who exactly did they hurt?

> As an independent company, Authentec could sell to Apple AND Apple's competitors. Apple obviously won't sell components to their competitors. They were incentivized to purchase Authentect to restrict competition.

Well if that was the purpose - to prevent competitors from having fingerprint sensors - they did a horrible job.

[shagie]

In that model, would it be reasonable for another agency (company, PE, billionaire with an axe to grind) to come along and buy them and then raise the prices to rent seek on Apple?

You appear to be arguing that larger companies shouldn't be able to secure their supply chain and instead be forced to follow the whims of the market as companies go in and out of business forcing the larger company to either (a) build it in house or (b) keep redesigning every time something changes.

[mrkurt]

One thing about antitrust is that it's a set of restrictions only applies to companies with a certain amount of market power. It's not a set of rules that are designed to be fair for everyone.

So, yes, some other company could conceivably do something to diminish Apple's market power and not run afoul of antitrust. And I think that's ok?

Companies with too much market power should not be able to vertically integrate to increase their market power. They definitely should not be able to do this via M&A.

This is, again, not meant to be "fair". Because there's no such thing. Companies of a certain size are inherently unfair competition, antitrust rules just limit how they can flex.

[wizzwizz4]

> Yes because Skype and GitHub are market leaders and it’s really hard to change your git origin.

Yes, for exactly those reasons. Have you actually tried getting everyone on a team to change their git origin? And that's before mentioning the other stuff you have to migrate: the issue tracker, the CI pipeline…

[scarface74]

Yes,

You tell everyone to change the git set-origin.

Hardly anyone uses GitHub’s rudimentary issue tracker and reconfiguring a CI/CD pipeline is child’s play unless you use GitHub actions and very few if any large companies use GitHub actions.

[mrkurt]

Ok, well, we're not talking about the same stuff here so I'm not sure it's worth going back and forth. We can just continue to be on different sides of the antitrust issue/