this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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On DMA eve, Google whines, Apple sounds alarms, and TikTok wants out (arstechnica.com)
submitted 6 months ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
40 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

As a general rule, when trillion-dollar companies don't like regulation, it simply means they're admitting the rules are good for their customers.

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 84 points 6 months ago (2 children)

...warning of potentially burdensome restrictions possibly hampering innovation and distorting competition.

Oh yeah, when I think of innovation now I think Google and Microsoft. Seriously what has been innovated in the last 10 years by either of them? Most products by big tech over the last 10 years are knockoffs of competitor products or things they captured by buying out a startup. They're big lumbering slow corporate behemoths who are just maintaining their power status.

True innovation is what will come out of this. If they can't hoard users and be anti-competitive... then they actually might have to innovate.

[–] Synthuir@lemmy.ml 50 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Oh, come on, in that time period Google’s made several dozen copies of the same service! And some of them even lasted longer than a year before being killed!

And Microsoft has been steadily rewriting the book on naming schemes in a valiant effort to confuse you no matter which of their product lines/ services you need, and all while graciously providing Candy Crush and telemetry free of charge!

[–] Ashe@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I love going to Entra (azure), the authentication manager (admin, legacy and Entra), the defender dashboard for DLP, wait no compliance, and then uh, what license do I need for this? It's a NIGHTMARE navigating their depreciated shit. Absolutely unreal

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I'm in the middle of integrating (ugh) Entra, and 99% of the documentation is marketing bullshit in a circlejerk about how proud they are that they... changed the name.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Feels like everything's written in that self-congratulatory treacly voice these days. Most products are the equivalent of the little McDonald's hamburger with reconstituted onions and two anemic pickle slices but sold as though they have Michelin stars.

[–] Zworf@beehaw.org 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yes that's the exact feeling I have. Fast food.

We've been moving from a lot of best-in-class services to Microsoft ones and this is exactly it. They're always just good enough to be passable but never great at what they do. The only real benefit they have is that a lot of stuff is "free" with other things (how Teams is killing slack despite being piss-poor) and that everything integrates better with Windows. And they're always behind the competition, like Intune was much much worse than the competing MDMs when we had to use it, and they've only kinda caught up by now.

It's a smart move because even if you do have an AAA product sooner or later some smartass manager is going to be looking to make a name for themselves and cut costs with something that's 'free'.

[–] Zworf@beehaw.org 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

EntraID is pretty much the only time a MS rebranding actually makes sense because Azure Active Directory was confusing as hell.

All the other ones, like Lync -> Skype, Yammer -> Viva, Intune -> MEM were just marketing running wild for the sake of it and putting their customers up with the burden. And CoPilot is a disaster because they're dumping a whole load of different products under the same labeling and nobody knows what the hell is what anymore, even experts.

[–] Ashe@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's insane. The documentation is often times half accurate and feels like navigating a minefield of half truths, depreciations and context clues to find the solution to problems.

[–] Zworf@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

YES! So true.

Many times something doesn't work, you log a ticket and they're like "according to the docs it should work so you're doing something wrong" and you get into an endless loop of providing logfiles and doing random updates because really their 'premium' support (which isn't even microsoft but accenture) has no clue whatsoever. They don't know anything more than anyone who read the docs. It's like you're in a courtroom and you have to prove your innocence before they're going to lift a finger to help you. At least in a real court you're innocent until proven guilty 🤦‍♂️

Then eventually after a month or two you bug your account manager enough that they finally escalate the issue to someone who actually knows something at microsoft and they're like "oh yeah that feature doesn't work properly, try this". I mean for real. 🤬 So much wasted time.

[–] egonallanon@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's not even the compliance portal any more it's purview.

[–] Ashe@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Only if you have an E5 license! If you have an E3 it's still compliance and you can trial purview features

[–] egonallanon@lemm.ee 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Of course the name changes if you pay for a different license lmao.

[–] Ashe@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 6 months ago

Ihatethemihatethemihatethem

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's difficult to innovate when most (or all) of what used to go to R&D is instead given to shareholders.

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 70 points 6 months ago (1 children)

At its heart, the DMA requires more interoperability than ever, making it harder for gatekeepers to favor their own services or block other businesses from reaching consumers on their platforms.

Wow Google/Apple/etc. will actually have to compete instead of just having a de facto monopoly? But how could they ever earn money under such conditions /s

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 42 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I predict layoffs coming, along with PR campaigns blaming regulation, and pat-yourself-on-the-back bonuses for executives to follow shortly thereafter.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Corporarions should be forced to calculate C level pay based on total employee pay divided by a factor. They cut jobs they lose their own income

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I feel like only being able to pay say 10 times the lowest paid employee or contractor would be more effective. If the janitor makes 40k, the boss can make up to 400k. That way you wouldn’t have situations where there is a high average pay, but that’s all in the highest levels of management and maybe a few key personnel while everyone else struggles to make rent.

Using average comes with the trouble that if Jeff Bezos walks into the room, everyone in that room is on average a billionaire even if all by one is hundreds of thousands in dept.

[–] verdare@beehaw.org 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I’ve considered this myself. A sort of “maximum allowable wealth disparity” limit. The only trouble is enforcing it. There are all sorts of ways to shuffle wealth around that might not count as “pay.” You’d need to plug all of those loopholes.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 6 points 6 months ago

Yep, make it 10x salary, they can pay everyone in the company half as much, and the C-suite gets the difference in options or straight-out vesting.

[–] frog@beehaw.org 6 points 6 months ago

The quickest and simplest way of doing it is to simply regulate for all assets to be valued/revalued and tax paid appropriately any time it changes ownership, and "changes of ownership" is given a definition that includes a corporation giving it to the CEO, a CEO moving it to a trust or holding company, etc. It would do away with the bullshit "our CEO doesn't get paid" when really he got millions in stock options instead. The stock options changed hands, therefore they have to be professionally and independently valued, and then taxed.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 months ago

I agree, your proposal is better

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Knowing them, they'll just say the equivalent of "Hey, we pay our already filthy rich CEOs $1 an hour! We cannot afford to pay them less!" while those same CEOs are out committing tax evasion and fraud.

[–] Shamot@jlai.lu 27 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Apple speaks like overprotective parents that don't want their kids to leave home alone.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 12 points 6 months ago

More like over-controlling parents.

[–] Zworf@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago

They don't want their "kids" to leave the beautiful walled garden where everyone pays a fee to be there :P

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 18 points 6 months ago (2 children)

"Changes to our Search results may send more traffic to large intermediaries and aggregators, and less traffic to direct suppliers like hotels, airlines, merchants and restaurants," Bethell wrote.

This is exactly what is happening right now. Every time I search for some random stuff on Google, I get eMag links (eMag is basically the biggest online retailer in my country. Kinda like Amazon).

They usually sound like:

Looking for [query]? Choose from the eMag offer

And then I get redirected to their search page if I click on it.

[–] ConstableJelly@beehaw.org 12 points 6 months ago

When we were trying to book a hotel, my partner clicked on the top link of a Google search, which was of course a sponsored link and took her to some completely off-brand intermediary whose website was designed to mimic the appearance of the hotel's. She completed the booking there before ever realizing it wasn't the hotel itself, and when I quoted the same stay directly with the hotel it wound up being some $100-$200 cheaper.

I had to have a lengthy phone call with their customer support and exchange a few emails before they finally agreed to refund us. I suppose we're lucky they even had a reachable customer service, but I was and remain infuriated by the conditions that created the situation in the first place.

[–] sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Found the Romanian! 😁

[–] Zworf@beehaw.org 14 points 6 months ago

As a general rule, when trillion-dollar companies don’t like regulation, it simply means they’re admitting the rules are good for their customers.

We're not their customers. That's the root cause of this problem.

[–] tiredofsametab@kbin.run 12 points 6 months ago

I didn't know Direct Memory Access was still so controversial! (I feel old now).

[–] drwho@beehaw.org 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I guess they're going to be replacing their lobbyists because the last batch didn't do their job well enough.

[–] tesseract@beehaw.org 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Or, the EU recognizes bribery that the US hides behind the euphemism called 'lobbying'.

[–] drwho@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I am skeptical of how long that's going to last. There's too much money at stake.

[–] Zworf@beehaw.org 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

There's many EU commissioners pushing for commercial projects already, like Thierry Breton and his ever present "digital everything" initiatives that nobody asked for except the companies that are implementing it. Like eIDAS and the recent digital ID thing. The EU is very receptive to commercial interests but mostly ones originating from the EU.

It is true that we do have a very different outlook on privacy but that should not be mistaken for a lack of commercial interests.

[–] tesseract@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's definitely a concern. But at least for now, the EU isn't a pretend-democracy like the US is, with the actual shots being called by rich billionaires and corporations.

[–] drwho@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago

For now.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 6 points 6 months ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summaryUnder the DMA, companies designated as gatekeepers—Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft—must follow strict rules to ensure that they don't engage in unfair business practices that could limit consumer choice in core platform services.

At its heart, the DMA requires more interoperability than ever, making it harder for gatekeepers to favor their own services or block other businesses from reaching consumers on their platforms.

Some companies, like Google, have announced various changes impacting businesses and users, while others, like TikTok-owner ByteDance, are begrudgingly updating services now while still contesting their gatekeeper status.

Partly formed to cooperate on setting best practice technology standards, the next meeting is scheduled for this spring, just after the EC publishes summaries of gatekeepers' compliance reports.

Other countries, including Turkey, Australia, Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom, have already embraced the DMA model, according to the nonprofit tech policy think tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

Some critics of the DMA, including ITIF, have urged countries to "carefully consider the full implications before copying the EU’s digital regulatory system," warning of potentially burdensome restrictions possibly hampering innovation and distorting competition.

Saved 79% of original text.

[–] tlf@feddit.de 5 points 6 months ago

So sometimes there is good news and we can smile a little