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Antitrust defies politics' law of gravity

(pluralistic.net)
33 points almost-exactly | 3 comments | 28 Jun 25 13:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source
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mensetmanusman ◴[28 Jun 25 14:32 UTC] No.44404980[source]▶
Antitrust applied naively by activists who are anti growth has its negatives though when it comes to R&D.

It killed Bell Labs, and it would have killed LLM research at Google before it started.

Figure out how to protect research and I’m all for anti trust.

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9283409232 ◴[28 Jun 25 14:44 UTC] No.44405049[source]▶
You say that like killing Bell Labs was a bad thing and Google did not give us LLMs. They may have wrote the paper on transformers but the ground work was done by universities.
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AnimalMuppet ◴[28 Jun 25 14:57 UTC] No.44405140[source]▶
Do you have any reason for claiming that killing Bell Labs was something other than bad?
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1. 9283409232 ◴[28 Jun 25 15:09 UTC] No.44405223[source]▶
Do you have any reason for thinking Bell Labs was good for the industry? The DoJ broke up AT&T specifically because their monopoly was putting their foot on competition.
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2. AnimalMuppet ◴[28 Jun 25 15:43 UTC] No.44405523[source]▶
What industry are we talking about here? Yes, the DoJ broke up AT&T because it was a monopoly in the phone industry.

When we talk about Bell Labs and R&D, though, we usually aren't talking about the phone industry. We're usually talking about things from semiconductors to computer science. And yes, Bell Labs was very good for that.

You're the one who made the first claim, that Bell Labs was "bad for the industry". It's your claim; it's your job to defend it, not mine to prove it wrong. So let's see your case that Bell Labs was bad.

3. bostik ◴[28 Jun 25 17:58 UTC] No.44406747[source]▶
Bell Labs was good for the industry despite of AT&T monopoly. The research they did was fundamental and has been feeding into further development over decades.

It doesn't make Ma Bell or their ilk any less awful.