via arstechnica:
While consumers and experts alike wonder if Facebook’s size and outsized global market power are what allow it to play fast and loose with user data and privacy, Wu and Hemphill argue a much more basic case of good old-fashioned unfair anticompetitive behavior.
Through “serial defensive acquisitions,” they say, Facebook has prevented competitors from entering the marketplace and cut off innovation before it can flourish.
In other words, when a small company looks promising, Facebook leaps in and snaps it up, eliminating competition and reaping profit from other developers’ innovations.
I’ve come around to Paul Romer’s idea for a tax on targeted advertising. Here’s a FAQ for his proposal.
h/t SG