Eps 1: Small Business Big Tech
The government should keep its hands off regulating the technology companies and their platforms
Our most critical infrastructure today is the gig economy connectivity through satellites, internet platforms, clouds, fiber optic cables, the sophisticated nationwide electric grid system, and the like that was almost all built out by the very tech and telecommunications companies that are now coming under fire for being too successful and making too much money.
A new report from the Connected Commerce Council, which analyzed the impact of Internet platforms and digital tools on small businesses in the COVID-19 crisis found almost one of three (31 percent) business owners say that without digital tools, they would have had to close all or part of their business during the crisis.
Host
Ann Taylor
Podcast Content
Why this is important: The blockade imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus has ruined America's small businesses. The fate of the post-crisis economic recovery will depend on whether it can be revived.
Facebook and Instagram stores have announced plans to help small businesses set up e-commerce platforms on the two popular sites, Axios reports. The feature allows people to shop through the stores' Facebook or Instagram pages, marking the first step in the development of a new type of retail and business marketplace, reports Markets Insider. It is touted as a way to help small businesses struggling with the coronavirus pandemic, but the effort could ultimately take customers away from the websites that were supposed to help them, according to a recent report.
Starting a business always means going back to the old way of doing business: a small office, a few employees and a lot of money.
The giants say they are giving startups what they crave: access to the world's most advanced technologies and the best business models for small businesses.
Apple's and Google's app stores allow developers to reach hundreds of millions of customers overnight, and Amazon's Marketplace does the same for physical product makers. Tech startups once bought servers; now they hire cloud computing power from Amazon or Google. CEO Jeff Bezos testified before Congress that such sellers have seen an increase in orders for their products in recent years.
Facebook reported better-than-expected results in the second quarter as more than half of its 1.3 billion users went online immediately to survive, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said. The company said it has 180 million small businesses using its social media platform, the largest in the world. President Donald Trump was also targeted for the second time this month, but this time with a more direct message to the president.
Facebook has launched a business resource hub to help businesses cope with the COVID-19 disruption and stay connected with their customers. Facebook has committed to a $100 million incentive program to help small businesses around the world. Google has invested $200 million in an investment fund that will allow small businesses to access its cloud services, including Google Docs, Google Drive and Google Maps.
Many telecommunications companies have undertaken not to terminate services for small business owners and to waive late fees that may arise as a result of the pandemic. Google's digital tools enable five million Americans to acquire digital skills through expanded economic opportunities and millions of small businesses connect with customers through maps and search, "he said. In education, 140 million students and educators use G Suite to stay connected during the pandemic, and nearly a third of small business owners say they have closed their businesses because of the loss of customers, according to a report by the US Department of Education's Office of Management and Budget .
Major advertisers have said that splitting Google and Facebook into smaller companies could work in their interests. The technology giants are enabling them to reach and reach a huge audience, and device prices have been sharply cut for billions of consumers around the world. Mobile operators can build and sell devices without paying Google license fees and without integrating Google products.
I am not sure that large advertisers would actually lobby to maintain the technology monopolies, but there is probably a lot of pressure on them to do so.
What Senator Warren and others are missing is the fact that market forces are already organically creating new competition and What they have overlooked is that market forces are already creating them organically.
The discussion is that US technology giants are trying to give their companies a boost by becoming regulated banks. Such deals help companies like Goldman reach more consumers and businesses by helping big technology companies like Amazon offer financing on their platforms. This in turn helps technology companies sell products and retain users to their ecosystems.
That is also true when, for example, an emerging tech start-up makes a deal with a Fortune 500 company, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
In 2015, there were more than 30 million small businesses in the US, and about 2.5 million of them represent small businesses. Small businesses can offer special needs and peripheral cases that larger providers do not yet offer. There were and are more than 20 million large and about 1.2 million smaller companies represented in the US in 2015.
One of the biggest advantages of a small business is the ability to act quickly, test new ideas and launch products and services earlier than large companies.