双语阅读｜怎样才能动摇美国科技巨头的统治地位呢？
NOT long ago, being the boss of a big Western tech firm was a dream job. As the billions rolled in, so did the plaudits: Google, Facebook, Amazon and others were making the world a better place. Today these companies are accused of being BAADD—big, anti-competitive, addictive and destructive to democracy. Regulators fine them, politicians grill them and one-time backers warn of their power to cause harm.
不久前，成为西方科技企业的领导人是一份令人梦寐以求的工作。随着数十亿美元滚滚而来，赞美也接踵而至：谷歌、Facebook和亚马逊等科技企业让世界变得更美好。但如今，这些企业被指责为“恶劣”——规模大，反竞争，令人上瘾且破坏民主。监管机构处罚它们，政客盘问它们，曾经一度的支持者也警告它们可能造成危害。
Much of this techlash is misguided. The presumption that big businesses must necessarily be wicked is plain wrong. Apple is to be admired as the world’s most valuable listed company for the simple reason that it makes things people want to buy, even while facing fierce competition. Many online services would be worse if their providers were smaller. Evidence for the link between smartphones and unhappiness is weak. Fake news is not only an online phenomenon.
这场科技冲突的大部分内容都是有误导性的。人们有一种成见，认为大企业一定邪恶至极，这显然大错特错。苹果被誉为全球市值第一的上市企业，原因只是在面临激烈竞争时，它仍能研发出人们想买的产品。如果线上服务的供应商规模小，这些服务将会变得更糟糕。智能手机和不幸福之间的联系微乎其微。虚假信息不只在网上风靡。
But big tech platforms, particularly Facebook, Google and Amazon, do indeed raise a worry about fair competition. That is partly because they often benefit from legal exemptions. Unlike publishers, Facebook and Google are rarely held responsible for what users do on them; and for years most American buyers on Amazon did not pay sales tax. Nor do the titans simply compete in a market. Increasingly, they are the market itself, providing the infrastructure (or “platforms”) for much of the digital economy. Many of their services appear to be free, but users “pay” for them by giving away their data. Powerful though they already are, their huge stockmarket valuations suggest that investors are counting on them to double or even triple in size in the next decade.
但一些大型的科技平台，尤其是Facebook、谷歌和亚马逊，确确实实引发了人们对公平竞争的忧虑。一个原因是这些平台常得益于法律豁免权。不像媒体发行商，Facebook和谷歌几乎不会为用户在平台的所作所为负责；多年来，亚马逊的大部分客户都不支付销售税。这些巨头也不是简单地在某一个市场里竞争。渐渐地，它们代表了市场本身，为数字经济提供基础设施（或“平台”）。它们提供的很多服务看起来是免费的，但用户献出数据就等同于“支付”费用。虽然它们十分强大，但在股市的高估值揭露出投资人期望它们的规模在未来十年涨至两倍甚至三倍。
There is thus a justified fear that the tech titans will use their power to protect and extend their dominance, to the detriment of consumers (see article). The tricky task for policymakers is to restrain them without unduly stifling innovation.
于是，关于这些科技巨头将利用其势力来保护并扩大其主导地位，危害消费者权益的担忧就显得理由十足。政策制订者面临的难题是：如何制衡这些科技巨头，同时又不会过度扼杀创新。
The less severe contest
竞争不太激烈
The platforms have become so dominant because they benefit from “network effects”. Size begets size: the more sellers Amazon, say, can attract, the more buyers will shop there, which attracts more sellers, and so on. By some estimates, Amazon captures over 40% of online shopping in America. With more than 2bn monthly users, Facebook holds sway over the media industry. Firms cannot do without Google, which in some countries processes more than 90% of web searches. Facebook and Google control two-thirds of America’s online ad revenues.
这些科技平台占据了主导地位，原因是它们受益于“网络效应”。规模产生规模：如亚马逊吸引的卖方越多，前来购物的买方就越多，而这反过来又吸引更多卖方，由此递推。据预测，亚马逊网站上的购物活动占美国线上购物的40%多。Facebook月活跃用户超过20亿人，f操控着媒体行业。离开了谷歌，很多企业也无法运营下去。在一些国家，谷歌的网页搜索份额超过90%。Facebook和谷歌掌控了美国三分之二的线上广告收入。
America’s trustbusters have given tech giants the benefit of the doubt. They look for consumer harm, which is hard to establish when prices are falling and services are “free”. The firms themselves stress that a giant-killing startup is just a click away and that they could be toppled by a new technology, such as the blockchain. Before Google and Facebook, Alta Vista and MySpace were the bee’s knees. Who remembers them?
美国反垄断者对这些科技巨头表示怀疑。他们努力寻找这些巨头对消费者造成的危害，但却难觅踪迹，因为价格在不断下降，服务也“免费”。这些企业自身强调打败它们的创业企业近在咫尺，而像区块链这样的新技术可能也会推翻它们。在谷歌和Facebook出现之前，搜索引擎公司Alta Vista和社交网络服务网站MySpace是当时的行业巨头。但现在还有谁记得它们？
However, the barriers to entry are rising. Facebook not only owns the world’s largest pool of personal data, but also its biggest “social graph”—the list of its members and how they are connected. Amazon has more pricing information than any other firm. Voice assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant, will give them even more control over how people experience the internet. China’s tech firms have the heft to compete, but are not about to get unfettered access to Western consumers.
然而，进入的门槛一直在不断提高。Facebook不仅握有全球最大的个人数据库，还有其最大的“社交图表”——会员列表及他们之间的相互联系。亚马逊拥有的定价信息最多。亚马逊的Alexa和谷歌的Assistant等语音助手将帮助它们更多地控制人们体验互联网的方式。中国的科技企业有竞争能力，但无法毫无束缚地打入西方消费者市场。
If this trend runs its course, consumers will suffer as the tech industry becomes less vibrant. Less money will go into startups, most good ideas will be bought up by the titans and, one way or another, the profits will be captured by the giants.
如果这一趋势顺其自然地前进下去，当科技产业将不再如此充满活力的时候，消费者会遭殃。流入初创企业的资金将减少，大多数好点子将被巨头买光； 最后不管怎样，利润都会落入巨头手中。
The early signs are already visible. The European Commission has accused Google of using control of Android, its mobile operating system, to give its own apps a leg up. Facebook keeps buying firms which could one day lure users away: first Instagram, then WhatsApp and most recently tbh, an app that lets teenagers send each other compliments anonymously. Although Amazon is still increasing competition in aggregate, as industries from groceries to television can attest, it can also spot rivals and squeeze them from the market.
初步迹象已显而易见。欧盟委员会指控谷歌利用移动操作系统Android为其应用提供优势。Facebook不断收购未来可能吸引用户眼球的企业：先是Instagram，再是WhatsApp，最近则是青少年相互匿名恭维应用tbh。尽管总的来看，亚马逊仍在继续增加其竞争力，从零售业到电视业都是证据，但它仍能发现对手，并将其挤出市场。
The rivalry remedy
对竞争的补救
What to do? In the past, societies have tackled monopolies either by breaking them up, as with Standard Oil in 1911, or by regulating them as a public utility, as with AT&T in 1913. Today both those approaches have big drawbacks. The traditional tools of utilities regulation, such as price controls and profit caps, are hard to apply, since most products are free and would come at a high price in forgone investment and innovation. Likewise, a full-scale break-up would cripple the platforms’ economies of scale, worsening the service they offer consumers. And even then, in all likelihood one of the Googlettes or Facebabies would eventually sweep all before it as the inexorable logic of network effects reasserted itself.
应该做什么？过去，社会对付垄断企业的方法有两种，一是拆分它们，如1911年的标准石油公司（Standard Oil）；二是按照公用事业来管理它们，例如1913年的美国电话电报公司（AT&T）。但现在，这两种方法都存在很大的弊端。传统的公用事业管理办法，比如价格控制和利润上限，如今却很难实行，因为大部分产品都免费，如果按以前的投资和创新，代价很高。同样，全面拆分将破坏平台的规模经济，降低客户服务的质量。即使那样做，十有八九，谷歌或Facebook分割出的一部分最终将在作为网络效应的必然逻辑重新出现之前就席卷市场。
The lack of a simple solution deprives politicians of easy slogans, but does not leave trustbusters impotent. Two broad changes of thinking would go a long way towards sensibly taming the titans. The first is to make better use of existing competition law. Trustbusters should scrutinise mergers to gauge whether a deal is likely to neutralise a potential long-term threat, even if the target is small at the time. Such scrutiny might have prevented Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and Google’s of Waze, which makes navigation software. To ensure that the platforms do not favour their own products, oversight groups could be set up to deliberate on complaints from rivals—a bit like the independent “technical committee” created by the antitrust case against Microsoft in 2001. Immunity to content liability must go, too.
政客们的简单竞选标语是提供不了简单的解决办法的，但反垄断者的力量并没有因此消弱。两大思维转变需要有很长的时间才能很理智地驯服科技巨头。第一个就是更好地利用现有竞争法。反垄断人士应该仔细审查合并案，即便合并的对象在当时规模很小，要判断交易能否中和长期潜在的威胁。这种详细的审查或许本可以防止Facebook并购Instagram，防止谷歌并购社区化交通导航应用Waze。为确保平台不会偏好自身产品，可以成立监督小组，审议竞争对手的投诉——略微类似2001年针对微软的反垄断案而设立的独立“技术委员会”。这些平台必须取消对内容责任的豁免权。
Second, trustbusters need to think afresh about how tech markets work. A central insight, one increasingly discussed among economists and regulators, is that personal data are the currency in which customers actually buy services. Through that prism, the tech titans receive valuable information—on their users’ behaviour, friends and purchasing habits—in return for their products. Just as America drew up sophisticated rules about intellectual property in the 19th century, so it needs a new set of laws to govern the ownership and exchange of data, with the aim of giving solid rights to individuals.
第二，反垄断人士需要重新思考科技市场的运作方式。经济学家和监管机构越来越热议的一个主要观点，即个人数据是消费者购买服务时所支付的货币。通过这一方式，科技巨头接受宝贵的信息——有关用户的行为、朋友和购买习惯——反过来，免费提供产品。正如19世纪美国起草复杂的知识产权保护规则一样，要管理数据的所有权和交换，也需要一套全新的法律，以给予个人强有力的权利。
In essence this means giving people more control over their information. If a user so desires, key data sh 54 37080 54 20157 0 0 9888 0 0:00:03 0:00:02 0:00:01 9890ould be made available in real time to other firms—as banks in Europe are now required to do with customers’ account information. Regulators could oblige platform firms to make anonymised bulk data available to competitors, in return for a fee, a bit like the compulsory licensing of a patent. Such data-sharing requirements could be calibrated to firms’ size: the bigger platforms are, the more they have to share. These mechanisms would turn data from something titans hoard, to suppress competition, into something users share, to foster innovation.
本质上，这意味着让人们更多的控制自己的信息。如果用户愿意，关键数据应该实时分享给其他公司——正如欧洲的银行现在被要求共享客户的账户信息一样。监管机构可以强迫平台企业向对手共享匿名的海量数据，并收取一定费用，有点像专利强制许可制度。这一数据共享的要求可以根据企业规模进行调整：平台越大，分享的内容越多。这些机制将使得数据从巨头聚藏来抑制竞争的工具转变为用户分享以促进创新的福利。
None of this will be simple, but it would tame the titans without wrecking the gains they have brought. Users would find it easier to switch between services. Upstart competitors would have access to some of the data that larger firms hold and thus be better equipped to grow to maturity without being gobbled up. And shareholders could no longer assume monopoly profits for decades to come.
这一切并不简单，但能做到在驯服巨头的同时，不损害它们带来的好处。用户将更容易切换服务。新进入市场的竞争者将可以使用大型企业手中握有的一些数据，因此更有能力发展到成熟期，不至于被吞食。股东也不能再期望未来几十年都获得垄断利润。
编译：余兴宇
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人（）