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Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

492 points by xoxoy 6y ago

aspenmayer 6y ago
'Both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.’s Google—and are well into planning for litigation, according to people familiar with the matter. 'The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer, some of the people said. At least some state attorneys general—led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican—are likely to file a case, probably in the fall, people familiar with the matter said. 'Much of the states’ investigation has focused on Google’s online advertising business. The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers. The Justice Department likewise is making Google’s ad technology one of its points of emphasis. But it is also focusing more broadly on concerns that Google uses its dominant search business to stifle competition, people familiar with the matter said. 'Details about the Justice Department’s legal theories for a case against Google couldn’t be learned.'
- akersten 6y ago
  > 'Details about the Justice Department’s legal theories for a case against Google couldn’t be learned.' That's what it seems like to me too. I understand a popular opinion is that Google is too big, should be broken up, etc. But I really don't think there's a prevailing justification. Or examples of competition that they've supposedly stifled? This stinks of politics. > The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers. The same could be said about Apple - they have the dominant (actually, the only tool) at every link between iOS developers and iPhone users. I think the case is weak. Google's a big company, sure. They're the most popular in many areas. But what about that requires anti-trust, compared to hundreds of other companies that check that same "most popular and big" box?
  - jaydz 6y ago
    No laws are being violated, Google will pay a fine and make some small changes. The last thing the DOJ wants is an embarrassing defeat in court.
  - adrianmonk 6y ago
    > This stinks of politics. Yes, and Trump has threatened Google explicitly before. For example: > Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed! (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1034456281120206848?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/10344562811202068...) And on the same day he said this: > Q Do you think that Google should be investigated? > PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, I think Google has really taken advantage of a lot of people. And I think that’s a very serious thing, and it’s a very serious charge. I think what Google and what others are doing — if you look at what’s going on at Twitter, if you look at what’s going on in Facebook, they better be careful, because you can’t do that to people. You can’t do it. > We have tremendous — we have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. And you just can’t do that. And so I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they’re really treading on very, very troubled territory. And they have to be careful. It’s not fair to large portions of the population. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-fifa-president-gianni-infantino-u-s-soccer-president-carlos-cordeiro-2026-world-cup/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...)
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  The case against Google is "whatever we can throw together to pressure them to stop pushing end-to-end encryption we can't break". Google is by far the biggest proponent of this, and they have both the most popular browser and some of the most popular sites on the Internet, so they can very easily do so. Whether you think Google is a monopoly or not, and whether you think they've done harm with that monopoly or not, I think this case is going to do net harm to Internet security.
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    What are you referring to when you say: ‘Google is by far the biggest proponent of this [end-to-end encryption]’? In what way do you mean?
    - JoshTriplett 6y ago
      Google has done a great deal of work to push and early-adopt new web security standards, including QUIC (which inspired HTTP/2 and became HTTP/3), by changing the Chrome browser, Android, Google services, etc. They've also heavily pushed Certificate Transparency. And they've pushed for device encryption, as well, on both Android and Chrome OS. Those and many others are technologies that better support a web without backdoors and devices without backdoors. I'm not necessarily suggesting that they've done the most work in all those areas, and many others are doing critical work, some of which should get a lot more attention than it does. But Google is literally the biggest proponent, insofar as they can push it the most quickly because they control the most endpoints.
  - thekyle 6y ago
    I don't see how you can consider Google to be "by far the biggest proponent" of end-to-end encryption. What Google products even use end-to-end encryption? Duo and Chrome sync are all I can think of. Even Facebook has end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp and says it's coming to their other messaging products which is far more than Google does.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Google doesn’t even use end-to-end encryption for its consumer facing stuff. It’s against their whole model of scanning content for keywords to eliminate spam, improve advertising, etc.
noad 6y ago
Amazon and Facebook should be next. Break them all up with extreme prejudice and put strict new anti-trust laws around acquisitions in place for the future. We're going to do this and open technology back up to innovation and progress, or just watch the tech giants continue to grow in power and abusiveness year after year while new startups continue to decline.
- ghastmaster 6y ago
  Ever wonder why innovation takes place? Wonder why we are not still reliant on locomotives for transportation? Economic incentives for innovation and disruption are greater when a monopolistic entity is over charging for it's good or service. If they are not over charging then there is not as great an incentive to innovate or disrupt. If the latter is the case, why bust a monopoly that is providing a fair service?
  - eshamukhamedov 6y ago
    > Economic incentives for innovation and disruption are greater when a monopolistic entity is over charging for it's good or service. Care to back that up, or are we supposed to take your, frankly, very unorthodox views at face value? Every industry I can think of with entrenched monopolies sees almost no innovation until things get so bad that they are finally disrupted: aerospace, energy, advertisement, telecommunications, and the list goes on and on.
    - SamReidHughes 6y ago
      Amazon doesn’t really “have” a monopoly. Walmart just can’t compete online, but it’s because they suck, not because of a structural force stopping them.
    - ghastmaster 6y ago
      > Every industry I can think of with entrenched monopolies sees almost no innovation until things get so bad that they are finally disrupted: aerospace, energy, advertisement, telecommunications, and the list goes on and on. Intel's virtual monopoly of microprocessors has led to AMD's recent advancements: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4247790-intel-vs-amd-battle-for-market-share https://seekingalpha.com/article/4247790-intel-vs-amd-battle... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-intel-cpu-market-share-q4-2019-epyc-and-ryzen-growth-decelerate-mobile-ryzen-up https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-intel-cpu-market-sh... Check out the historical market shares in the links. Markets have changed in time with respect to computing. People are opting for mobile devices which use arm processors(even breaking into server space). Unless the behemoths in the industry adapt, their industry may not exist in the future. That is innovation and disruption happening right now. Intel had in 2018 90.4% of the desktop/notebook/server market with 96.8% of the server market share. Maybe this is only Intel vs. AMD stats. Are servers run with other processors? Standard oil(Arguably the most notorious monopolistic company in the history of the United States) by comparison: "At one point, it was believe that they controlled somewhere between 88% to 91% of all the oil in the United States"
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.md/UOrGM https://archive.md/UOrGM
vmception 6y ago
sells a few $ billion in shares for the rainy day fund. buy some treasuries, wait for a few quarters.
diogenescynic 6y ago
I really hope they start splitting tech giants up. It would be a boom for the economy, jobs, and create much needed competition.
- ghastmaster 6y ago
  > It would be a boom for the economy Why? Are they inefficient? Have their resources been mis-allocated? > jobs For the sake of jobs? That pay more or less? > create much needed competition Are they charging too much?
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    It's dangerous for us all to be so dependent on a few companies. I doubt that's what motivates the DoJ in this case, but right now, if you have a problem with Google, you have to post a cri de coeur on Twitter or Hacker News and hope it embarrasses somebody at Google enough to take action on your behalf. More competitors in the advertising and search space would certainly help, or at least keep the situation from getting worse. As for Amazon, the antitrust enforcers should have come down on them like a ton of bricks the moment it appeared that they were leveraging internal business intelligence to compete with their own sellers. I use Amazon constantly, I have an enormous amount of respect for them, and I value their services a great deal, but come on. There's no point in even having antitrust laws if they don't apply in this instance.
    - Armic 6y ago
      Re: Amazon, many companies do the same thing (e.g. CVS, Target, Costco). With Costco in particular, Kirkland products are higher quality and cheaper than the competition in almost all categories they are in, which is a benefit to me as a consumer. Should Kirkland be broken off just because other companies can't compete with it? If not, what's the justification for Amazon?
      - CamperBob2 6y ago
        The victims are the third-party sellers. Store brands are a completely different subject. They are purchased and licensed from the manufacturers. Do you think Costco has a factory making paper towels someplace, next door to their factory making alkaline batteries?
Despegar 6y ago
This antitrust case is the most straightforward one for prosecutors to win. It's been a long time coming and the FTC would have brought one during the Obama administration if they weren't so captured by the tech industry and Google in particular [1][2]. I expect Google will lose their antitrust cases globally. Cases against other tech companies like Facebook and Amazon seem less certain, but I haven't really thought about antitrust theories too deeply for them. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-of-google-1426793274 https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323689604578221971197494496 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323689604578221...
- foxtr0t 6y ago
  Isn't settlement far more likely than losing all the way through appeals? And in what way is it straightforward? Does it not require a new interpretation of antitrust law? Google isn't using monopoly power to increase prices for consumers.
  - nojito 6y ago
    >Google isn't using monopoly power to increase prices for consumers. This is whole reason for the criminal trial. If they can prove Google stifled competition in the advertising business, it is going to be a cut and dry case.
    - cromwellian 6y ago
      Facebook and Google only account for 50% of all digital ad spending online, so clearly there are lots competition, it's just fragmented.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Antitrust isn't criminal; it's civil.
    - foxtr0t 6y ago
      Last I checked almost all antitrust laws are enforced through civil cases.
hristov 6y ago
Just in time for the elections! Pretty transparent.
kart23 6y ago
What happens to the stock if it's actually broken up? Another split or will the stock price just go down?
quattrofan 6y ago
The big one is Amazon. The revenue from AWS funds the ability for them to crush the high street on the shopping side. They should be forced to sell off AWS as a separate company.
- wolco 6y ago
  Agreed. Facebook brekup doesn't make sense nor a google. Amazon has two different businesses.
  - burmer 6y ago
    At least split off instagram. You're not supposed to simply buy up your competitors.
- chrischattin 6y ago
  This is all beneficial for the consumer, no? Having a competitive advantage is not illegal. Someone correct me, but isn't the law's intent to protect people from abuse of monopolistic power? Which wouldn't be the case here.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bcrosby95 6y ago
    The laws intent is debated. Some think it is there to protect consumers. Others to protect free enterprise and eliminate the ability to manipulate a marketplace - pro consumer or not. Lately, the outlook of protecting consumers has won out in the US, as that is what the Supremes laid out as a determining factor in the later half of the 20th century. But it wasn't always that way. And the laws aren't written that way. In my opinion, focusing on consumer benefit is a red herring. We are all both consumers and producers. An economy full of companies shutting out competition through market manipulation may be good when I'm trying to buy something, but it's bad when I'm trying to find work, because they can dictate whatever terms they desire in that half of my participation in the economy.
glenstein 6y ago
I don't have a problem with this. But I wonder why there isn't similar willpower to pursue, say, telecoms, banks, Monsanto, Luxxotica, Disney, and the like. Why is it just big tech?
- leoh 6y ago
  Telecom, etc. are far, far more harmful IMHO
  - CaveTech 6y ago
    They're also currently much better regulated
    - papeda 6y ago
      They are? Recent history suggests it's way easier for a random person to build a successful search engine (e.g. DuckDuckGo) than a successful telecom, and I have way more choice of search engine than telecom.
      - maxore44 6y ago
        I definitely won't argue that telecoms play fair, but there are high barriers to entry for starting a telecom. If you start a new telecom only to compete for customers with an existing telecom in a certain area, you have to pay a huge expense to build out your network and your upside will be limited by the ensuing price war. Not arguing that starting a telecom is easier than a search engine, but I think a large part of that difficulty is inherent to the industry.
        pb7 6y ago
        You’re describing point by point exactly why they’re dangerous monopolies. It’s hard, incumbents have advantage, and even if you do it, incumbents will undercut you because they are already well situated. Consumers have no choice; incumbents frequently at the receiving end of the worst consumer satisfaction. Oh, and taxpayers also paid $400B to lay that infrastructure that apparently newcomers aren’t allowed to have. And yet here we are, going after a search engine that has a dozen alternatives that are just as capable of suiting your needs and new ones able to spring up overnight. It just makes no sense. This is pure manipulation by the government.
pge 6y ago
This is interesting because it seems like the DOJ's definition of monopoly is changing, which I think is a good thing. Since the late 80s (roughly), antitrust litigation has only been brought on the basis of a monopoly's negative impact on consumer prices (i.e. does the existence of a monopoly cause the consumer to have to pay higher prices?). That ignores monopolies that impair the ability of smaller companies to enter markets (which is one of the issues raised with respect to some of the current internet giants). Prior to the 1980s, this latter kind of monopoly would have been subject to scrutiny and possibly litigation by the DOJ, but since then it has been ignored.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Planet Money did a pretty good episode on this last year: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-tech https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/anti...
- nojito 6y ago
  Barriers of Entry are not related to antitrust. Can you share some instances of this being true in the 80s?
  - nojito 6y ago
    It’s pretty ridiculous that the top comment in this thread is 100% wrong.
- mrkramer 6y ago
  Google's dominant market position was achieved through market competition not through impairing the ability of smaller companies to enter markets. Even in Google Chrome you can pick DuckDuckGo and Ecosia as your default search engine. Most of Chrome users probably never heard of those two search engines. For example would YouTube be successful as it is today if it wasn't Google's resources and knowledge to skyrocket it? I think not.
  - xoxoy 6y ago
akersten 6y ago
I will continue to believe that this is another tentacle of William Barr's political harassment of Google and tech in general until he leads the same crusade against other 'monopolies' of the same degree like Comcast, Apple, Boeing, Amazon, United Airlines, etc.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Even if it is, it could set a precedent that makes it easier for a future, less corrupt administration. I don't know if the good necessarily outweighs the bad, but maybe it does.
  - dantheman 6y ago
    Yeah, because the government going after private organizations with vague mandates is a clear way to avoid corruption. /S This is a continuation of politics trying to skim money off of tech and funnel it to thier favored constituents - it's straight up corruption.
    - barrkel 6y ago
      Democracy is about setting the rules for society, including how to reallocate some fraction of private resources according to a popular mandate. This doesn't mean its corruption. You need more qualification to call it that. (Not saying that the Trump admin isn't corrupt. I'm rather saying that your statement is too broad, and it fits almost all generally accepted democratic governance.)
      - dodobirdlord 6y ago
        It’s possible to be corrupt with a democratic mandate. Levying taxes is one thing, sending the justice department after companies because they are out of favor with the current administration is obviously another.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        I wonder if you would say that if the government took your property under eminent domain so that Walmart could build a store.
MattGaiser 6y ago
The big problem with this is the extreme mediocrity of every other industry. Amazon and Google are winning everything because none of their competitors have even attempted to do better than they did 10 years ago. Amazon should have won in very few of the markets it entered. Instead, its competitors just decided to lie down and die, with a couple of yelps on their way to their death.
- chrischattin 6y ago
  DuckDuckGo has a better search engine than Google right now, imo.
  - blululu 6y ago
    I'm curious why you say this. I spent the past two weeks using Bing (which is the source of DDG results, but a little faster and more accurate). For most queries it was fine (finding things on Wikipedia), but last weekend I got into a project that required a lot of css and html (not my day job). There were a lot of cases where the search results were not even close to the thing I wanted. The experience led me to switch my default browser back to Google.
    - tristan957 6y ago
      Oh is this the case? I thought their results came from Yandex. I don't really want to have a Yandex account to get my site indexed, so if this is my out I am all about it.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    DuckDuckGo has better human-centered results, but they miss a lot of the more technical stuff.
    - chrischattin 6y ago
      Try using bang syntax for more specific results. Ie: append `!so` to search Stack Overflow, etc. It's similar to Google's `site:stackoverflow.com` but much nicer.
knolax 6y ago
It seems that all the recent cases by the DoJ have been motivated more by a desire to poltically pander than solid legal precedent.
Medicalidiot 6y ago
AWS needs to be spun. That's the largest enabler for a monopolistic company I can think of right now.
joejerryronnie 6y ago
It’s funny how Microsoft has learned that anti-trust has nothing to do with competition and is 100% politics and public perception. Just sell to other businesses and you can do whatever you want.
subroutine 6y ago
Do DOJ rules only apply to Google's operations in the US? Could DOJ also do this to overseas-based companies that operates in the U.S.? Say you break up Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc., and people begin to adopt the platforms like say, Baidu, TikTok, Alibaba, etc. which grow to 90%+ market dominance. Can DOJ bring antitrust lawsuits against Alibaba?
- Aperocky 6y ago
  Huawei don't even sale their stuff in the US and look at where we are now. DOJ won't just bring the case they'll also find the proverbial WMD in Iraq.
billme 6y ago
Anyone know of any reasons DOJ might be going after Google for reasons unrelated to antitrust issues? Globally, how does breaking up Google benefit the US?
gordon_freeman 6y ago
one thing I always have a hard time understanding. What if a tech giant is considered a Monopoly but it makes my - as a consumer - life easier? I mean having flights tool readily available near Google Search which helps me quickly find a cheap flight without upselling me with hotels and car rentals etc on aggregators like Expedia is something I love and makes my experience better.
- throwawayy1001 6y ago
  You’re not a consumer though, you’re the product. Google needs to sell eyeballs, so it creates products for free (subsidized by ads) and along the way destroys competition.
LatteLazy 6y ago
It's election session, corporate clients need to pay their dues.
tiborsaas 6y ago
I can't help but think that fighting big tech with anti trust approaches is like fighting the T-1000 with a katana. You can win a few fights, but it just reassembles itself because they will outsmart the challenge adapt to the new situation. If you want real change then you got to be more radical than just separating Google search from Gmail or Instagram from Facebook. I have no idea how, but the goal should be to change their incentives.
paul7986 6y ago
This is good to see as there has been tons of posts here on HN detailing Google abusing their power in the last few years. Prior to I'm guessing 2013 to 2015, Google to many was viewed as the company who actually did no evil & a dream company to work. Maybe them absorbing other company's and their cultures affected them?
StreamBright 6y ago
About time. We need to claim back the free web from corporates like Google and Facebook.
foob4r 6y ago
If this sets a precedent to sue say the telcos or banks or oil companies, I'm all for it.
oneiftwo 6y ago
Interesting, I wonder if it has anything to do with this [0]. Google wanted to play politics by choosing winners and curating results...now they get to face the consequences for abusing such an enormous power 0.https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/google-diversity-inclusion-conservative-programmes-cut https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/google-diversity-i...
- papeda 6y ago
  How is your link related to antitrust?
  - oneiftwo 6y ago
    Google is regularly accused of leaning left and has taken open steps to curate search results and other content in an ostensibly unbiased manner, but one which may disproportionately censor right leaning sources. This is motive for a right leaning government lead by an infamous narcissist to attempt to rein in Google's power over information.
papeda 6y ago
As some variant of millenial, I'm continually bemused by how many of my peers are on board with breaking up "big tech" and use "big tech" products multiple times every single day. If I bring up federal contracting, which is an industry of comparable size, and which is dominated by companies founded well over 50 years ago [1], and which is way more politically opaque, and whose funding they cannot as tax-paying US citizens opt out of, the response is never anything more than "meh". I understand that one is more relevant to daily in-their-face life. These aren't dumb people. They read, argue, write, vote. But the choice of what to agitate for is so odd to me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S._federal_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S...
- mthoms 6y ago
  I'll take a stab at this. Perhaps it's because the internet (and surrounding technologies) are so much more foundational to society. Without information moving freely and fairly, we'll mostly never learn about any of the other big problems that need addressing (of which, the one you pointed out seems perfectly valid). Also, I think the average person feels more empowered with regards to shaping the future of the internet, than they do with something so entrenched, opaque, political and corrupt (IMHO) as federal contracting.
  - papeda 6y ago
    Thanks for the response. The first point makes sense, but it's hard for me to square with breaking up companies. I don't think any of FAANG has played a real censorious role on the internet. I'm just as free to spin up a random webpage to espouse whatever as I was in 1999. People move around the web differently, but I can still send it to whomever I want. I could also see an argument that AMP and similar technologies hurt journalism, but I hardly ever see that claimed. If it's a question of agency, to me it feels much better to "vote with my feet" and not patronize companies I dislike than to write my congressperson and receive a form response from some intern. You may be right that people just expect better from the internet than federal contracting.
- gerash 6y ago
onewhonknocks 6y ago
IMHO they're not a monopoly, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Traditional monopolies "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted." In this case, the supply of a good or service (social networking, webpage indexing and searching) are not controlled by Facebook and Google because they aren't finite resources. Anyone can index the web and anyone can build a social network and Google/Facebook aren't going to crush you with lawsuits or some other nefarious tactic to maintain their position (AFAIK). Entry of new producers of these services is not prevented or highly restricted. New social networks and search engines pop up all the time. What Facebook and Google have is massive, large scale user loyalty. Despite alternatives existing (Bing, Mastadon, DuckDuckGo, Myspace, etc.), users are voluntarily choosing to use Google and Facebook. This is not a monopoly. I think we need a new term for this situation.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Religion comes to mind.
- lhorie 6y ago
  "If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product" is how the old adage goes. If users are the product, then couldn't one argue that it's a monopoly over the supply of users?
  - nycdatasci 6y ago
    I think this is a good point. Users are the product. From a typical consumer's perspective, there are other viable options for google-like services. From the perspective of a small business trying to target a specific audience with ads, are there viable alternatives?
- dontreact 6y ago
  No one can build a search engine as good as Google without the data flowing through it every day. That have so many click logs to train their models and see what works, there is just no way to compete. If all Google engineers left at the same time, Google would still probably end up dominant by hiring new folks to get things back up and running. No amount of human labor will be able to close that data gap.
sub7 6y ago
About fucking time. Search is the big one but please don't neglect Android and Chrome. And take Apple to task as well - their app store policies and new app signing requirements for OSX are absurd. Amazon has just started abusing it's monopoly so they'll be in the next antitrust wave I imagine and get away here. Don't even get me started on Whatsapp. Consistently anti-user and competition crushing behaviour in tech should be dealt with forcefully. Not some 5 billion $ chickenshit fine please.
- nothis 6y ago
  I don’t care about search. This should be about chrome.
jorblumesea 6y ago
While it's probably true that most of the tech companies have some form of platform monopolies, William Barr, out of all people, is not to be trusted. Hatchet man through and through. The motives here are entirely political. Notice that the ISPs, telecom industry in general, defense industries are left out of this discussion. Tech companies lean left, largely donate to the Democrats, and have been the focus of conservative groups for years as they are considered "biased" towards those on the Left. Like many things about Trump's administration, it's about revenge against those who oppose him, be they companies, state or individuals.
techntoke 6y ago
They'd me much better off having them open source YouTube and/or Gmail. I don't really think Google as a whole is an evil corporation, and there are a lot worse companies out there with a clear monopoly.
davesque 6y ago
I think this was a long time coming. However, I don't trust the current administration's motives for doing it. My instinct is that this is just some behind-the-scenes string pulling to eliminate an entity that is seen more as a political threat than an economic one.
yalogin 6y ago
Wonder how long before the DoJ focuses on Amazon too.
bilekas 6y ago
I'm sure I don't need to point it out but: If we believe for a moment, this is a play against Google's liberal position, or at the very least Google's employees liberal outlook.. (I will try to pull up references). Lets say it's true: These actions are by all accounts the same as the old communist states.. Only this time they're under the guise of legal proceedings which have some precedent. Americans would usually be so alergic to the idea of such a thought that there would be uproar.. But nationalism and faith in a leader/idea has prevailed. I would argue that it's super rich for the Justice Dept to be worried about antitrust all of a sudden, as a European, I've been fortunate to be protected far better than the US over the years by why of data protection laws. Also knowing Google and other major tech companies penchant for moving their headquarters abroad (Ireland for example), its super interesting to see a swift interest in antitrust.. The US has had, and still does I believe, a huge fight to get chip & pin on debit and credit cards because of insurance liability.. But hey.. Those tech companies.. Gotta get them first. I'm no tinfoil hat wearer, but if it walks like a duck .
JaceLightning 6y ago
Why not Apple???? I don't understand. Apples has more than 50% of the phone marketplace AND locks everything down. They also have twice the revenue of Google.
- JBReefer 6y ago
  Apple has 10% of the market, depending on where you look. The high penetration in NYC and SF is an aberration.
  - samfisher83 6y ago
    They have 45% in the US. The fact that only approved apps can be installed should be taken to court.
- samfisher83 6y ago
  They really should be.
ilaksh 6y ago
We need to replace the Google platforms with distributed public ones.
cracker_jacks 6y ago
Regardless of any one's opinion about this being right or wrong, good or bad, Google has spent enormous resources preparing for this moment. From lobbying efforts to the Alphabet restructuring, Google has been acutely aware of this possibility years ago. This will not be an easy case for the states.
marmada 6y ago
A take: monopoly in tech is good. Because Google/Amazon/FB have so much money they can do things that push tech forward as a whole. Think about the revolutionary improvements Google has made towards data centers, AWS, and all the research/open source contributions these companies have done. Unlike other monopolies (telecom, defense contracting) etc. where the monopoly is used to stagnate innovation (see Comcast being terrible), here the monopoly leads to more innovation. Smaller companies can't embark on Google-sized projects. Sidenote: I'm pretty sure this lawsuit is just a political attack. It seems reasonable that other monopolies in healthcare/defense/etc. are much much worse, yet they aren't "liberal"/"blue" companies, so there are no lawsuits. Disclosure: I'm interning at Google. I don't think this matters at all, but someone called me out on this in the comments.
- bhahn 6y ago
  I don’t think comparing monopolies across industries is justification for a monopoly in tech. A more telling comparison would be monopoly in tech vs no monopoly in tech.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > here the monopoly leads to more innovation More innovation in what? And as compared to what? The innovations you mention are all addressing issues that only huge tech giants like Google have anyway. And they are all funded by the ad-supported business model, which IMO is a negative that outweighs those positive contributions. Plus, the ad supported business model means users only get the benefit of any innovations Google makes when it increases Google's ad income. That incentive is not well aligned with the needs of users. How many times has Google discontinued a popular application because it wasn't making them enough money? A company in Google's position is exactly the company that could figure out how to get a billion users to pay them directly for services those users want, instead of using their eyeballs as commodities, but Google has put zero effort towards that highly desirable innovation. We also don't see all the innovations that are not happening because the people that would have made them are being paid by Google and other tech giants to look for new ways to capture more eyeballs instead. > I'm pretty sure this lawsuit is just a political attack. It seems reasonable that other monopolies in healthcare/defense/etc. are much much worse, yet they aren't "liberal"/"blue" companies, so there are no lawsuits. If this hypothesis were correct, we would have expected to see lawsuits against those other monopolies during, say, the Obama administration. But we didn't. The lawsuit is specifically stated in the article to be targeted at the ad-supported business model, so the obvious inference is that all the issues with that business model that have come up over the years have finally built up enough political pressure that the government feels it has to do something about it.
dvduval 6y ago
I think to myself how I would probably be just fine if the Google search engine became a public service tomorrow and all advertisements were removed, or perhaps only a small area of the page were allowed to be used to make enough money to pay the costs of upkeep. I'm reminded of how I was so enamored by the internet during the age of the directory. Humans assembled information to share with each other, and there were different search engines you could use as well. It was just so much more interesting at the time. There are still wonderful examples of information being assembled by humans like Wikipedia. But these types of sites struggle to have enough money to operate, while other companies just dominate everything, especially anything that involves money. That's how the market works. But there are certain things the way having libraries, police, firefighters, maybe you can health insurance, where if profit is the only thing that's going to be considered, it just creates a society that is less worthwhile. Perhaps the search engine needs to be considered a public service.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Right. Just like how publicly funded broadcasters have never promoted any kind of propaganda, a publicly funded search engine will be politically neutral in every way. Who funds this public service? The US? Everyone? Well I don't live in the US, why should I have to fund your public service? What if I don't want to use Google, but DuckDuckGo instead? (You see, the arguments go on and on...) Private sector companies done right (aka incentives align correctly) are inherently more trustworthy than public sector. Disclosure: I do work for Google, but I've held these opinions for a long time.
SupriseAnxiety 6y ago
Good article/video.
cageface 6y ago
I think some antitrust enforcement in tech is overdue. But it needs to be applied broadly and fairly across the entire industry. Singling out single companies is just picking winners and losers. Making big acquisitions much more difficult and reviewing the big acquistitions of the last decade would be the right place to start in my opinion.
- VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
  Thankfully USA has provisions codified in law for this kind of thing. It was famously enforced against Microsoft. Now enforce it against Google. And then do it against Facebook.
v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
I think it‘s kind of funny that there was an article today about Google‘s Pixel division being disjointed and not integrated enough with the Android division. Maybe part of the reason for the publics perception of Google‘s teams and divisions seemingly operating in an independent and chaotic manner is a way of minimizing the attack surface for antitrust accusations.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  Integration is hard. The amount of work to keep good integration between all services in a business grows as the square of the number of services. Missing “obvious” integrations is just a natural consequence of being large.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > The amount of work to keep good integration between all services in a business grows as the square of the number of services That's true if each of the services directly integrates with each of the other services—or, more generally, if the number of integrations per service grows proportionally to the total number of services. But the number of service interactions per service seems, IME, to increase sublinearly with number of services, and a decreasing marginal rate.
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      Even the effort of being on the lookout for whether two services should naturally integrate with each other scales superlinearly. Eventually you reach a point where most teams don't even know of the existence of most teams.
0x262d 6y ago
Tech is an area where the contradictions inherent in the liberal approach to regulating companies are most clear. Liberal theories of nice capitalism require multiple competing companies on "fair" grounds. But it is obviously annoying and inefficient to have market competition in software most of the time - once a tool is developed, it's nearly free for 100% of people to use it rather than 50%, and it's crucial that all such tools interoperate nicely. Hence why various walled-off social media platforms are annoying and people are squeezed into at most only a couple for a given purpose. When right wingers point out that anti-trust stuff is inefficient, to an extent they're right. The rational thing is to have a "monopoly" that isn't evil. But that means that democratic control shouldn't be after-the-fact, external regulation (shown time and time again to be insufficient and generally bought off) but fundamental to the operating of these companies. In essence, Google makes the case for democratic management of production - socialism - very clear. But the other important part of this theory is it's not just about "what would be nice to have" in some utopian sense. Larger companies have competitive advantages that cause them to grow even faster - some real economies of scale, more political heft, greater bargaining power. This leads to the system being inherently unstable and tending towards concentration, which is apparent in pretty much every sector of tech. Trying to permanently reverse this trend through anti-trust is as nonsensical as suggesting people go back to living in the woods; it is in opposition to the fundamental trends inherent in market economies. The only way we can move is forward, to the resolution of these contradictions by working class ownership of all by all.
- 0x262d 6y ago
  To try to preempt one counterargument: such a system doesn't mean we can no longer have "competing" software projects that do similar things if it is beneficial to compare different approaches. We can easily do that if it's better overall. But in such a case, each approach to a given software problem would be fully open, and developed in coordination with the others and with an understanding of their successes and pitfalls, to maximize productivity. This wouldn't be siloed-off, hostile competition but a scientific, coordinated approach.
rotrux 6y ago
EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND LISTEN. SOME COUNTRY SAID SOME MASSIVE CORPORATION DID SOMETHING.
cavisne 6y ago
Its interesting that Google is the first target here. From my anecdotal experience the last decade has been. Content discovery: Google Reader -> (Twitter, Facebook, Apple Podcasts) Chat: Google Talk/Hangouts -> (Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Imessage, Facetime, Zoom) Product Search: Google -> Amazon Video: Youtube -> (Youtube, Prime Video, Apple TV, Netflix, Tiktok) A lot of these examples are big tech -> big tech but still if anything it seems like the rest of the FANG that have grown their businesses. Obviously any lawsuit doesnt need to win over consumers, but personally I could care less who owns what in adtech.
alexmingoia 6y ago
Google has achieved its market position through providing a service its customers want to use. They have not restricted any competitor. Anyone can easily use another search engine, and Google does nothing to stop them. The US government’s increasing hostility towards peaceful trade is alarming. Google is one of America’s greatest business successes of this century.
dehrmann 6y ago
Looking at that picture, it's amazing how much more put-together Sundar Pichai is than Bill Gates. Some of that might be their individual personalities, some might be that the tech industry has grown up a bit.
kumarvvr 6y ago
Is it possible this is politically motivated?
dbuder 6y ago
I want to see Google get in trouble for saying that an algorithm made a decision when a human did.
nloladze 6y ago
Everyone, breathe a sigh of relief.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

492 points by xoxoy 6y ago

'Both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.’s Google—and are well into planning for litigation, according to people familiar with the matter. 'The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer, some of the people said. At least some state attorneys general—led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican—are likely to file a case, probably in the fall, people familiar with the matter said. 'Much of the states’ investigation has focused on Google’s online advertising business. The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers. The Justice Department likewise is making Google’s ad technology one of its points of emphasis. But it is also focusing more broadly on concerns that Google uses its dominant search business to stifle competition, people familiar with the matter said. 'Details about the Justice Department’s legal theories for a case against Google couldn’t be learned.'

akersten 6y ago
> 'Details about the Justice Department’s legal theories for a case against Google couldn’t be learned.' That's what it seems like to me too. I understand a popular opinion is that Google is too big, should be broken up, etc. But I really don't think there's a prevailing justification. Or examples of competition that they've supposedly stifled? This stinks of politics. > The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers. The same could be said about Apple - they have the dominant (actually, the only tool) at every link between iOS developers and iPhone users. I think the case is weak. Google's a big company, sure. They're the most popular in many areas. But what about that requires anti-trust, compared to hundreds of other companies that check that same "most popular and big" box?
- jaydz 6y ago
  No laws are being violated, Google will pay a fine and make some small changes. The last thing the DOJ wants is an embarrassing defeat in court.
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  > This stinks of politics. Yes, and Trump has threatened Google explicitly before. For example: > Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed! (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1034456281120206848?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/10344562811202068...) And on the same day he said this: > Q Do you think that Google should be investigated? > PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, I think Google has really taken advantage of a lot of people. And I think that’s a very serious thing, and it’s a very serious charge. I think what Google and what others are doing — if you look at what’s going on at Twitter, if you look at what’s going on in Facebook, they better be careful, because you can’t do that to people. You can’t do it. > We have tremendous — we have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. And you just can’t do that. And so I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they’re really treading on very, very troubled territory. And they have to be careful. It’s not fair to large portions of the population. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-fifa-president-gianni-infantino-u-s-soccer-president-carlos-cordeiro-2026-world-cup/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...)
JoshTriplett 6y ago
The case against Google is "whatever we can throw together to pressure them to stop pushing end-to-end encryption we can't break". Google is by far the biggest proponent of this, and they have both the most popular browser and some of the most popular sites on the Internet, so they can very easily do so. Whether you think Google is a monopoly or not, and whether you think they've done harm with that monopoly or not, I think this case is going to do net harm to Internet security.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  What are you referring to when you say: ‘Google is by far the biggest proponent of this [end-to-end encryption]’? In what way do you mean?
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    Google has done a great deal of work to push and early-adopt new web security standards, including QUIC (which inspired HTTP/2 and became HTTP/3), by changing the Chrome browser, Android, Google services, etc. They've also heavily pushed Certificate Transparency. And they've pushed for device encryption, as well, on both Android and Chrome OS. Those and many others are technologies that better support a web without backdoors and devices without backdoors. I'm not necessarily suggesting that they've done the most work in all those areas, and many others are doing critical work, some of which should get a lot more attention than it does. But Google is literally the biggest proponent, insofar as they can push it the most quickly because they control the most endpoints.
- thekyle 6y ago
  I don't see how you can consider Google to be "by far the biggest proponent" of end-to-end encryption. What Google products even use end-to-end encryption? Duo and Chrome sync are all I can think of. Even Facebook has end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp and says it's coming to their other messaging products which is far more than Google does.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Google doesn’t even use end-to-end encryption for its consumer facing stuff. It’s against their whole model of scanning content for keywords to eliminate spam, improve advertising, etc.

noad 6y ago

Amazon and Facebook should be next. Break them all up with extreme prejudice and put strict new anti-trust laws around acquisitions in place for the future. We're going to do this and open technology back up to innovation and progress, or just watch the tech giants continue to grow in power and abusiveness year after year while new startups continue to decline.

ghastmaster 6y ago
Ever wonder why innovation takes place? Wonder why we are not still reliant on locomotives for transportation? Economic incentives for innovation and disruption are greater when a monopolistic entity is over charging for it's good or service. If they are not over charging then there is not as great an incentive to innovate or disrupt. If the latter is the case, why bust a monopoly that is providing a fair service?
- eshamukhamedov 6y ago
  > Economic incentives for innovation and disruption are greater when a monopolistic entity is over charging for it's good or service. Care to back that up, or are we supposed to take your, frankly, very unorthodox views at face value? Every industry I can think of with entrenched monopolies sees almost no innovation until things get so bad that they are finally disrupted: aerospace, energy, advertisement, telecommunications, and the list goes on and on.
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    Amazon doesn’t really “have” a monopoly. Walmart just can’t compete online, but it’s because they suck, not because of a structural force stopping them.
  - ghastmaster 6y ago
    > Every industry I can think of with entrenched monopolies sees almost no innovation until things get so bad that they are finally disrupted: aerospace, energy, advertisement, telecommunications, and the list goes on and on. Intel's virtual monopoly of microprocessors has led to AMD's recent advancements: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4247790-intel-vs-amd-battle-for-market-share https://seekingalpha.com/article/4247790-intel-vs-amd-battle... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-intel-cpu-market-share-q4-2019-epyc-and-ryzen-growth-decelerate-mobile-ryzen-up https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-intel-cpu-market-sh... Check out the historical market shares in the links. Markets have changed in time with respect to computing. People are opting for mobile devices which use arm processors(even breaking into server space). Unless the behemoths in the industry adapt, their industry may not exist in the future. That is innovation and disruption happening right now. Intel had in 2018 90.4% of the desktop/notebook/server market with 96.8% of the server market share. Maybe this is only Intel vs. AMD stats. Are servers run with other processors? Standard oil(Arguably the most notorious monopolistic company in the history of the United States) by comparison: "At one point, it was believe that they controlled somewhere between 88% to 91% of all the oil in the United States"

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.md/UOrGM https://archive.md/UOrGM

vmception 6y ago

sells a few $ billion in shares for the rainy day fund. buy some treasuries, wait for a few quarters.

diogenescynic 6y ago

I really hope they start splitting tech giants up. It would be a boom for the economy, jobs, and create much needed competition.

ghastmaster 6y ago
> It would be a boom for the economy Why? Are they inefficient? Have their resources been mis-allocated? > jobs For the sake of jobs? That pay more or less? > create much needed competition Are they charging too much?
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  It's dangerous for us all to be so dependent on a few companies. I doubt that's what motivates the DoJ in this case, but right now, if you have a problem with Google, you have to post a cri de coeur on Twitter or Hacker News and hope it embarrasses somebody at Google enough to take action on your behalf. More competitors in the advertising and search space would certainly help, or at least keep the situation from getting worse. As for Amazon, the antitrust enforcers should have come down on them like a ton of bricks the moment it appeared that they were leveraging internal business intelligence to compete with their own sellers. I use Amazon constantly, I have an enormous amount of respect for them, and I value their services a great deal, but come on. There's no point in even having antitrust laws if they don't apply in this instance.
  - Armic 6y ago
    Re: Amazon, many companies do the same thing (e.g. CVS, Target, Costco). With Costco in particular, Kirkland products are higher quality and cheaper than the competition in almost all categories they are in, which is a benefit to me as a consumer. Should Kirkland be broken off just because other companies can't compete with it? If not, what's the justification for Amazon?
    - CamperBob2 6y ago
      The victims are the third-party sellers. Store brands are a completely different subject. They are purchased and licensed from the manufacturers. Do you think Costco has a factory making paper towels someplace, next door to their factory making alkaline batteries?

Despegar 6y ago

This antitrust case is the most straightforward one for prosecutors to win. It's been a long time coming and the FTC would have brought one during the Obama administration if they weren't so captured by the tech industry and Google in particular [1][2]. I expect Google will lose their antitrust cases globally. Cases against other tech companies like Facebook and Amazon seem less certain, but I haven't really thought about antitrust theories too deeply for them. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-of-google-1426793274 https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323689604578221971197494496 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323689604578221...

foxtr0t 6y ago
Isn't settlement far more likely than losing all the way through appeals? And in what way is it straightforward? Does it not require a new interpretation of antitrust law? Google isn't using monopoly power to increase prices for consumers.
- nojito 6y ago
  >Google isn't using monopoly power to increase prices for consumers. This is whole reason for the criminal trial. If they can prove Google stifled competition in the advertising business, it is going to be a cut and dry case.
  - cromwellian 6y ago
    Facebook and Google only account for 50% of all digital ad spending online, so clearly there are lots competition, it's just fragmented.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Antitrust isn't criminal; it's civil.
  - foxtr0t 6y ago
    Last I checked almost all antitrust laws are enforced through civil cases.

hristov 6y ago

Just in time for the elections! Pretty transparent.

kart23 6y ago

What happens to the stock if it's actually broken up? Another split or will the stock price just go down?

quattrofan 6y ago

The big one is Amazon. The revenue from AWS funds the ability for them to crush the high street on the shopping side. They should be forced to sell off AWS as a separate company.

wolco 6y ago
Agreed. Facebook brekup doesn't make sense nor a google. Amazon has two different businesses.
- burmer 6y ago
  At least split off instagram. You're not supposed to simply buy up your competitors.
chrischattin 6y ago
This is all beneficial for the consumer, no? Having a competitive advantage is not illegal. Someone correct me, but isn't the law's intent to protect people from abuse of monopolistic power? Which wouldn't be the case here.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  The laws intent is debated. Some think it is there to protect consumers. Others to protect free enterprise and eliminate the ability to manipulate a marketplace - pro consumer or not. Lately, the outlook of protecting consumers has won out in the US, as that is what the Supremes laid out as a determining factor in the later half of the 20th century. But it wasn't always that way. And the laws aren't written that way. In my opinion, focusing on consumer benefit is a red herring. We are all both consumers and producers. An economy full of companies shutting out competition through market manipulation may be good when I'm trying to buy something, but it's bad when I'm trying to find work, because they can dictate whatever terms they desire in that half of my participation in the economy.

glenstein 6y ago

I don't have a problem with this. But I wonder why there isn't similar willpower to pursue, say, telecoms, banks, Monsanto, Luxxotica, Disney, and the like. Why is it just big tech?

leoh 6y ago
Telecom, etc. are far, far more harmful IMHO
- CaveTech 6y ago
  They're also currently much better regulated
  - papeda 6y ago
    They are? Recent history suggests it's way easier for a random person to build a successful search engine (e.g. DuckDuckGo) than a successful telecom, and I have way more choice of search engine than telecom.
    - maxore44 6y ago
      I definitely won't argue that telecoms play fair, but there are high barriers to entry for starting a telecom. If you start a new telecom only to compete for customers with an existing telecom in a certain area, you have to pay a huge expense to build out your network and your upside will be limited by the ensuing price war. Not arguing that starting a telecom is easier than a search engine, but I think a large part of that difficulty is inherent to the industry.
      - pb7 6y ago
        You’re describing point by point exactly why they’re dangerous monopolies. It’s hard, incumbents have advantage, and even if you do it, incumbents will undercut you because they are already well situated. Consumers have no choice; incumbents frequently at the receiving end of the worst consumer satisfaction. Oh, and taxpayers also paid $400B to lay that infrastructure that apparently newcomers aren’t allowed to have. And yet here we are, going after a search engine that has a dozen alternatives that are just as capable of suiting your needs and new ones able to spring up overnight. It just makes no sense. This is pure manipulation by the government.

pge 6y ago

This is interesting because it seems like the DOJ's definition of monopoly is changing, which I think is a good thing. Since the late 80s (roughly), antitrust litigation has only been brought on the basis of a monopoly's negative impact on consumer prices (i.e. does the existence of a monopoly cause the consumer to have to pay higher prices?). That ignores monopolies that impair the ability of smaller companies to enter markets (which is one of the issues raised with respect to some of the current internet giants). Prior to the 1980s, this latter kind of monopoly would have been subject to scrutiny and possibly litigation by the DOJ, but since then it has been ignored.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Planet Money did a pretty good episode on this last year: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-tech https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/anti...
nojito 6y ago
Barriers of Entry are not related to antitrust. Can you share some instances of this being true in the 80s?
- nojito 6y ago
  It’s pretty ridiculous that the top comment in this thread is 100% wrong.
mrkramer 6y ago
Google's dominant market position was achieved through market competition not through impairing the ability of smaller companies to enter markets. Even in Google Chrome you can pick DuckDuckGo and Ecosia as your default search engine. Most of Chrome users probably never heard of those two search engines. For example would YouTube be successful as it is today if it wasn't Google's resources and knowledge to skyrocket it? I think not.
- xoxoy 6y ago

akersten 6y ago

I will continue to believe that this is another tentacle of William Barr's political harassment of Google and tech in general until he leads the same crusade against other 'monopolies' of the same degree like Comcast, Apple, Boeing, Amazon, United Airlines, etc.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Even if it is, it could set a precedent that makes it easier for a future, less corrupt administration. I don't know if the good necessarily outweighs the bad, but maybe it does.
- dantheman 6y ago
  Yeah, because the government going after private organizations with vague mandates is a clear way to avoid corruption. /S This is a continuation of politics trying to skim money off of tech and funnel it to thier favored constituents - it's straight up corruption.
  - barrkel 6y ago
    Democracy is about setting the rules for society, including how to reallocate some fraction of private resources according to a popular mandate. This doesn't mean its corruption. You need more qualification to call it that. (Not saying that the Trump admin isn't corrupt. I'm rather saying that your statement is too broad, and it fits almost all generally accepted democratic governance.)
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      It’s possible to be corrupt with a democratic mandate. Levying taxes is one thing, sending the justice department after companies because they are out of favor with the current administration is obviously another.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      I wonder if you would say that if the government took your property under eminent domain so that Walmart could build a store.

MattGaiser 6y ago

The big problem with this is the extreme mediocrity of every other industry. Amazon and Google are winning everything because none of their competitors have even attempted to do better than they did 10 years ago. Amazon should have won in very few of the markets it entered. Instead, its competitors just decided to lie down and die, with a couple of yelps on their way to their death.

chrischattin 6y ago
DuckDuckGo has a better search engine than Google right now, imo.
- blululu 6y ago
  I'm curious why you say this. I spent the past two weeks using Bing (which is the source of DDG results, but a little faster and more accurate). For most queries it was fine (finding things on Wikipedia), but last weekend I got into a project that required a lot of css and html (not my day job). There were a lot of cases where the search results were not even close to the thing I wanted. The experience led me to switch my default browser back to Google.
  - tristan957 6y ago
    Oh is this the case? I thought their results came from Yandex. I don't really want to have a Yandex account to get my site indexed, so if this is my out I am all about it.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  DuckDuckGo has better human-centered results, but they miss a lot of the more technical stuff.
  - chrischattin 6y ago
    Try using bang syntax for more specific results. Ie: append `!so` to search Stack Overflow, etc. It's similar to Google's `site:stackoverflow.com` but much nicer.

knolax 6y ago

It seems that all the recent cases by the DoJ have been motivated more by a desire to poltically pander than solid legal precedent.

Medicalidiot 6y ago

AWS needs to be spun. That's the largest enabler for a monopolistic company I can think of right now.

joejerryronnie 6y ago

It’s funny how Microsoft has learned that anti-trust has nothing to do with competition and is 100% politics and public perception. Just sell to other businesses and you can do whatever you want.

subroutine 6y ago

Do DOJ rules only apply to Google's operations in the US? Could DOJ also do this to overseas-based companies that operates in the U.S.? Say you break up Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc., and people begin to adopt the platforms like say, Baidu, TikTok, Alibaba, etc. which grow to 90%+ market dominance. Can DOJ bring antitrust lawsuits against Alibaba?

Aperocky 6y ago
Huawei don't even sale their stuff in the US and look at where we are now. DOJ won't just bring the case they'll also find the proverbial WMD in Iraq.

billme 6y ago

Anyone know of any reasons DOJ might be going after Google for reasons unrelated to antitrust issues? Globally, how does breaking up Google benefit the US?

gordon_freeman 6y ago

one thing I always have a hard time understanding. What if a tech giant is considered a Monopoly but it makes my - as a consumer - life easier? I mean having flights tool readily available near Google Search which helps me quickly find a cheap flight without upselling me with hotels and car rentals etc on aggregators like Expedia is something I love and makes my experience better.

throwawayy1001 6y ago
You’re not a consumer though, you’re the product. Google needs to sell eyeballs, so it creates products for free (subsidized by ads) and along the way destroys competition.

LatteLazy 6y ago

It's election session, corporate clients need to pay their dues.

tiborsaas 6y ago

I can't help but think that fighting big tech with anti trust approaches is like fighting the T-1000 with a katana. You can win a few fights, but it just reassembles itself because they will outsmart the challenge adapt to the new situation. If you want real change then you got to be more radical than just separating Google search from Gmail or Instagram from Facebook. I have no idea how, but the goal should be to change their incentives.

paul7986 6y ago

This is good to see as there has been tons of posts here on HN detailing Google abusing their power in the last few years. Prior to I'm guessing 2013 to 2015, Google to many was viewed as the company who actually did no evil & a dream company to work. Maybe them absorbing other company's and their cultures affected them?

StreamBright 6y ago

About time. We need to claim back the free web from corporates like Google and Facebook.

foob4r 6y ago

If this sets a precedent to sue say the telcos or banks or oil companies, I'm all for it.

oneiftwo 6y ago

Interesting, I wonder if it has anything to do with this [0]. Google wanted to play politics by choosing winners and curating results...now they get to face the consequences for abusing such an enormous power 0.https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/google-diversity-inclusion-conservative-programmes-cut https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/google-diversity-i...

papeda 6y ago
How is your link related to antitrust?
- oneiftwo 6y ago
  Google is regularly accused of leaning left and has taken open steps to curate search results and other content in an ostensibly unbiased manner, but one which may disproportionately censor right leaning sources. This is motive for a right leaning government lead by an infamous narcissist to attempt to rein in Google's power over information.

papeda 6y ago

As some variant of millenial, I'm continually bemused by how many of my peers are on board with breaking up "big tech" and use "big tech" products multiple times every single day. If I bring up federal contracting, which is an industry of comparable size, and which is dominated by companies founded well over 50 years ago [1], and which is way more politically opaque, and whose funding they cannot as tax-paying US citizens opt out of, the response is never anything more than "meh". I understand that one is more relevant to daily in-their-face life. These aren't dumb people. They read, argue, write, vote. But the choice of what to agitate for is so odd to me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S._federal_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S...

mthoms 6y ago
I'll take a stab at this. Perhaps it's because the internet (and surrounding technologies) are so much more foundational to society. Without information moving freely and fairly, we'll mostly never learn about any of the other big problems that need addressing (of which, the one you pointed out seems perfectly valid). Also, I think the average person feels more empowered with regards to shaping the future of the internet, than they do with something so entrenched, opaque, political and corrupt (IMHO) as federal contracting.
- papeda 6y ago
  Thanks for the response. The first point makes sense, but it's hard for me to square with breaking up companies. I don't think any of FAANG has played a real censorious role on the internet. I'm just as free to spin up a random webpage to espouse whatever as I was in 1999. People move around the web differently, but I can still send it to whomever I want. I could also see an argument that AMP and similar technologies hurt journalism, but I hardly ever see that claimed. If it's a question of agency, to me it feels much better to "vote with my feet" and not patronize companies I dislike than to write my congressperson and receive a form response from some intern. You may be right that people just expect better from the internet than federal contracting.
gerash 6y ago

onewhonknocks 6y ago

IMHO they're not a monopoly, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Traditional monopolies "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted." In this case, the supply of a good or service (social networking, webpage indexing and searching) are not controlled by Facebook and Google because they aren't finite resources. Anyone can index the web and anyone can build a social network and Google/Facebook aren't going to crush you with lawsuits or some other nefarious tactic to maintain their position (AFAIK). Entry of new producers of these services is not prevented or highly restricted. New social networks and search engines pop up all the time. What Facebook and Google have is massive, large scale user loyalty. Despite alternatives existing (Bing, Mastadon, DuckDuckGo, Myspace, etc.), users are voluntarily choosing to use Google and Facebook. This is not a monopoly. I think we need a new term for this situation.

runawaybottle 6y ago
Religion comes to mind.
lhorie 6y ago
"If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product" is how the old adage goes. If users are the product, then couldn't one argue that it's a monopoly over the supply of users?
- nycdatasci 6y ago
  I think this is a good point. Users are the product. From a typical consumer's perspective, there are other viable options for google-like services. From the perspective of a small business trying to target a specific audience with ads, are there viable alternatives?
dontreact 6y ago
No one can build a search engine as good as Google without the data flowing through it every day. That have so many click logs to train their models and see what works, there is just no way to compete. If all Google engineers left at the same time, Google would still probably end up dominant by hiring new folks to get things back up and running. No amount of human labor will be able to close that data gap.

sub7 6y ago

About fucking time. Search is the big one but please don't neglect Android and Chrome. And take Apple to task as well - their app store policies and new app signing requirements for OSX are absurd. Amazon has just started abusing it's monopoly so they'll be in the next antitrust wave I imagine and get away here. Don't even get me started on Whatsapp. Consistently anti-user and competition crushing behaviour in tech should be dealt with forcefully. Not some 5 billion $ chickenshit fine please.

nothis 6y ago
I don’t care about search. This should be about chrome.

jorblumesea 6y ago

While it's probably true that most of the tech companies have some form of platform monopolies, William Barr, out of all people, is not to be trusted. Hatchet man through and through. The motives here are entirely political. Notice that the ISPs, telecom industry in general, defense industries are left out of this discussion. Tech companies lean left, largely donate to the Democrats, and have been the focus of conservative groups for years as they are considered "biased" towards those on the Left. Like many things about Trump's administration, it's about revenge against those who oppose him, be they companies, state or individuals.

techntoke 6y ago

They'd me much better off having them open source YouTube and/or Gmail. I don't really think Google as a whole is an evil corporation, and there are a lot worse companies out there with a clear monopoly.

davesque 6y ago

I think this was a long time coming. However, I don't trust the current administration's motives for doing it. My instinct is that this is just some behind-the-scenes string pulling to eliminate an entity that is seen more as a political threat than an economic one.

yalogin 6y ago

Wonder how long before the DoJ focuses on Amazon too.

bilekas 6y ago

I'm sure I don't need to point it out but: If we believe for a moment, this is a play against Google's liberal position, or at the very least Google's employees liberal outlook.. (I will try to pull up references). Lets say it's true: These actions are by all accounts the same as the old communist states.. Only this time they're under the guise of legal proceedings which have some precedent. Americans would usually be so alergic to the idea of such a thought that there would be uproar.. But nationalism and faith in a leader/idea has prevailed. I would argue that it's super rich for the Justice Dept to be worried about antitrust all of a sudden, as a European, I've been fortunate to be protected far better than the US over the years by why of data protection laws. Also knowing Google and other major tech companies penchant for moving their headquarters abroad (Ireland for example), its super interesting to see a swift interest in antitrust.. The US has had, and still does I believe, a huge fight to get chip & pin on debit and credit cards because of insurance liability.. But hey.. Those tech companies.. Gotta get them first. I'm no tinfoil hat wearer, but if it walks like a duck .

JaceLightning 6y ago

Why not Apple???? I don't understand. Apples has more than 50% of the phone marketplace AND locks everything down. They also have twice the revenue of Google.

JBReefer 6y ago
Apple has 10% of the market, depending on where you look. The high penetration in NYC and SF is an aberration.
- samfisher83 6y ago
  They have 45% in the US. The fact that only approved apps can be installed should be taken to court.
samfisher83 6y ago
They really should be.

ilaksh 6y ago

We need to replace the Google platforms with distributed public ones.

cracker_jacks 6y ago

Regardless of any one's opinion about this being right or wrong, good or bad, Google has spent enormous resources preparing for this moment. From lobbying efforts to the Alphabet restructuring, Google has been acutely aware of this possibility years ago. This will not be an easy case for the states.

marmada 6y ago

A take: monopoly in tech is good. Because Google/Amazon/FB have so much money they can do things that push tech forward as a whole. Think about the revolutionary improvements Google has made towards data centers, AWS, and all the research/open source contributions these companies have done. Unlike other monopolies (telecom, defense contracting) etc. where the monopoly is used to stagnate innovation (see Comcast being terrible), here the monopoly leads to more innovation. Smaller companies can't embark on Google-sized projects. Sidenote: I'm pretty sure this lawsuit is just a political attack. It seems reasonable that other monopolies in healthcare/defense/etc. are much much worse, yet they aren't "liberal"/"blue" companies, so there are no lawsuits. Disclosure: I'm interning at Google. I don't think this matters at all, but someone called me out on this in the comments.

bhahn 6y ago
I don’t think comparing monopolies across industries is justification for a monopoly in tech. A more telling comparison would be monopoly in tech vs no monopoly in tech.
pdonis 6y ago
> here the monopoly leads to more innovation More innovation in what? And as compared to what? The innovations you mention are all addressing issues that only huge tech giants like Google have anyway. And they are all funded by the ad-supported business model, which IMO is a negative that outweighs those positive contributions. Plus, the ad supported business model means users only get the benefit of any innovations Google makes when it increases Google's ad income. That incentive is not well aligned with the needs of users. How many times has Google discontinued a popular application because it wasn't making them enough money? A company in Google's position is exactly the company that could figure out how to get a billion users to pay them directly for services those users want, instead of using their eyeballs as commodities, but Google has put zero effort towards that highly desirable innovation. We also don't see all the innovations that are not happening because the people that would have made them are being paid by Google and other tech giants to look for new ways to capture more eyeballs instead. > I'm pretty sure this lawsuit is just a political attack. It seems reasonable that other monopolies in healthcare/defense/etc. are much much worse, yet they aren't "liberal"/"blue" companies, so there are no lawsuits. If this hypothesis were correct, we would have expected to see lawsuits against those other monopolies during, say, the Obama administration. But we didn't. The lawsuit is specifically stated in the article to be targeted at the ad-supported business model, so the obvious inference is that all the issues with that business model that have come up over the years have finally built up enough political pressure that the government feels it has to do something about it.

dvduval 6y ago

I think to myself how I would probably be just fine if the Google search engine became a public service tomorrow and all advertisements were removed, or perhaps only a small area of the page were allowed to be used to make enough money to pay the costs of upkeep. I'm reminded of how I was so enamored by the internet during the age of the directory. Humans assembled information to share with each other, and there were different search engines you could use as well. It was just so much more interesting at the time. There are still wonderful examples of information being assembled by humans like Wikipedia. But these types of sites struggle to have enough money to operate, while other companies just dominate everything, especially anything that involves money. That's how the market works. But there are certain things the way having libraries, police, firefighters, maybe you can health insurance, where if profit is the only thing that's going to be considered, it just creates a society that is less worthwhile. Perhaps the search engine needs to be considered a public service.

cameronbrown 6y ago
Right. Just like how publicly funded broadcasters have never promoted any kind of propaganda, a publicly funded search engine will be politically neutral in every way. Who funds this public service? The US? Everyone? Well I don't live in the US, why should I have to fund your public service? What if I don't want to use Google, but DuckDuckGo instead? (You see, the arguments go on and on...) Private sector companies done right (aka incentives align correctly) are inherently more trustworthy than public sector. Disclosure: I do work for Google, but I've held these opinions for a long time.

SupriseAnxiety 6y ago

Good article/video.

cageface 6y ago

I think some antitrust enforcement in tech is overdue. But it needs to be applied broadly and fairly across the entire industry. Singling out single companies is just picking winners and losers. Making big acquisitions much more difficult and reviewing the big acquistitions of the last decade would be the right place to start in my opinion.

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
Thankfully USA has provisions codified in law for this kind of thing. It was famously enforced against Microsoft. Now enforce it against Google. And then do it against Facebook.

v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago

I think it‘s kind of funny that there was an article today about Google‘s Pixel division being disjointed and not integrated enough with the Android division. Maybe part of the reason for the publics perception of Google‘s teams and divisions seemingly operating in an independent and chaotic manner is a way of minimizing the attack surface for antitrust accusations.

dodobirdlord 6y ago
Integration is hard. The amount of work to keep good integration between all services in a business grows as the square of the number of services. Missing “obvious” integrations is just a natural consequence of being large.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The amount of work to keep good integration between all services in a business grows as the square of the number of services That's true if each of the services directly integrates with each of the other services—or, more generally, if the number of integrations per service grows proportionally to the total number of services. But the number of service interactions per service seems, IME, to increase sublinearly with number of services, and a decreasing marginal rate.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    Even the effort of being on the lookout for whether two services should naturally integrate with each other scales superlinearly. Eventually you reach a point where most teams don't even know of the existence of most teams.

0x262d 6y ago

Tech is an area where the contradictions inherent in the liberal approach to regulating companies are most clear. Liberal theories of nice capitalism require multiple competing companies on "fair" grounds. But it is obviously annoying and inefficient to have market competition in software most of the time - once a tool is developed, it's nearly free for 100% of people to use it rather than 50%, and it's crucial that all such tools interoperate nicely. Hence why various walled-off social media platforms are annoying and people are squeezed into at most only a couple for a given purpose. When right wingers point out that anti-trust stuff is inefficient, to an extent they're right. The rational thing is to have a "monopoly" that isn't evil. But that means that democratic control shouldn't be after-the-fact, external regulation (shown time and time again to be insufficient and generally bought off) but fundamental to the operating of these companies. In essence, Google makes the case for democratic management of production - socialism - very clear. But the other important part of this theory is it's not just about "what would be nice to have" in some utopian sense. Larger companies have competitive advantages that cause them to grow even faster - some real economies of scale, more political heft, greater bargaining power. This leads to the system being inherently unstable and tending towards concentration, which is apparent in pretty much every sector of tech. Trying to permanently reverse this trend through anti-trust is as nonsensical as suggesting people go back to living in the woods; it is in opposition to the fundamental trends inherent in market economies. The only way we can move is forward, to the resolution of these contradictions by working class ownership of all by all.

0x262d 6y ago
To try to preempt one counterargument: such a system doesn't mean we can no longer have "competing" software projects that do similar things if it is beneficial to compare different approaches. We can easily do that if it's better overall. But in such a case, each approach to a given software problem would be fully open, and developed in coordination with the others and with an understanding of their successes and pitfalls, to maximize productivity. This wouldn't be siloed-off, hostile competition but a scientific, coordinated approach.

rotrux 6y ago

EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND LISTEN. SOME COUNTRY SAID SOME MASSIVE CORPORATION DID SOMETHING.

cavisne 6y ago

Its interesting that Google is the first target here. From my anecdotal experience the last decade has been. Content discovery: Google Reader -> (Twitter, Facebook, Apple Podcasts) Chat: Google Talk/Hangouts -> (Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Imessage, Facetime, Zoom) Product Search: Google -> Amazon Video: Youtube -> (Youtube, Prime Video, Apple TV, Netflix, Tiktok) A lot of these examples are big tech -> big tech but still if anything it seems like the rest of the FANG that have grown their businesses. Obviously any lawsuit doesnt need to win over consumers, but personally I could care less who owns what in adtech.

alexmingoia 6y ago

Google has achieved its market position through providing a service its customers want to use. They have not restricted any competitor. Anyone can easily use another search engine, and Google does nothing to stop them. The US government’s increasing hostility towards peaceful trade is alarming. Google is one of America’s greatest business successes of this century.

dehrmann 6y ago

Looking at that picture, it's amazing how much more put-together Sundar Pichai is than Bill Gates. Some of that might be their individual personalities, some might be that the tech industry has grown up a bit.

kumarvvr 6y ago

Is it possible this is politically motivated?

dbuder 6y ago

I want to see Google get in trouble for saying that an algorithm made a decision when a human did.

nloladze 6y ago

Everyone, breathe a sigh of relief.

deleted 6y ago

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