24 ms·

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 l

by 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
  Does it matter how a monopoly came to be a monopoly?
  - mrkramer 6y ago
    Yea it matters. If monopoly was achieved through market competition then fine, if it was achieved through destroying other companies then it is illegal and unfair. But once dominant market position is achieved company still needs to behave properly and not stifle competition.
    - xoxoy 6y ago
      Gotcha. I would be surprised if the gov couldn’t find some incriminating emails though of executives talking about how to kill Bing when MSFT looked like it was gunning to be a search competitor. We will see though.
      - mrkramer 6y ago
        Believe it or not Android was response to Microsoft's Windows Mobile(Windows Phone) and not to Apple's Iphone. Google was afraid at the time that Microsoft will release it's own "smartphone" and put Bing(Windows Live Search) as default search engine on it. But eventually Windows Phone killed itself and Google is good to go.
    - dvduval 6y ago
      Just following your argument down that road... What if one day there is only one company in the whole world? if they just slowly envelops all the other companies, and perhaps met your definition of this being legal and fair, would that be fine?
    - int_19h 6y ago
      Antitrust legislation is about keeping the markets competitive, because it also keeps them healthy. In that context, it doesn't matter if the monopoly position was achieved "fairly" or "unfairly", but only what effect on the market it has. Coincidentally, this is also how legislation was implemented in this country until 1980s. Which is to say - this is what we did back when our economy was both prosperous and stable. For a good example of just how much teeth anti-trust used to have before it got Borked, read this court opinion in one case from 1962: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/#tab-opinion-1943877 https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/#tab-opi...
shadowgovt 6y ago
This has been a major gap between the American understanding of monopoly protection and the European one. In the European space, protection of smaller business' ability to compete is factored in. But the US space, in general, has not cared if smaller businesses can compete and tends to take a laissez-faire attitude towards business-on-business market pressures. It's the effect of the market on consumers that's paramount. To be honest, I'm not sold on the European-style philosophy. Guilds traditionally empowered tradespeople, but they also had a reputation for holding back innovation and punishing new ideas that didn't fit the existing paradigms. Amazon, for example, has made book-buying so cheap nationally that individual bookstores have trouble competing. Amazon's other failings aside (which should be addressed by sweeping employee / labor protections, not by breaking up Amazon): should Grandma's books be more expensive in general so the local bookstore owner gets to enjoy the lifestyle of self-business-ownership to which he is accustom? Why / why not?
- c1b 6y ago
  Funny how making books cheap is considered a failing.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    Right? That's the thing; it's not. Not by consumers, anyway. Now, French book-sellers, on the other hand, appreciate the law that keeps them in business for aesthetic reasons, whether or not it makes economic sense or they can stay financially competitive when the price of data transmission has crashed past too-small-to-meter-per-word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law
    - sciurus 6y ago
      This is something interesting I was completely unaware of. It's not just France, lots of countries have legally fixed book prices. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price
  - jaredtn 6y ago
xoxoy 6y ago
I’m wondering if the focus is going to be on the search business or how Google stifles competitors on their search results page? I know Yelp for example has long claimed Google downranks their results over Google’s own reviews etc.
xjsuueueje 6y ago
I don't really see the problem with the current definition of a monopoly if consumers are saving money. The Europeans focus more on the sorts of effects you're talking about and they're far from famous for their efficient businesses practices or low consumer prices. Or is the idea that uncompetitive small businesses are valuable in a totally real but difficult to measure way?
thayne 6y ago
Neither of those interpretations really takes into account non-price effects of monopoly on consumers. Such as, say, crippling free ad-blocker plugins on the browser with the most market share.
m463 6y ago
if you had perfect information on everyone, you could have personalized pricing, and people would pay more, some much more. And google has arguably the best information in the world since identifying specific people is their core business.
scarface74 6y ago
I wouldn’t go that far. The only reason that the justice department is going after big tech is because of the President’s personal dislike of the “left coast liberal elite”. Don’t you find it strange that a Republican administration is going after a company for anti-trust? I am not saying that Google hasn’t unfairly competed against small business or they shouldn’t be sued, but this is purely political, not the Justice Department all the sudden caring about the little guy.
- bhl 6y ago
  > Don’t you find it strange that a Republican administration is going after a company for anti-trust? Nope. If anything, there is past precedence from the 2001 Antitrust case against Microsoft [1]. Note in that case, it wasn't about whether consumers were directly harmed, but whether Microsoft was abusing its market power to prevent other entrants into the browser space. Arguably this is very analogous to what Google and Facebook are currently being accused of. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
  - JonathanFly 6y ago
    >> Don’t you find it strange that a Republican administration is going after a company for anti-trust? >Nope. If anything, there is past precedence from the 2001 Antitrust case against Microsoft [1]. Note in that case, it wasn't about whether consumers were directly harmed, but whether Microsoft was abusing its market power to prevent other entrants into the browser space. Arguably this is very analogous to what Google and Facebook are currently being accused of. The President, March 16: >The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google. The Administration is working to remedy this illegal situation. Stay tuned, and send names & events. Thank you Michelle! https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1261626674686447621 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12616266746864476...
- csunbird 6y ago
  /tin-foil hat on Well, no government wants any company to wield more power than them, right? /tin-foil hat off

by pge 6y ago

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
Does it matter how a monopoly came to be a monopoly?
- mrkramer 6y ago
  Yea it matters. If monopoly was achieved through market competition then fine, if it was achieved through destroying other companies then it is illegal and unfair. But once dominant market position is achieved company still needs to behave properly and not stifle competition.
  - xoxoy 6y ago
    Gotcha. I would be surprised if the gov couldn’t find some incriminating emails though of executives talking about how to kill Bing when MSFT looked like it was gunning to be a search competitor. We will see though.
    - mrkramer 6y ago
      Believe it or not Android was response to Microsoft's Windows Mobile(Windows Phone) and not to Apple's Iphone. Google was afraid at the time that Microsoft will release it's own "smartphone" and put Bing(Windows Live Search) as default search engine on it. But eventually Windows Phone killed itself and Google is good to go.
  - dvduval 6y ago
    Just following your argument down that road... What if one day there is only one company in the whole world? if they just slowly envelops all the other companies, and perhaps met your definition of this being legal and fair, would that be fine?
  - int_19h 6y ago
    Antitrust legislation is about keeping the markets competitive, because it also keeps them healthy. In that context, it doesn't matter if the monopoly position was achieved "fairly" or "unfairly", but only what effect on the market it has. Coincidentally, this is also how legislation was implemented in this country until 1980s. Which is to say - this is what we did back when our economy was both prosperous and stable. For a good example of just how much teeth anti-trust used to have before it got Borked, read this court opinion in one case from 1962: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/#tab-opinion-1943877 https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/#tab-opi...

shadowgovt 6y ago

This has been a major gap between the American understanding of monopoly protection and the European one. In the European space, protection of smaller business' ability to compete is factored in. But the US space, in general, has not cared if smaller businesses can compete and tends to take a laissez-faire attitude towards business-on-business market pressures. It's the effect of the market on consumers that's paramount. To be honest, I'm not sold on the European-style philosophy. Guilds traditionally empowered tradespeople, but they also had a reputation for holding back innovation and punishing new ideas that didn't fit the existing paradigms. Amazon, for example, has made book-buying so cheap nationally that individual bookstores have trouble competing. Amazon's other failings aside (which should be addressed by sweeping employee / labor protections, not by breaking up Amazon): should Grandma's books be more expensive in general so the local bookstore owner gets to enjoy the lifestyle of self-business-ownership to which he is accustom? Why / why not?

c1b 6y ago
Funny how making books cheap is considered a failing.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Right? That's the thing; it's not. Not by consumers, anyway. Now, French book-sellers, on the other hand, appreciate the law that keeps them in business for aesthetic reasons, whether or not it makes economic sense or they can stay financially competitive when the price of data transmission has crashed past too-small-to-meter-per-word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law
  - sciurus 6y ago
    This is something interesting I was completely unaware of. It's not just France, lots of countries have legally fixed book prices. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price
- jaredtn 6y ago

xoxoy 6y ago

I’m wondering if the focus is going to be on the search business or how Google stifles competitors on their search results page? I know Yelp for example has long claimed Google downranks their results over Google’s own reviews etc.

xjsuueueje 6y ago

I don't really see the problem with the current definition of a monopoly if consumers are saving money. The Europeans focus more on the sorts of effects you're talking about and they're far from famous for their efficient businesses practices or low consumer prices. Or is the idea that uncompetitive small businesses are valuable in a totally real but difficult to measure way?

thayne 6y ago

Neither of those interpretations really takes into account non-price effects of monopoly on consumers. Such as, say, crippling free ad-blocker plugins on the browser with the most market share.

m463 6y ago

if you had perfect information on everyone, you could have personalized pricing, and people would pay more, some much more. And google has arguably the best information in the world since identifying specific people is their core business.

scarface74 6y ago

I wouldn’t go that far. The only reason that the justice department is going after big tech is because of the President’s personal dislike of the “left coast liberal elite”. Don’t you find it strange that a Republican administration is going after a company for anti-trust? I am not saying that Google hasn’t unfairly competed against small business or they shouldn’t be sued, but this is purely political, not the Justice Department all the sudden caring about the little guy.

bhl 6y ago
> Don’t you find it strange that a Republican administration is going after a company for anti-trust? Nope. If anything, there is past precedence from the 2001 Antitrust case against Microsoft [1]. Note in that case, it wasn't about whether consumers were directly harmed, but whether Microsoft was abusing its market power to prevent other entrants into the browser space. Arguably this is very analogous to what Google and Facebook are currently being accused of. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
- JonathanFly 6y ago
  >> Don’t you find it strange that a Republican administration is going after a company for anti-trust? >Nope. If anything, there is past precedence from the 2001 Antitrust case against Microsoft [1]. Note in that case, it wasn't about whether consumers were directly harmed, but whether Microsoft was abusing its market power to prevent other entrants into the browser space. Arguably this is very analogous to what Google and Facebook are currently being accused of. The President, March 16: >The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google. The Administration is working to remedy this illegal situation. Stay tuned, and send names & events. Thank you Michelle! https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1261626674686447621 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12616266746864476...
csunbird 6y ago
/tin-foil hat on Well, no government wants any company to wield more power than them, right? /tin-foil hat off