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What's even the point of adding a bunch of rules to break up a player with less than a third of the market and already in decline? It seems pretty clear that co

What's even the point of adding a bunch of rules to break up a player with less than a third of the market and already in decline? It seems pretty clear that competitors have stepped it up. Meanwhile in Mobile ma bell has reassembled itself and in cable we're stuck with regional monopolies; in healthcare we're happy with the same or greater dominance by total monopolies like for insulin or glasses amongst other goods; likewise in payments with Visa and Mastercard. Smells like political rent seeking to me.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
yingw787 6y ago
"Why cut my fingernails? They'll grow back." - Ephraim, "Munich" (2005)
pessimizer 6y ago
> in healthcare we're happy Are we, though? It sounds like you're saying why go after google when there are so many other companies with similar levels of control over their own markets who we also don't go after. That's not a reasonable objection, unless you can find somebody who thinks that we should go after google, but not go after these other companies.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > That's not a reasonable objection, unless you can find somebody who thinks that we should go after google, but not go after these other companies. But you can -- the US Department of Justice, who are apparently preparing a case against Google and not companies in those other markets.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    So in order to go after one monopolist they must go after all monopolists are once? Can’t they prioritize?
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Which brings us back to the original question -- why are they starting with Google and not the others?
      - heromal 6y ago
        Especially when Time Warner and the other conglomerates have been doing this shit for decades before anyone knew wtf Google was
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
newfeatureok 6y ago
Why do people always say this? Multiple agendas can be pursued simultaneously
- Avicebron 6y ago
  It's an attempt to deflect the issue at hand by putting up some straw men, they say it because they feel personally attacked that their monopolist daddy is under some fire for world scale abuse and bad faith.
- CPLX 6y ago
  The person you're replying to is a current Google employee.
  - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/10/amazon-facebook-google-political-allies-antitrust/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/10/amazon-... https://twitter.com/william_fitz/status/1270740531081932801?s=20 https://twitter.com/william_fitz/status/1270740531081932801?... Googlers downvoted and flagged a comment that raised the possibility of astroturfing. Looks like we hit a nerve. Their employer is spending millions trying to sway public opinion.
    - dang 6y ago
      I downvoted and flagged your comment and am no googler. It's against HN's rules to accuse other users of astroturfing without evidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Even if another user works for Google and is commenting about Google, a lot of people comment based on what they know or how they feel from work. Nothing could be more natural than to do that, so it's not evidence of an organized campaign. Moreover, it's not something we'd want to suppress on Hacker News, because we don't want to disincentivize [1] people from showing up here to talk about what they know, and for most of us, what we work on is our area of greatest knowledge. Should an employee of $CO disclose that they work for $CO whenever they comment on a topic that's related to $CO? Arguably that would be courteous to other users. But not doing it is certainly less discourteous than accusing someone else of being an astroturfer or shill, and the implication that someone was paid to post an HN comment rather than expressing a sincerely held view is a slur. There is plenty of past explanation about HN's no-astroturfing-accusations rule at [2]. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20disincent&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
grandmczeb 6y ago
I think it's pretty clear what the motivation is if you look at who's pushing for this. - Large publishers and news agencies who have seen declining revenues due to increased competition for ads. - Left-leaning people who believe large companies are inherently bad for society. - Right-leaning people who believe "big tech" is biased against them. Its also worth noting who's not pushing for this. - Advertisers. - General consumers.
- bsanr2 6y ago
  >General consumers But are they pushing against it? Would they, if asked?
  - pphysch 6y ago
    If the verdict involved something like "your Google account will no longer work with X service" there would definitely be a lot of consumer pushback
    - dontblink 6y ago
      Or if you now have to pay for X what you used to get for free
      - bsanr2 6y ago
        Google already does this, bolstered by their monopoly. You used to be able to listen to Youtube videos with the screen off without paying them.
        heromal 6y ago
        YouTube vanced ftw
    - bsanr2 6y ago
      That's an assumption. Severing the financial tie might not necessarily fully sever the operational relationship. Obviously Google would be pushing that narrative hard, but it would be relatively easy to push back and say, "Separate companies with a non-exclusive relationship would still be lucrative and so the two companies that result from this action aren't going to give that up just to spite consumers/regulators."
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I have a big problem when people talk about Google only having "a third of the market", and counting total digital ad spend as that market. For example, I bet that if you looked at certain industries of people selling things online (for example, plumbers, attorneys, hotels, etc.) you'd find that nearly 100% of businesses spend money on Google. Sure, they may spread ad spend around (e.g. lots of businesses uses Facebook for brand awareness and Google for targeted search marketing), but these businesses don't see not spending on Google as an option. If there were real competition, these businesses would have a choice to spend these dollars somewhere else, but the fact is that Google is so dominant in search that for most companies the options are "pay the Google tax" and "go out of business". That doesn't feel like a market with healthy competition.
- smallnamespace 6y ago
  If you cut any industry finely enough, you will find a monopoly. The pizza restaurant next door is a monopolist in the pizza category on my street. So if you don’t want policy to be completely arbitrary, you’ll need some principles to follow when drawing industry boundaries.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    > The pizza restaurant next door is a monopolist in the pizza category on my street. That's ridiculous. Sure, it may be easiest to order from the guy next door, but if you don't like the pizza next door, you can easily call the guy 3 blocks down the street. My point is you have options when it comes to pizza. There are many types of businesses that simply do not have any options besides Google. Don't believe me? Ask literally anyone who works in digital advertising. If you were planning any kind of digital ad campaign that relied on search, and you said you weren't going to spend on Google, they'd think you were insane. "Oh yeah, I've decided to put all my search ad spend on Bing." It sounds ridiculously laughable just writing it out.
    - aaronAgain 6y ago
      I work for Bing. Awwww, man. ;-)
chrisco255 6y ago
We've got 5G on the way with the 3-way mobile mobile in the U.S. plus Space X's Starlink on the way: https://www.starlink.com/ https://www.starlink.com/. All this will provide competition for cable companies big time. As for payments, the Visa/MC/Amex hegemony will get challenged by crypto. Ethereum's scalability is rapidly approaching Visa scale and with stablecoins and DeFi skyrocketing in popularity, it's going to be an interesting thing to watch.
- modeless 6y ago
  Starlink is not competition for cable companies, unfortunately. Any area dense enough for cable is too dense for Starlink. There may be more competition in wireless carriers than wired ISPs, but that's not saying much. It's still not nearly the competitive market it should be especially with even more consolidation happening recently.
adventured 6y ago
Google's ad business has doubled in size in 3 1/2 years. They're not in decline and neither is their ad business. They'll be at $200 billion in sales soon; they're one of the largest, most powerful corporations in world history. Amazon's ad business is a small fraction the size of Google. Facebook's ad sales are less than 1/2 that of Google. Market share isn't the only factor to consider in pursuing anti-trust. However if it's market share you're interested in: Google has three other monopoly positions and their ad business is the cornerstone that makes it all function, providing an excellent reason to target the ad business to inflict a reduction in total system power in one shot. This is the proper way to view the giant tech companies: with a holistic view of how they maintain and integrate their overall monopoly positions and extend them, rather than focusing on very narrow abuses.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
"What's even the point of adding a bunch of rules to break up a player with less than a third of the market and already in decline?" The market they are defining does not include Facebook, Amazon or other "walled gardens". Details in the PDF. The "why not look at other industries/companies" argument is old, tired and makes little sense. Looking at one company/industry does not prevent AGs or DOJ from looking at another.
- scarface74 6y ago
  So if you slice “the market” granularly enough and squint, then there is a monopoly. If I had a general consumer business, I would much rather use FB advertising because they know more about their users than Google.
  - perrylaj 6y ago
    If you had a general consumer business and used both, you'd probably drop Facebook after finding that they don't translate into revenue growth at nearly the same rate. If you didn't, you'd still likely find that your return on investment is far better with Google ad buys. At least, that was my experience with a lifestyle/hobby product. So many leads from Facebook were simply garbage, and the numbers seemed, well, let's just say questionable. Again, your mileage may differ, but FB knowing more about people didn't seem to matter for me. When it came down to it, a dollar spent with Google was far better than a dollar spent with FB.
  - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
    That's only you, though. Plus you don't have a consumer business. Not very persuasive. The "choice" described in the paper is not between Facebook and Google, it is between Google and nothing. According the the authors, Facebook does not particpate in the business of ads for the "open web".
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Who cares if FB participates in the “open web” when the majority of adults in the US have a FB Account and probably spend more time on FB than anywhere else?
warent 6y ago
I've never heard Visa or Mastercard characterized as monopolies before. Is that true? I guess I always just thought they were so regulated that nobody wants to try and enter the market (except Discover who I happen to bank with) Not to be too tangential here but does anyone know if Visa/Mastercard monopoly has a negative affect on the consumer right now? I havent noticed one, so it must be a lot more subtle than, say, internet / cable monopolies.
- Avshalom 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_Card#Business_developments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_Card#Business_develop...
- threeseed 6y ago
  The payment one is just ridiculous and completely wrong. Credit cards are already competitive i.e. Visa, MasterCard, American Express. And the payment space is one of the most dynamic and competitive around. Endless amounts of new startups and bigger players in digital payments e.g. PayPal.
  - dlubarov 6y ago
    > Visa, MasterCard, American Express Add Discover and you essentially have a complete list of credit networks in the US. The other offerings you see are mostly white label products built on top of the usual credit networks. I wouldn't consider PayPal a competitor since they don't operate a credit network (although they sometimes facilitate money transfers that don't involve the credit networks). Whenever a physical credit card is used in the US, it's almost always the case that one of those four credit networks collects an interchange fee.
prepend 6y ago
And I guess 90s Microsoft didn’t have a monopoly if you counted all embedded OSes and all software and all hardware devices with software. There are other monopolies and Google isn’t alone, but I think if this were political then Twitter and Facebook would be bigger targets. Maybe it’s petty because Google completely bungled the Congressional shaming.
logicslave 6y ago
This! I would love to see google broken up and admittedly dislike the company. But I think that they are declining on their own.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
Are Google's lobbying efforts considered to be rent-seeking?
thayne 6y ago
Are you disputing that google has monopolies in search, browser, or hosting user-generated videos? Because, as I understand it the argument is google is abusing it's monopoly power in those areas to increase prices for ads.
dessant 6y ago
I think it would be important to disclose your affiliation to Google, especially when you're defending your employer, and arguing against breaking up Google.
ur-whale 6y ago
> Smells like political rent seeking to me. Pleonasm. But fully agree with your point.
john_alan 6y ago
Why do you consider google in decline??
- andromeduck 6y ago
  I think it's because Sundar lacks strategic vision and/or lacks the courage to disturb the power structure/struggle below him. He's a Ballmer.
  - john_alan 6y ago
    Ah makes sense.
cirno 6y ago
I hope the anti-trust investigation focuses on search. They have an obscene monopoly on search, built largely on the massive amounts of our personal data they have access to (through Chrome, Gmail, YouTube and so on), even though their product has been stagnating and returning worse and worse results for the better part of the past decade. We need real competition there and it doesn't seem like Bing and its clones (Duckduckgo and so on) are going to get us there. They are at too big a disadvantage out the gate.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

yingw787 6y ago

"Why cut my fingernails? They'll grow back." - Ephraim, "Munich" (2005)

pessimizer 6y ago

> in healthcare we're happy Are we, though? It sounds like you're saying why go after google when there are so many other companies with similar levels of control over their own markets who we also don't go after. That's not a reasonable objection, unless you can find somebody who thinks that we should go after google, but not go after these other companies.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> That's not a reasonable objection, unless you can find somebody who thinks that we should go after google, but not go after these other companies. But you can -- the US Department of Justice, who are apparently preparing a case against Google and not companies in those other markets.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  So in order to go after one monopolist they must go after all monopolists are once? Can’t they prioritize?
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Which brings us back to the original question -- why are they starting with Google and not the others?
    - heromal 6y ago
      Especially when Time Warner and the other conglomerates have been doing this shit for decades before anyone knew wtf Google was
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

newfeatureok 6y ago

Why do people always say this? Multiple agendas can be pursued simultaneously

Avicebron 6y ago
It's an attempt to deflect the issue at hand by putting up some straw men, they say it because they feel personally attacked that their monopolist daddy is under some fire for world scale abuse and bad faith.
CPLX 6y ago
The person you're replying to is a current Google employee.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/10/amazon-facebook-google-political-allies-antitrust/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/10/amazon-... https://twitter.com/william_fitz/status/1270740531081932801?s=20 https://twitter.com/william_fitz/status/1270740531081932801?... Googlers downvoted and flagged a comment that raised the possibility of astroturfing. Looks like we hit a nerve. Their employer is spending millions trying to sway public opinion.
  - dang 6y ago
    I downvoted and flagged your comment and am no googler. It's against HN's rules to accuse other users of astroturfing without evidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Even if another user works for Google and is commenting about Google, a lot of people comment based on what they know or how they feel from work. Nothing could be more natural than to do that, so it's not evidence of an organized campaign. Moreover, it's not something we'd want to suppress on Hacker News, because we don't want to disincentivize [1] people from showing up here to talk about what they know, and for most of us, what we work on is our area of greatest knowledge. Should an employee of $CO disclose that they work for $CO whenever they comment on a topic that's related to $CO? Arguably that would be courteous to other users. But not doing it is certainly less discourteous than accusing someone else of being an astroturfer or shill, and the implication that someone was paid to post an HN comment rather than expressing a sincerely held view is a slur. There is plenty of past explanation about HN's no-astroturfing-accusations rule at [2]. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20disincent&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

grandmczeb 6y ago

I think it's pretty clear what the motivation is if you look at who's pushing for this. - Large publishers and news agencies who have seen declining revenues due to increased competition for ads. - Left-leaning people who believe large companies are inherently bad for society. - Right-leaning people who believe "big tech" is biased against them. Its also worth noting who's not pushing for this. - Advertisers. - General consumers.

bsanr2 6y ago
>General consumers But are they pushing against it? Would they, if asked?
- pphysch 6y ago
  If the verdict involved something like "your Google account will no longer work with X service" there would definitely be a lot of consumer pushback
  - dontblink 6y ago
    Or if you now have to pay for X what you used to get for free
    - bsanr2 6y ago
      Google already does this, bolstered by their monopoly. You used to be able to listen to Youtube videos with the screen off without paying them.
      - heromal 6y ago
        YouTube vanced ftw
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    That's an assumption. Severing the financial tie might not necessarily fully sever the operational relationship. Obviously Google would be pushing that narrative hard, but it would be relatively easy to push back and say, "Separate companies with a non-exclusive relationship would still be lucrative and so the two companies that result from this action aren't going to give that up just to spite consumers/regulators."

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

I have a big problem when people talk about Google only having "a third of the market", and counting total digital ad spend as that market. For example, I bet that if you looked at certain industries of people selling things online (for example, plumbers, attorneys, hotels, etc.) you'd find that nearly 100% of businesses spend money on Google. Sure, they may spread ad spend around (e.g. lots of businesses uses Facebook for brand awareness and Google for targeted search marketing), but these businesses don't see not spending on Google as an option. If there were real competition, these businesses would have a choice to spend these dollars somewhere else, but the fact is that Google is so dominant in search that for most companies the options are "pay the Google tax" and "go out of business". That doesn't feel like a market with healthy competition.

smallnamespace 6y ago
If you cut any industry finely enough, you will find a monopoly. The pizza restaurant next door is a monopolist in the pizza category on my street. So if you don’t want policy to be completely arbitrary, you’ll need some principles to follow when drawing industry boundaries.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > The pizza restaurant next door is a monopolist in the pizza category on my street. That's ridiculous. Sure, it may be easiest to order from the guy next door, but if you don't like the pizza next door, you can easily call the guy 3 blocks down the street. My point is you have options when it comes to pizza. There are many types of businesses that simply do not have any options besides Google. Don't believe me? Ask literally anyone who works in digital advertising. If you were planning any kind of digital ad campaign that relied on search, and you said you weren't going to spend on Google, they'd think you were insane. "Oh yeah, I've decided to put all my search ad spend on Bing." It sounds ridiculously laughable just writing it out.
  - aaronAgain 6y ago
    I work for Bing. Awwww, man. ;-)

chrisco255 6y ago

We've got 5G on the way with the 3-way mobile mobile in the U.S. plus Space X's Starlink on the way: https://www.starlink.com/ https://www.starlink.com/. All this will provide competition for cable companies big time. As for payments, the Visa/MC/Amex hegemony will get challenged by crypto. Ethereum's scalability is rapidly approaching Visa scale and with stablecoins and DeFi skyrocketing in popularity, it's going to be an interesting thing to watch.

modeless 6y ago
Starlink is not competition for cable companies, unfortunately. Any area dense enough for cable is too dense for Starlink. There may be more competition in wireless carriers than wired ISPs, but that's not saying much. It's still not nearly the competitive market it should be especially with even more consolidation happening recently.

adventured 6y ago

Google's ad business has doubled in size in 3 1/2 years. They're not in decline and neither is their ad business. They'll be at $200 billion in sales soon; they're one of the largest, most powerful corporations in world history. Amazon's ad business is a small fraction the size of Google. Facebook's ad sales are less than 1/2 that of Google. Market share isn't the only factor to consider in pursuing anti-trust. However if it's market share you're interested in: Google has three other monopoly positions and their ad business is the cornerstone that makes it all function, providing an excellent reason to target the ad business to inflict a reduction in total system power in one shot. This is the proper way to view the giant tech companies: with a holistic view of how they maintain and integrate their overall monopoly positions and extend them, rather than focusing on very narrow abuses.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

"What's even the point of adding a bunch of rules to break up a player with less than a third of the market and already in decline?" The market they are defining does not include Facebook, Amazon or other "walled gardens". Details in the PDF. The "why not look at other industries/companies" argument is old, tired and makes little sense. Looking at one company/industry does not prevent AGs or DOJ from looking at another.

scarface74 6y ago
So if you slice “the market” granularly enough and squint, then there is a monopoly. If I had a general consumer business, I would much rather use FB advertising because they know more about their users than Google.
- perrylaj 6y ago
  If you had a general consumer business and used both, you'd probably drop Facebook after finding that they don't translate into revenue growth at nearly the same rate. If you didn't, you'd still likely find that your return on investment is far better with Google ad buys. At least, that was my experience with a lifestyle/hobby product. So many leads from Facebook were simply garbage, and the numbers seemed, well, let's just say questionable. Again, your mileage may differ, but FB knowing more about people didn't seem to matter for me. When it came down to it, a dollar spent with Google was far better than a dollar spent with FB.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  That's only you, though. Plus you don't have a consumer business. Not very persuasive. The "choice" described in the paper is not between Facebook and Google, it is between Google and nothing. According the the authors, Facebook does not particpate in the business of ads for the "open web".
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Who cares if FB participates in the “open web” when the majority of adults in the US have a FB Account and probably spend more time on FB than anywhere else?

warent 6y ago

I've never heard Visa or Mastercard characterized as monopolies before. Is that true? I guess I always just thought they were so regulated that nobody wants to try and enter the market (except Discover who I happen to bank with) Not to be too tangential here but does anyone know if Visa/Mastercard monopoly has a negative affect on the consumer right now? I havent noticed one, so it must be a lot more subtle than, say, internet / cable monopolies.

Avshalom 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_Card#Business_developments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_Card#Business_develop...
threeseed 6y ago
The payment one is just ridiculous and completely wrong. Credit cards are already competitive i.e. Visa, MasterCard, American Express. And the payment space is one of the most dynamic and competitive around. Endless amounts of new startups and bigger players in digital payments e.g. PayPal.
- dlubarov 6y ago
  > Visa, MasterCard, American Express Add Discover and you essentially have a complete list of credit networks in the US. The other offerings you see are mostly white label products built on top of the usual credit networks. I wouldn't consider PayPal a competitor since they don't operate a credit network (although they sometimes facilitate money transfers that don't involve the credit networks). Whenever a physical credit card is used in the US, it's almost always the case that one of those four credit networks collects an interchange fee.

prepend 6y ago

And I guess 90s Microsoft didn’t have a monopoly if you counted all embedded OSes and all software and all hardware devices with software. There are other monopolies and Google isn’t alone, but I think if this were political then Twitter and Facebook would be bigger targets. Maybe it’s petty because Google completely bungled the Congressional shaming.

logicslave 6y ago

This! I would love to see google broken up and admittedly dislike the company. But I think that they are declining on their own.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

Are Google's lobbying efforts considered to be rent-seeking?

thayne 6y ago

Are you disputing that google has monopolies in search, browser, or hosting user-generated videos? Because, as I understand it the argument is google is abusing it's monopoly power in those areas to increase prices for ads.

dessant 6y ago

I think it would be important to disclose your affiliation to Google, especially when you're defending your employer, and arguing against breaking up Google.

ur-whale 6y ago

> Smells like political rent seeking to me. Pleonasm. But fully agree with your point.

john_alan 6y ago

Why do you consider google in decline??

andromeduck 6y ago
I think it's because Sundar lacks strategic vision and/or lacks the courage to disturb the power structure/struggle below him. He's a Ballmer.
- john_alan 6y ago
  Ah makes sense.

cirno 6y ago

I hope the anti-trust investigation focuses on search. They have an obscene monopoly on search, built largely on the massive amounts of our personal data they have access to (through Chrome, Gmail, YouTube and so on), even though their product has been stagnating and returning worse and worse results for the better part of the past decade. We need real competition there and it doesn't seem like Bing and its clones (Duckduckgo and so on) are going to get us there. They are at too big a disadvantage out the gate.