6 ms·

I read this story just now and I found it incredibly frustrating -- it reads like a gossip column. Lots of details about who wants to do what and when and who

by nlh 6y ago

I read this story just now and I found it incredibly frustrating -- it reads like a gossip column. Lots of details about who wants to do what and when and who objects, but incredibly light on actual details. What laws are they going to claim Google has broken? Vague hand-waves about "advertising" and "Google is involved in your life" doesn't cut it for me. Does anyone have a source or a hunch of what specific anti-trust laws Google is violating with what specific actions?

paxys 6y ago
That info doesn't exist publicly because the charges haven't been filed yet.
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
Whenever the case is made you will see what they argue.
cblconfederate 6y ago
Google controls advertising on both the supply side and demand side. It's not hard to think ways in which this is anticompetitive. A ton of stuff is black boxes. E.g. are adsense chargebacks real? Are keyword bids fair?
- donor20 6y ago
  Do billboard work? Does a fox ad work? Come on - the company spending the money has MORE visability into what their google ad spend buys them then in almost any other area. I don't even care if I overpay on a "bid" for a spot - the metric I'm using is return on spend. And trust me, the mainline media companies driving this do not promise advertisers "fair" bidding. They have sales people trying to extract every nickle they can (through sometimes horrible accounting practices where they pay different divisions to drive up various "costs").
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    Maybe for you ad price is not an issue. That's like saying the price of steak is not an issue for you. There are a ton of billboard companies and TV channels, so competition is presumed to lead to price discovery and low prices. Google has no competition.
    - donor20 6y ago
      Google has no competition in marketing? Are these serious statements? I can advertise on Instagram, pay social media influencers and the ways to market to folks are literally endless, from postcards, to delivery route saturation campaigns to annoying popups on Hulu videos to microtargeted facebook ads. I hate facebook, don't have the app, but campaigns on facebook at least historically could do amazingly well if you had the targeting down. Historically one paper in town basically got most advertising. Those folks printed money. Classifieds etc. There has been an explosion of marketing opportunities now. I can market on amazon if I think that would yield more (it does sometimes).
      - cblconfederate 6y ago
        Why are you conflating google with all of marketing and TV ads etc? That's like claimingn that airlines and sealines are the same market. Google's competitors are not billboards, they are the (now extinct) other online ad marketplaces. Their problem is that they control the search and display ad marketplace absolutely, they can ask advertisers to pay $100, pay the publisher $1 and nobody will know if they are being scammed because there is no competiting marketplace to compare. https://archive.vn/G8cgI https://archive.vn/G8cgI I also don't see what will be lost if google loses its grip on one part of the equation. Don't you want competition?
        donor20 6y ago
        Huh? Something like 60% goes to website - it's in the agreement. If they are going to try and prove google charged $100 and paid $1 - good luck. Google makes enough money just on their 40%, and can change that % any time. Google could just set their rate to 50% if they wanted if they'd still be competitive. If the DOJ is relying on this type of argument, that google is secretly scamming folks, they are probably toast I think.
  - bergstromm466 6y ago
    > Come on No you come on. Do you really live in a fairytale dream world where corporate crimes are non-existent? Yes it's of course not all Google's fault, and many of the underlying governance systems are fucked up (money system, how new laws are created, IP & property laws, etc.), but where does your instant forgiveness come from towards these massive corporate monopolies? It is all a black box, and we have no idea what's going on. Platform monopolies have started to decide elections. In your perspective, when is the threshold met when we start to admit we have a problem, and we invite social change? What do you get out of campaigning for Google and other corporations? Are you that well paid?
    - dang 6y ago
      This comment breaks the site guidelines badly. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=astroturf%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... has lots more explanation. You've also been posting repeatedly in the flamewar style, unfortunately. We ban accounts that do that, because it's destructive of the site mandate. So could you please not do that any more?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - bergstromm466 6y ago
        Leaving this here as a loving reminder to myself: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapoport-rules-criticism/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...
  - withinboredom 6y ago
    Google has every incentive to find you the least expensive lead, which is not good for you. The least expensive lead is the one that would buy from you even if they didn't see the ad. This means you wasted money, and a lot of it.
    - donor20 6y ago
      But I can judge whether I'm wasting money with google ads vs using TV ads or billboards. Do NPR promise me my sponsorship will result in increased sales or that it's the "lowest" possible price? Maybe some people hearing an NPR sponsorship would have bought from me anyways - is this now a crime?
    - throwaways885 6y ago
      What about when people are bidding on CPA and not CPC? Surely that gives a representative number.
      - cblconfederate 6y ago
        A representative number of what? The real price of the CPA? But google controls both the bid price and the ask price, so it could be arbitrary for all i know.
        donor20 6y ago
        Every other marketing option also is arbitrary. A social influencer doesn't owe you a low price, they will charge what they can. Google will charge what it can for CPA etc.
        cblconfederate 6y ago
        Once more, there are thousands and thousands of influencers, their price is set through competition. Google is only 1 (one) company, no competition to force them to adjust their prices.
- mrkramer 6y ago
  Google's algorithms are trade secrets just like Coca-Cola recipe formula is. You can not expect somebody making billions and revealing their secret "know-how".
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    if coca-cola controlled all the fridges, i d expect them to be broken up though the point of antitrust is not to force companies to give up trade secrets, it's to ensure that there is competition and market alternatives
themgt 6y ago
My guess is there will be multiple lines of attack, but this paper[0] which was also at least implicitly referenced in the recent Congressional hearing seems very likely to be one of them: Approximately 86% of online display advertising space in the U.S. is bought and sold in real-time on electronic trading venues, which the industry calls "advertising exchanges." With intermediaries that route buy and sell orders, the structure of the ad market is similar to the structure of electronically traded financial markets. In advertising, a single company, Alphabet (“Google”), simultaneously operates the leading trading venue, as well as the leading intermediaries that buyers and sellers go through to trade. At the same time, Google itself is one of the largest sellers of ad space globally. This Paper explains how Google dominates advertising markets by engaging in conduct that lawmakers prohibit in other electronic trading markets: Google’s exchange shares superior trading information and speed with the Google-owned intermediaries, Google steers buy and sell orders to its exchange and websites (Search & YouTube), and Google abuses its access to inside information. In the market for electronically traded equities, we require exchanges to provide traders with fair access to data and speed, we identify and manage intermediary conflicts of interest, and we require trading disclosures to help police the market. Because ads now trade on electronic trading venues too, should we borrow these three competition principles to protect the integrity of advertising? [0]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3500919 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3500919
- victor106 6y ago
  This is an awesome paper. What other resources exist to learn in detailed about how the online ad industry works?
  - soared 6y ago
    https://www.thetradedesk.com/edgeacademy https://www.thetradedesk.com/edgeacademy This is free for now and what everyone in this part of the industry is posting to their LinkedIn’s right now.
    - victor106 6y ago
stale2002 6y ago
> what specific anti-trust laws The specific anti trust law would almost certainly be section 2 of the Sherman anti trust act.
skymt 6y ago
Not a gossip column, political reporting. This is appropriate because this is a political story. The subject isn't the case against Google but the internal conflicts in building the case.
ardy42 6y ago
>> Justice Dept. plans to file antitrust charges against Google in coming weeks (nytimes.com) > I read this story just now and I found it incredibly frustrating -- it reads like a gossip column. Lots of details about who wants to do what and when and who objects, but incredibly light on actual details. That's the actual story here, which doesn't appear to be the story you want to read. > What laws are they going to claim Google has broken? Vague hand-waves about "advertising" and "Google is involved in your life" doesn't cut it for me. You will find out when the DOJ files the charges in a month (if the deadline reported here is accurate). They probably haven't even finalized the details you want to know yet (otherwise they probably would have have filed already).
rdiddly 6y ago
Tend to agree, with particular attention to the peeve that hit me in the very first sentence: the phrase "career lawyers." Like I'm supposed to think "Ohh, THESE lawyers are experienced and smart, not like all those hobbyist amateur lawyers the Attorney General of the United States usually consults with! How dare he countermand these particular infallible and always-correct lawyers!!"
- ls612 6y ago
  No, career lawyers is to say they are civil servants, not political appointees.
  - rdiddly 6y ago
    Have never heard the term used that way, and can't find anything about it. Even further off topic - yet not - have search engines' functionality and results quality really degraded this much? Apparently quoting a phrase doesn't even work anymore. I get loads of info on a career AS a lawyer. Anyway, given that a political appointee would presumably be a relative newcomer, and a "career anything" tends to reflect a longer term of experience, are you saying there's no connotation whatsoever of expertise in this usage?
    - lizardmancan 6y ago
      i find it incredibly hard to get over 30 000 RSS subscriptions. beyond websites die in larger numbers than i can find them. its googles fault they are not getting traffic and their problem of fast dying web is solved by not even indexing it which feeds back into the problem. i cant find anything these days even if i know it exists
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by nlh 6y ago

paxys 6y ago

That info doesn't exist publicly because the charges haven't been filed yet.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago

Whenever the case is made you will see what they argue.

cblconfederate 6y ago

Google controls advertising on both the supply side and demand side. It's not hard to think ways in which this is anticompetitive. A ton of stuff is black boxes. E.g. are adsense chargebacks real? Are keyword bids fair?

donor20 6y ago
Do billboard work? Does a fox ad work? Come on - the company spending the money has MORE visability into what their google ad spend buys them then in almost any other area. I don't even care if I overpay on a "bid" for a spot - the metric I'm using is return on spend. And trust me, the mainline media companies driving this do not promise advertisers "fair" bidding. They have sales people trying to extract every nickle they can (through sometimes horrible accounting practices where they pay different divisions to drive up various "costs").
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  Maybe for you ad price is not an issue. That's like saying the price of steak is not an issue for you. There are a ton of billboard companies and TV channels, so competition is presumed to lead to price discovery and low prices. Google has no competition.
  - donor20 6y ago
    Google has no competition in marketing? Are these serious statements? I can advertise on Instagram, pay social media influencers and the ways to market to folks are literally endless, from postcards, to delivery route saturation campaigns to annoying popups on Hulu videos to microtargeted facebook ads. I hate facebook, don't have the app, but campaigns on facebook at least historically could do amazingly well if you had the targeting down. Historically one paper in town basically got most advertising. Those folks printed money. Classifieds etc. There has been an explosion of marketing opportunities now. I can market on amazon if I think that would yield more (it does sometimes).
    - cblconfederate 6y ago
      Why are you conflating google with all of marketing and TV ads etc? That's like claimingn that airlines and sealines are the same market. Google's competitors are not billboards, they are the (now extinct) other online ad marketplaces. Their problem is that they control the search and display ad marketplace absolutely, they can ask advertisers to pay $100, pay the publisher $1 and nobody will know if they are being scammed because there is no competiting marketplace to compare. https://archive.vn/G8cgI https://archive.vn/G8cgI I also don't see what will be lost if google loses its grip on one part of the equation. Don't you want competition?
      - donor20 6y ago
        Huh? Something like 60% goes to website - it's in the agreement. If they are going to try and prove google charged $100 and paid $1 - good luck. Google makes enough money just on their 40%, and can change that % any time. Google could just set their rate to 50% if they wanted if they'd still be competitive. If the DOJ is relying on this type of argument, that google is secretly scamming folks, they are probably toast I think.
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  > Come on No you come on. Do you really live in a fairytale dream world where corporate crimes are non-existent? Yes it's of course not all Google's fault, and many of the underlying governance systems are fucked up (money system, how new laws are created, IP & property laws, etc.), but where does your instant forgiveness come from towards these massive corporate monopolies? It is all a black box, and we have no idea what's going on. Platform monopolies have started to decide elections. In your perspective, when is the threshold met when we start to admit we have a problem, and we invite social change? What do you get out of campaigning for Google and other corporations? Are you that well paid?
  - dang 6y ago
    This comment breaks the site guidelines badly. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=astroturf%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... has lots more explanation. You've also been posting repeatedly in the flamewar style, unfortunately. We ban accounts that do that, because it's destructive of the site mandate. So could you please not do that any more?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - bergstromm466 6y ago
      Leaving this here as a loving reminder to myself: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapoport-rules-criticism/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...
- withinboredom 6y ago
  Google has every incentive to find you the least expensive lead, which is not good for you. The least expensive lead is the one that would buy from you even if they didn't see the ad. This means you wasted money, and a lot of it.
  - donor20 6y ago
    But I can judge whether I'm wasting money with google ads vs using TV ads or billboards. Do NPR promise me my sponsorship will result in increased sales or that it's the "lowest" possible price? Maybe some people hearing an NPR sponsorship would have bought from me anyways - is this now a crime?
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    What about when people are bidding on CPA and not CPC? Surely that gives a representative number.
    - cblconfederate 6y ago
      A representative number of what? The real price of the CPA? But google controls both the bid price and the ask price, so it could be arbitrary for all i know.
      - donor20 6y ago
        Every other marketing option also is arbitrary. A social influencer doesn't owe you a low price, they will charge what they can. Google will charge what it can for CPA etc.
        cblconfederate 6y ago
        Once more, there are thousands and thousands of influencers, their price is set through competition. Google is only 1 (one) company, no competition to force them to adjust their prices.
mrkramer 6y ago
Google's algorithms are trade secrets just like Coca-Cola recipe formula is. You can not expect somebody making billions and revealing their secret "know-how".
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  if coca-cola controlled all the fridges, i d expect them to be broken up though the point of antitrust is not to force companies to give up trade secrets, it's to ensure that there is competition and market alternatives

themgt 6y ago

My guess is there will be multiple lines of attack, but this paper[0] which was also at least implicitly referenced in the recent Congressional hearing seems very likely to be one of them: Approximately 86% of online display advertising space in the U.S. is bought and sold in real-time on electronic trading venues, which the industry calls "advertising exchanges." With intermediaries that route buy and sell orders, the structure of the ad market is similar to the structure of electronically traded financial markets. In advertising, a single company, Alphabet (“Google”), simultaneously operates the leading trading venue, as well as the leading intermediaries that buyers and sellers go through to trade. At the same time, Google itself is one of the largest sellers of ad space globally. This Paper explains how Google dominates advertising markets by engaging in conduct that lawmakers prohibit in other electronic trading markets: Google’s exchange shares superior trading information and speed with the Google-owned intermediaries, Google steers buy and sell orders to its exchange and websites (Search & YouTube), and Google abuses its access to inside information. In the market for electronically traded equities, we require exchanges to provide traders with fair access to data and speed, we identify and manage intermediary conflicts of interest, and we require trading disclosures to help police the market. Because ads now trade on electronic trading venues too, should we borrow these three competition principles to protect the integrity of advertising? [0]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3500919 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3500919

victor106 6y ago
This is an awesome paper. What other resources exist to learn in detailed about how the online ad industry works?
- soared 6y ago
  https://www.thetradedesk.com/edgeacademy https://www.thetradedesk.com/edgeacademy This is free for now and what everyone in this part of the industry is posting to their LinkedIn’s right now.
  - victor106 6y ago

stale2002 6y ago

> what specific anti-trust laws The specific anti trust law would almost certainly be section 2 of the Sherman anti trust act.

skymt 6y ago

Not a gossip column, political reporting. This is appropriate because this is a political story. The subject isn't the case against Google but the internal conflicts in building the case.

ardy42 6y ago

>> Justice Dept. plans to file antitrust charges against Google in coming weeks (nytimes.com) > I read this story just now and I found it incredibly frustrating -- it reads like a gossip column. Lots of details about who wants to do what and when and who objects, but incredibly light on actual details. That's the actual story here, which doesn't appear to be the story you want to read. > What laws are they going to claim Google has broken? Vague hand-waves about "advertising" and "Google is involved in your life" doesn't cut it for me. You will find out when the DOJ files the charges in a month (if the deadline reported here is accurate). They probably haven't even finalized the details you want to know yet (otherwise they probably would have have filed already).

rdiddly 6y ago

Tend to agree, with particular attention to the peeve that hit me in the very first sentence: the phrase "career lawyers." Like I'm supposed to think "Ohh, THESE lawyers are experienced and smart, not like all those hobbyist amateur lawyers the Attorney General of the United States usually consults with! How dare he countermand these particular infallible and always-correct lawyers!!"

ls612 6y ago
No, career lawyers is to say they are civil servants, not political appointees.
- rdiddly 6y ago
  Have never heard the term used that way, and can't find anything about it. Even further off topic - yet not - have search engines' functionality and results quality really degraded this much? Apparently quoting a phrase doesn't even work anymore. I get loads of info on a career AS a lawyer. Anyway, given that a political appointee would presumably be a relative newcomer, and a "career anything" tends to reflect a longer term of experience, are you saying there's no connotation whatsoever of expertise in this usage?
  - lizardmancan 6y ago
    i find it incredibly hard to get over 30 000 RSS subscriptions. beyond websites die in larger numbers than i can find them. its googles fault they are not getting traffic and their problem of fast dying web is solved by not even indexing it which feeds back into the problem. i cant find anything these days even if i know it exists

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]