7 ms·

Justice Department to File Antitrust Suit Against Google

91 points by grej 6y ago

llacb47 6y ago
Change the URL to https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-to-file-long-awaited-antitrust-suit-against-google-11603195203?mod=djemalertNEWS https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-to-file-long... (no paywall)
DSingularity 6y ago
And what about Facebook? Or do they get a pass since they allies of the Republican Party.
- question000 6y ago
  Remember Hacker NewS forbids saying anything against the R Party, remember to to use code words next time. For example: "Zuckerberg is cozy with conservative interests" is fine, but using the R word angers people members of the R party.
mattmcknight 6y ago
"Google owns or controls search distribution channels accounting for about 80% of search queries in the U.S., the officials said. That means Google’s competitors can’t get a meaningful number of search queries and build a scale needed to compete" This doesn't seem right, technically speaking. I see estimates that globally they process 2 trillion searches per year (70,000 per second). 20% of that, 14,000 searches per second, seems a meaningful number of searches to scale to. "The government will allege that Google uses billions of dollars collected from advertisements on its platform to pay mobile-phone manufacturers, carriers and browsers, like Apple Inc.’s Safari, to maintain Google as their preset, default search engine." If the claim is that they are forcing people to use Google Search, reducing that 80% is going to require getting people to choose something else. The way that reducing the market share that is supposed to come from defaults has happened in the past is by forcing users choose which product to use instead. However, I posit that in this case a lot of the 20% comes from situations where there is a non-Google default. For example, one common request from people who notice is how to get Windows/Cortana to use Google instead of Bing. https://www.howtogeek.com/226638/make-the-windows-10-start-menu-and-cortana-search-google-instead-of-bing/ https://www.howtogeek.com/226638/make-the-windows-10-start-m... I would do some user research about what people want to use before assuming that a massive lawsuit with a remedy intended to give them a choice doesn't result in the same situation. My (small scale) research indicates that more than 80% of people want to use Google.
- sushicalculus 6y ago
  > 20% of that, 14,000 searches per second, seems a meaningful number of searches to scale to. This is only part of the story. 20% to me is not really meaningful. More importantly, Google wields power to affect the 80%. 20% is a paltry alternative.
  - mattmcknight 6y ago
    For scale, the % doesn't matter. The implication was that there wasn't enough data to drive ad serving.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    But the argument is that 20% isn’t enough to sustain another business. This is plainly false.
    - voisin 6y ago
      Doesn’t it depend on how competitive the other 20% is? Having one player with 80% and the remaining 20% split amongst 20 companies would indicate market dominance and that the others are competing with each other and not meaningfully with the market leader. I think the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index[0] is used in these cases but I am not sure what it looks like for search. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl–Hirschman_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl–Hirschman_Index
mrkramer 6y ago
And so it begins.
CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Google definitely needs anti-trust scrutiny, but I find the timing suspicious. It smells like a politically-motivated hit job, especially since Facebook didn't get a suit as well.
- sushicalculus 6y ago
  > but I find the timing suspicious. This has been in work for over a year. This is not suspicious to anyone that's seen the headlines
  - CogentHedgehog 6y ago
    The Trump administration has been laying the groundwork for this action for a while, yes. That doesn't mean it's any less suspicious that they actually file suit right before the election.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    It's been transparently motivated by partisan politics the whole time, too, but even if it wasn’t that wouldn't stop the timing of the actual filing from being suspect.
smileysteve 6y ago
> The department will allege that Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc. This is the part I was looking for. Of the tech companies, Alphabet has been the most proactive of creating a business of businesses to avoid antitrust.
- draw_down 6y ago
  Seems it hasn’t worked very well, then.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Of the tech companies, Alphabet has been the most proactive of creating a business of businesses to avoid antitrust. A business of businesses isn't a way to avoid antitrust, its just a trust.
vthallam 6y ago
What would be the goal of this Antitrust? Search seems to be the major theme, how do you break up search? Even if you break up search from Android, the ads revenue from Search is enough to pay another alphabet company(Android) to make Google search default. Even if you give options to users, 90% of them won't care.
- pfortuny 6y ago
  Not that I am pro-nationalization, but if a service can only be truly supported by one actor, it would be better to have it be supported as a publicly owned company or a non-profit foundation. If this happens to worsen the product, then maybe an opportunity arises for competition... Just a non-thought out idea, but the problem with private monopolies is that they are usually unaccountable and irresponsible.
  - sm0ss117 6y ago
    Yea, if something is a Natural monopoly, which search almost certainly is, then it should be a publicly owned utility.
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      No search isn't a Natural Monopoly. There isn't some sole magical search spring that Google taps into or a need to dig search lines beneath everybody's houses like a utility. "It is very useful" does not make something a utility - having exclusivity to a commons is what makes it so. There is nothing exclusive about search - Firefox and many other browsers allow you to choose between multiple search engines at any time without setting a permanent default.
  - SpaceL10n 6y ago
    If we can't get the internet to be classified as a utility, we certainly won't get search to be classified as a utility. Even though, imo, both should be. They are central to everyone's lives. That's a utility.
daniel-s 6y ago
Unless granted by a government, monopolies don't exist in free markets. There is no definition that a rational person could ever use to differentiate between a monopoly or otherwise. This is no different to the Cosa Nostra, a shakedown like any other: Google needs to pay their dues and kiss the ring. Edit: a lot of people disagreeing with me/don't like what I had to say. At least step up to the challenge: provide a rational definition for a monopoly.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  This is wrong. There are markets that naturally lead to monopolies, namely companies and businesses that have large upfront costs, relatively high risk, and small profit margins. A good example is the airline manufacturing industry. It's extremely difficult for new companies to get into airplane manufacturing because it's difficult and there isn't much incentive to do so.
  - daniel-s 6y ago
    You haven't even said what a monopoly is, then gone ahead to explain why they must exist.
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      You didn't define what a monopoly is either, so I kind of assumed you knew the definition... Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of trade in a commodity or service. Of relevance too is a duopoly: a situation in which two suppliers dominate the market for a commodity or service. A complete and single monopoly isn't required for the market to start being inefficient and appear manipulated.
      - daniel-s 6y ago
        Your definition places every single company in the world in the category of monopolist and is therefore absurd. Every single company sells a commodity or service different to their competitors. For example, McDonald's sells burgers, as do Burger King. It's arbitrary (and therefore not something that one could determine rationally) where the line is drawn about what will be considered a product or service. If you want to draw the line at Burger there is no monopoly. If you want to draw he line at Big Mac then McDonald's has a 100% monopoly. Is the line Big Mac specifically, burgers, food? No matter the company and what it sells, you will always be able to come up with a definition of their product narrow or wide enough to find that they sell 100% of that thing when you want to. An example: Epic's complaints about the app stores. Apple has a monopoly on app stores running on iPhones, but not on mobile devices, not on consumer computer devices, not on computer-based gaming devices, not on entertainment services generally. They could never stop people playing Fortnite, but you could always call Apple a monopolist if you chose your definition appropriately. Ultimately, the decision is arbitrary and up to the discretion of a bureaucrat. In the absence of a rational method to determine monopolies the decision becomes one of who the bureaucrat decides to shake down.
kirubakaran 6y ago
More comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24836520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24836520
tssva 6y ago
One of the issues the government raises is Google paying to be the default search engine in browsers. If the government is successful in this suit I expect one of the results will be Google being prevented from continuing this behavior. Get ready for Mozilla to have to make more cuts and Firefox to fade even more. Mozilla may be able to get Bing or someone else to pay to be their default browser engine but with Google being blocked from competing the amount others will offer for the small market share Firefox now occupies will be far less than Google has been paying.
- voisin 6y ago
  Maybe relying on a single customer to pay to be default wasn’t the wisest strategy?
cosmiccatnap 6y ago
Seems to me that they are getting paid to force support for bing from Microsoft.

91 points by grej 6y ago

Change the URL to https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-to-file-long-awaited-antitrust-suit-against-google-11603195203?mod=djemalertNEWS https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-to-file-long... (no paywall)

DSingularity 6y ago

And what about Facebook? Or do they get a pass since they allies of the Republican Party.

question000 6y ago
Remember Hacker NewS forbids saying anything against the R Party, remember to to use code words next time. For example: "Zuckerberg is cozy with conservative interests" is fine, but using the R word angers people members of the R party.

mattmcknight 6y ago

"Google owns or controls search distribution channels accounting for about 80% of search queries in the U.S., the officials said. That means Google’s competitors can’t get a meaningful number of search queries and build a scale needed to compete" This doesn't seem right, technically speaking. I see estimates that globally they process 2 trillion searches per year (70,000 per second). 20% of that, 14,000 searches per second, seems a meaningful number of searches to scale to. "The government will allege that Google uses billions of dollars collected from advertisements on its platform to pay mobile-phone manufacturers, carriers and browsers, like Apple Inc.’s Safari, to maintain Google as their preset, default search engine." If the claim is that they are forcing people to use Google Search, reducing that 80% is going to require getting people to choose something else. The way that reducing the market share that is supposed to come from defaults has happened in the past is by forcing users choose which product to use instead. However, I posit that in this case a lot of the 20% comes from situations where there is a non-Google default. For example, one common request from people who notice is how to get Windows/Cortana to use Google instead of Bing. https://www.howtogeek.com/226638/make-the-windows-10-start-menu-and-cortana-search-google-instead-of-bing/ https://www.howtogeek.com/226638/make-the-windows-10-start-m... I would do some user research about what people want to use before assuming that a massive lawsuit with a remedy intended to give them a choice doesn't result in the same situation. My (small scale) research indicates that more than 80% of people want to use Google.

sushicalculus 6y ago
> 20% of that, 14,000 searches per second, seems a meaningful number of searches to scale to. This is only part of the story. 20% to me is not really meaningful. More importantly, Google wields power to affect the 80%. 20% is a paltry alternative.
- mattmcknight 6y ago
  For scale, the % doesn't matter. The implication was that there wasn't enough data to drive ad serving.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  But the argument is that 20% isn’t enough to sustain another business. This is plainly false.
  - voisin 6y ago
    Doesn’t it depend on how competitive the other 20% is? Having one player with 80% and the remaining 20% split amongst 20 companies would indicate market dominance and that the others are competing with each other and not meaningfully with the market leader. I think the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index[0] is used in these cases but I am not sure what it looks like for search. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl–Hirschman_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl–Hirschman_Index

mrkramer 6y ago

And so it begins.

CogentHedgehog 6y ago

Google definitely needs anti-trust scrutiny, but I find the timing suspicious. It smells like a politically-motivated hit job, especially since Facebook didn't get a suit as well.

sushicalculus 6y ago
> but I find the timing suspicious. This has been in work for over a year. This is not suspicious to anyone that's seen the headlines
- CogentHedgehog 6y ago
  The Trump administration has been laying the groundwork for this action for a while, yes. That doesn't mean it's any less suspicious that they actually file suit right before the election.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  It's been transparently motivated by partisan politics the whole time, too, but even if it wasn’t that wouldn't stop the timing of the actual filing from being suspect.

smileysteve 6y ago

> The department will allege that Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc. This is the part I was looking for. Of the tech companies, Alphabet has been the most proactive of creating a business of businesses to avoid antitrust.

draw_down 6y ago
Seems it hasn’t worked very well, then.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Of the tech companies, Alphabet has been the most proactive of creating a business of businesses to avoid antitrust. A business of businesses isn't a way to avoid antitrust, its just a trust.

vthallam 6y ago

What would be the goal of this Antitrust? Search seems to be the major theme, how do you break up search? Even if you break up search from Android, the ads revenue from Search is enough to pay another alphabet company(Android) to make Google search default. Even if you give options to users, 90% of them won't care.

pfortuny 6y ago
Not that I am pro-nationalization, but if a service can only be truly supported by one actor, it would be better to have it be supported as a publicly owned company or a non-profit foundation. If this happens to worsen the product, then maybe an opportunity arises for competition... Just a non-thought out idea, but the problem with private monopolies is that they are usually unaccountable and irresponsible.
- sm0ss117 6y ago
  Yea, if something is a Natural monopoly, which search almost certainly is, then it should be a publicly owned utility.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    No search isn't a Natural Monopoly. There isn't some sole magical search spring that Google taps into or a need to dig search lines beneath everybody's houses like a utility. "It is very useful" does not make something a utility - having exclusivity to a commons is what makes it so. There is nothing exclusive about search - Firefox and many other browsers allow you to choose between multiple search engines at any time without setting a permanent default.
- SpaceL10n 6y ago
  If we can't get the internet to be classified as a utility, we certainly won't get search to be classified as a utility. Even though, imo, both should be. They are central to everyone's lives. That's a utility.

daniel-s 6y ago

Unless granted by a government, monopolies don't exist in free markets. There is no definition that a rational person could ever use to differentiate between a monopoly or otherwise. This is no different to the Cosa Nostra, a shakedown like any other: Google needs to pay their dues and kiss the ring. Edit: a lot of people disagreeing with me/don't like what I had to say. At least step up to the challenge: provide a rational definition for a monopoly.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
This is wrong. There are markets that naturally lead to monopolies, namely companies and businesses that have large upfront costs, relatively high risk, and small profit margins. A good example is the airline manufacturing industry. It's extremely difficult for new companies to get into airplane manufacturing because it's difficult and there isn't much incentive to do so.
- daniel-s 6y ago
  You haven't even said what a monopoly is, then gone ahead to explain why they must exist.
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    You didn't define what a monopoly is either, so I kind of assumed you knew the definition... Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of trade in a commodity or service. Of relevance too is a duopoly: a situation in which two suppliers dominate the market for a commodity or service. A complete and single monopoly isn't required for the market to start being inefficient and appear manipulated.
    - daniel-s 6y ago
      Your definition places every single company in the world in the category of monopolist and is therefore absurd. Every single company sells a commodity or service different to their competitors. For example, McDonald's sells burgers, as do Burger King. It's arbitrary (and therefore not something that one could determine rationally) where the line is drawn about what will be considered a product or service. If you want to draw the line at Burger there is no monopoly. If you want to draw he line at Big Mac then McDonald's has a 100% monopoly. Is the line Big Mac specifically, burgers, food? No matter the company and what it sells, you will always be able to come up with a definition of their product narrow or wide enough to find that they sell 100% of that thing when you want to. An example: Epic's complaints about the app stores. Apple has a monopoly on app stores running on iPhones, but not on mobile devices, not on consumer computer devices, not on computer-based gaming devices, not on entertainment services generally. They could never stop people playing Fortnite, but you could always call Apple a monopolist if you chose your definition appropriately. Ultimately, the decision is arbitrary and up to the discretion of a bureaucrat. In the absence of a rational method to determine monopolies the decision becomes one of who the bureaucrat decides to shake down.

kirubakaran 6y ago

More comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24836520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24836520

tssva 6y ago

One of the issues the government raises is Google paying to be the default search engine in browsers. If the government is successful in this suit I expect one of the results will be Google being prevented from continuing this behavior. Get ready for Mozilla to have to make more cuts and Firefox to fade even more. Mozilla may be able to get Bing or someone else to pay to be their default browser engine but with Google being blocked from competing the amount others will offer for the small market share Firefox now occupies will be far less than Google has been paying.

voisin 6y ago
Maybe relying on a single customer to pay to be default wasn’t the wisest strategy?

cosmiccatnap 6y ago

Seems to me that they are getting paid to force support for bing from Microsoft.