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Google, Facebook Agreed to Team Up Against Possible Antitrust Action

213 points by Despegar 6y ago

anupamchugh 6y ago
> Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc.’s Google agreed to “cooperate and assist one another” if they ever faced an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising It was obvious they'll team considering their whole online advertising business is at a risk to lose revenue.
kerng 6y ago
I doubt this strategy will work well for them, its highlighting the problem even more. Also interesting that Google would want to be anywhere close to being associated with Facebook.
- dhnajsjdnd 6y ago
  What do you feel is so different about these two companies? They both do the same stuff.
  - tworuweoiru243 6y ago
    Google's public image is slightly better than that of Facebook and Twitter.
    - jobigoud 6y ago
      There is a difference though, Twitter is usually critiqued for its user's behavior, not really for its own decisions. You can have a decent Twitter (or even Instagram) experience if you don't follow toxic people. Twitter is mostly a mirror of our behavior, the company itself isn't really actively evil. On the other hand you can't really escape Google as they are actively trying to insert themselves into everything. And Facebook is a bit of both, toxic communities and trying to be everywhere.
      - reducesuffering 6y ago
        Twitter's own decisions regarding labeling disinformation are widely panned by right-wing circles and government. Twitter CEO Dorsey has been in congressional hearings multiple times over this.
    - kennywinker 6y ago
      Just one person, but ranked from worst to best it's definitely Facebook is better than Google is better than Twitter Twitter has a big impact socially, but they're so much smaller than fb and google, it's hard to put them in the same league
      - olliej 6y ago
        Facebook is absolutely worse than google, in addition to doing all of the horrific things google does, they’ve sold “privacy” VPNs that recorded information, repeatedly lied and reneged on promises.
        ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        Google got caught operating a service extremely similar to Onavo. It's called Screenwise Meter. Identically to how Facebook was exploited enterprise certificates to circumvent the App Store policy, Google was doing the exact same: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-data-collector-through-apples-back-door https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-da... While they backed off on iOS when they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Google kept it running on Android until this month, well over a year after Facebook shut down Onavo: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/03/googles-screenwise-meter-app-and-its-rewards-program-are-now-dead/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/03/googles-screenwise-... It's incredible to me that Facebook still has a worse image than Google: Google can do the exact same thing, for longer, and still people treat Facebook like they're a degree worse for some reason. Both ad companies are bad.
      - rutthenut 6y ago
        Nothing 'definite' about those statements, they are just opinions, as we all have. I'd say FB is worst because of their reuse and reselling of personal data, their deliberate designs of making their service more and more invasive, their purchase of competing services and monopolised approach to everything. Google are no saints either, not by a long stretch. Twitter has far more influence than anyone would expect
      - kennywinker 6y ago
    - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
      > Google's public image is slightly better than that of Facebook Well, it depends who you ask. You can stop using FB, but not using Google products, even passively. is practically impossible.
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
        Stopping using Facebook is easy. Stopping being used by Facebook is just as hard if not more. Facebook has its spyware embedded in the majority of apps out there, most companies willingly share their customers' personal details with them for ad targeting purposes and Facebook uses social engineering to trick people into sharing their contacts list which includes your details.
    - cwhiz 6y ago
      It is better, but it shouldn't be. Google has destroyed or reshaped entire industries with their surveillance subsidized pricing model.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  Also interesting that Google would want to be anywhere close to being associated with Facebook. Interesting but unsurprising. Maybe they’ve realised that by now no one in the entire world is still fooled by their “do no evil” pantomime.
- laurent92 6y ago
  « Let’s fight antitrust lawsuit by... forming a trust between top-level companies » – Indeed I agree it doesn’t look best.
- _the_inflator 6y ago
  I disagree. This is pretty common and normal. Even Apple and Google work together in certain areas. We should not rush to judgment here and they can defend themselves.
- konschubert 6y ago
  The first line of the article implies that this is an old agreement that they talked about "in case". This was from before the suits against them were filed.
  - willis936 6y ago
    How does that change anything?
  - zcw100 6y ago
    Why would it be better that they anticipated the current situation years ahead of time and then took actions that would allow them to continue to do it be better than it simply being reactionary? This is way worse.
    - konschubert 6y ago
      It makes it more evil. But also less stupid.
adrianN 6y ago
Form a bigger Trust to combat Antitrust action. What a bigbrain move.
- odiroot 6y ago
  Robber barons would be proud. What's old is new again.
  - deepstack 6y ago
    If only Robber barons know what tech Billionaire are doing now days, it's their wet dream come true. When are we going to stop idolising these people?
    - itsoktocry 6y ago
      >When are we going to stop idolising these people? What's even better is most ethical and moral people know these companies do bad things, but in the best case are afraid to speak out because the companies wield so much career and economic influence. In the worst case, people are wilfully helping out for a pay cheque. There are some funny things going on in Silicon Valley. For years tech billionaires have been telling us how there's no place on earth for doing business like the Valley. Now they are packing up and moving to Texas because they never had any intention of sharing their ungodly wealth. This is not a "good" system. Here's hoping the Biden administration (with the help of advocates like AOC) come down hard, finally. But I'm skeptical.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - adventured 6y ago
    Will people in the future consider big tech employees to be the equivalent of war criminals? Guilty of vast human rights abuses and well paid for it. It's an interesting question I had never considered until this thread. Societies often change in such ways over time; what's mildly questionable today is considered an egregious human rights violation decades later. If privacy is a human right, then what are the employees of big tech guilty of? Simple question, obvious answer. Will societies in the future hold human rights abuse trials, looking back on what was done during this era? The employees of Google and Facebook are as guilty as the management. Without the employees, none of it happens. And they have been paid like princes for the deeds that they've done. After the robber barons, what should society do with the employees at big tech that make it all possible and knowingly assist criminal enterprises? Nobody that works at big tech can pretend to not know what these companies do at this point. These people are all morally responsible. Should they be social pariahs? Should they be held responsible for the damage they've caused? They all know what the big paychecks are bribes meant to cover. Here's $400k per year, have some moral flexibility, intentionally harm your fellow humans, look the other way. Nobody pretends employees at Blackwater just happened to be working for an evil corporation. If you worked at Blackwater you knew what you were doing, what you were contributing to. You cashed your paycheck regardless. If you've worked for big tech in the past decade plus, you knew what you were doing and what you were assisting, you knew what you were being paid so well to do.
NicoJuicy 6y ago
Why would Google wanted to be associated with Facebook? Teaming up in this case ain't good for their public image.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- enjoyyourlife 6y ago
  For their legal teams to pool their resources together
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    They don't need it, the pro's aren't worth the cons from my POV.
    - sitkack 6y ago
      Depending on the population metric, sometimes the pros and the cons are the same folks.
scoot_718 6y ago
Wow - fucking tear those shits apart.
betwixthewires 6y ago
Say it with me folks: "cartel"
- bayindirh 6y ago
  From "Do no evil" to "Be evil". Magnificent.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    The people from the "Do No Evil" era, who built the company, have all retired with their millions. It's a very different crew running the mature company now.
    - cwhiz 6y ago
      Larry Page was the CEO of Alphabet until the end of 2019. He owns over 40 million shares. Sergey Brin was the President of Alphabet until the end of 2019. He owns ~39 million shares. The actions of Google from inception until 2019 are the personal responsibility of these two men. They are both "retired" as of today but still have an extreme amount of influence on the company. This type of monopolistic behavior will not stop until the people who are personally responsible for corporate behavior are held personally liable.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  Say it with me folks: "I'm on HN, till I don't get 400k+ from FAANG my pitchforks will be out"
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Can I get my pitchfork out if I don't care about working at a FAANG? Because we can go back and forth with "you're just butthurt you didn't get in" "you would say that, you're a FAANG employee" all day long.
tomaszs 6y ago
It is also an interesting question to ask, why Microsoft with Bing search and ads platform does not vigorously compete with Google worldwide, but keeping a stable position in the US. Anyways the accusation from the article is shocking. But it may also explain why Facebook at some point stopped expansion of third site ads to only visitors that logged in into an app on such sites rather than chasings all users. Combined with latest articles about how Google supposably considers open web as an opponent for their app system, it is just worrying if the web is still safe with domination of these tech giants.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > why Microsoft with Bing search and ads platform does not vigorously compete with Google worldwide, but keeping a stable position in the US. They may not necessarily hold a great position in China, but they're cleaning up against Google there. ;D
- Nkuna 6y ago
  > Combined with latest articles about how Google supposably considers open web as an opponent for their app system, it is just worrying if the web is still safe with domination of these tech giants. This sounds like Apple. I mean, Google is pro web precisely because it translates positively to their bottom line. Android is a stop gap that is highly effective too. So web or mobile, they are fine. Would appreciate links to those articles.
ffpip 6y ago
Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google agreed to “cooperate and assist one another” if they ever faced an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising, according to an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed by 10 states against Google last week. The suit, as filed, cites internal company documents that were heavily redacted. The Wall Street Journal reviewed part of a recent draft version of the suit without redactions, which elaborated on findings and allegations in the court documents. Ten Republican attorneys general, led by Texas, are alleging that the two companies cut a deal in September 2018 in which Facebook agreed not to compete with Google’s online advertising tools in return for special treatment when it used them. Google used language from “Star Wars” as a code name for the deal, according to the lawsuit, which redacted the actual name. The draft version of the suit says it was known as “Jedi Blue.” The lawsuit itself said Google and Facebook were aware that their agreement could trigger antitrust investigations and discussed how to deal with them, in a passage that is followed by significant redactions. The draft version spells out some of the contract’s provisions, which state that the companies will “cooperate and assist each other in responding to any Antitrust Action” and “promptly and fully inform the Other Party of any Governmental Communication Related to the Agreement.” In the companies’ contract, “the word [REDACTED] is mentioned no fewer than 20 times,” the lawsuit says. The unredacted draft fills in the word: Antitrust. A Google spokesperson said such agreements over antitrust threats are extremely common. The states’ “claims are inaccurate. We don’t manipulate the auction,” the spokesperson said, adding that the deal wasn’t secret and that Facebook participates in other ad auctions. “There’s nothing exclusive about [Facebook’s] involvement and they don’t receive data that is not similarly made available to other buyers.” The redacted lawsuit filed last week makes no mention of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. According to the draft version, Ms. Sandberg signed the deal with Google. The draft version also cites an email where she told CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives: “This is a big deal strategically.” Like Google, Facebook has also disputed the allegations in the lawsuit, saying its agreements for bidding on advertising promote choice and create clear benefits for advertisers, publishers and small businesses. “Any allegation that this harms competition or any suggestion of misconduct on the part of Facebook is baseless,” a Facebook spokesperson said. The final version of the lawsuit didn’t make public details about the deal’s value. The draft states that starting in the deal’s fourth year, Facebook is locked into spending a minimum of $500 million annually in Google-run ad auctions. “Facebook is to win a fixed percent of those auctions,” the draft version says. The lawsuit says “Facebook is to [REDACTED].” According to the draft version, an internal Facebook document described the deal as “relatively cheap” when compared with direct competition, while a Google presentation said if the company couldn’t “avoid competing with” Facebook, it would collaborate to “build a moat.” The redacted lawsuit filed last week doesn’t include those quotes. The lawsuit alleges that Google executives worried ahead of the deal about competition from Facebook as well as others deploying “header bidding,” a technique for buying and selling online ads. In an internal Google presentation from October 2016, an employee expressed concern about the potential for competition from Facebook and other big tech companies, saying, “to stop these guys from doing HB [header bidding] we probably need to consider something more aggressive,” according to the draft. The redacted lawsuit discusses Google’s concerns about competition and mentions the presentation, but it doesn’t include the quote. According to an internal Google communication from November 2017 discussing a potential “Facebook Partnership” for Google’s “Top Partner Council,” Google said that its endgame was to “collaborate when necessary to maintain status quo…” The redacted lawsuit describes a presentation about Google’s endgame, but doesn’t include the quotes. As the two sides neared agreement, according to the draft, Facebook’s negotiating team sent an email to Mr. Zuckerberg, saying the company faced options: “invest hundreds more engineers” and spend billions of dollars to lock up inventory, exit the business, or do the deal with Google. Mr. Zuckerberg wanted to meet before making a decision, according to the draft. Those details don’t appear in the lawsuit filed last week, which only names Mr. Zuckerberg once, in a separate paragraph about another internal communication about the deal. For years, criticism of Google’s online advertising empire has focused on how the company leveraged its powerful consumer-facing platforms, such as Google Search and YouTube, to take over another lucrative but less visible business: the software that acts as a middleman for buying and selling ads across the web. The Facebook allegations add a new wrinkle—that Google cut a deal with a competing middleman, one that the states describe as Google’s “largest potential competitive threat.” They also represent a potent legal risk. Under U.S. law, agreements to fix prices can be easier to prove than the states’ other accusations—namely that Google is maintaining an illegal monopoly. In addition to the suit filed in Texas, Google was hit last week in a separate antitrust lawsuit joined by 38 attorneys general, which alleged that it maintained monopoly power over the internet-search market through anticompetitive contracts and conduct. Google has also disputed the contentions in that suit, as well as a previous lawsuit filed by the Justice Department on Oct. 20 over alleged monopoly practices.
tannhaeuser 6y ago
What's the outlook of antitrust action in US is like when Google, Fb are well-known sponsors of the Democratic Party?
- bassman9000 6y ago
  What's the outlook Tumbleweed-y and under-the-carpet-y.
- biddit 6y ago
  Both FB and Google corporate donate equally to both parties. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/C00428623/summary/2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs... https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/C00502906/summary/2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  The Democratic Party has a lot less interest in tolerating big tech than they have in the past. I'm cautiously optimistic Biden won't make the same mistakes Obama did here. But we'll see.
  - zonethundery 6y ago
    Same here, but I wonder if Biden's pushback won't be more like mid-90's tech opposition (Piracy! Pornography! "You wouldn't encrypt a car, would you?"). We'll see what kind of hamfisted weirdness shows up in a compromise 230 bill in the next Congress.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      Section 230 is going to die one way or another. Tech companies want you to believe it's an Internet apocalypse, but realistically, it means when someone sues a tech company, they are going to have to defend themselves on the merits of the case instead of using a "get out of jail free" card. Facebook, Google, and Twitter will need slightly more lawyers, and the rest of the Internet will get along just fine with "doing the best we can". Pornhub will survive 2020. And it's an example of what removing Section 230 protection can do, absolutely, since SESTA/FOSTA exempted child sexual exploitation from 230 protection. Pornhub now only accepting verified uploads from professional studios and performers will not end porn. And in fact, without the ability for anonymous uploaders to post pirated premium porn, adult performers are going to make more money than they ever have before. Piracy has been hurting pornography just as much as it's hurt every other type of content, perhaps even moreso. Yeah, the wild west of the Internet is over. Governments know how it works and how it can impact them. Businesses have massive influence over how it operates and evolves. And the Internet isn't just "out in space", it exists as real equipment in real sovereign countries, and that will continue to apply more to how the Internet works over time. I don't think that's bad for the Internet. With regulation comes protection for people who might be otherwise harmed by others online. And it highlights the need to continue to push for global individual freedom: As we push towards open communication and human rights, the Internet as a whole will reflect that.
what2build 6y ago
The only winning move is not to play. To that end I have been shipping friends and family Rpis with k8s and kilo installed to experiment with alternatives. The web as a concept need not be these corporations. And to be frank, I’ve seen what you all post on social media and are building with software. Most of it is, well, consider me unimpressed by most of it.
jgalt212 6y ago
This movie just writes itself.
zcw100 6y ago
Time to reevaluate what you think about Google and why you think that. Google is an advertising company not an IT company. Yes they use and create a lot of technology but they don’t get paid for any of it. They get paid for advertising. They’re an advertising company and they do their best advertising for themselves. Their public image is a very carefully crafted one. I interviewed with them years ago and they are very fake, Disneyland type fake. It was clear that things were very deliberately set up in a way to make a particular impression. It wasn’t the obvious things like a company’s logo in the lobby is put there to make a deliberate impression that you’ve arrived at the correct company which is obvious and served a clear purpose but small things that aren’t meant to be noticed. Just one of many examples, I was waiting in a lobby for my next interview. It was a fairly standard corporate lobby except I look to my right and there’s this purple, Dr Seuss looking phone. Something you’d find in a toy store. The initial impression was, “oh those kooky Google engineers. One of them must have thought this would be cute and brought it in”. It looked like it had never been touched and probably hadn’t. The thing is if you went to another building you’d find the same stupid purple phone. Someone from HR went out and probably bought a dozen of these things and spread them about. That wasn’t the only thing. That kind of crap was everywhere if you looked for it and I’m willing to bet that kind of crap and thinking went all the way to the top.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  "Couldn't get in, so they suck".
  - sidlls 6y ago
    I failed a couple of FAANG interviews, and passed a couple others (working at one, now). I agree with the OP. This isn't about being able to pass their infantile, gatekeeping interview process.
    - mav3rick 6y ago
      Hypocrite much ? The process is infantile but I still want to work there ?
emptyparadise 6y ago
Google is just as bad as Facebook. It just has more goodwill to burn through.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  ...because it is actually of some use. Most people would miss Google Maps if it went away, and Android wouldn't have given ios competition if Google hadn't backed it. YouTube would have been shut down by lawsuits if Google hadn't bought it. Whereas if Facebook went away...uh, I don't really see any problem.
mroche 6y ago
https://archive.is/mbT0N https://archive.is/mbT0N
onetimemanytime 6y ago
>>Draft lawsuit quotes Facebook’s Sandberg saying Google pact was a ‘big deal strategically’ More like moronic and horrible optics. It's not like you can't afford lawyers for crying out loud
jhowell 6y ago
The crimes we commit give insight to society as a whole. It tough to imagine that this is only about targeted advertising.
Havoc 6y ago
What a bizarre situation. Accused of anti-competitive behaviour so they team up with a competitor?
- cryptica 6y ago
  Seems like they're going for a "Too big to fail, too big to jail" strategy.
cryptica 6y ago
Our society has turned into a competition between different organizations and communities to out-bribe and out-corrupt each other... I think it's a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. This trustless, lawless environment is ideal for cryptocurrencies.
- 3131s 6y ago
  > This trustless, lawless environment is ideal for cryptocurrencies. Well, there's always rubber-hose cryptanalysis. Currency might just not be that feasible in a totally lawless society.
  - cryptica 6y ago
    That's one way in which crypto is different from every other asset. The ownership relies on cryptography, not law. Legal ownership is one of the a weakest forms of ownership. A step above that is physical ownership (e.g. gold stored in a secret vault). Cryptographic ownership is even stronger than physical ownership because nobody can take it away from you unless you tell them that you own the thing to begin with and then you willingly give them the passphrase or transfer the tokens.
bsradcliffe 6y ago
If you have to team up against antitrust action, you're DEFINITELY doing the definition of monopolizing industries. Tear these companies apart.
- wheelerwj 6y ago
  "lets prove we're not too big by teaming up to become bigger" Not only do are they doing the exact thing they are being accused of, but they are doing with the worst company. I can't think of anything Google could have done that would be further from "Don't be evil."
jpster 6y ago
> A Google spokesperson said such agreements over antitrust threats are extremely common. Really? Any examples?
sershe 6y ago
Silly question based on every other comment; value judgments aside, isn't teaming up with a competitor in the same market (ads) for legal assistance serve more of a proof that they don't have a monopoly (there's a competitor viable enough to team up with!), than that they have one?
- takeiteasyy 6y ago
  They each have monopolies in their respective niches, but are in the same industry
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
Teaming up? Sounds like antitrust.

213 points by Despegar 6y ago

> Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc.’s Google agreed to “cooperate and assist one another” if they ever faced an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising It was obvious they'll team considering their whole online advertising business is at a risk to lose revenue.

kerng 6y ago

I doubt this strategy will work well for them, its highlighting the problem even more. Also interesting that Google would want to be anywhere close to being associated with Facebook.

dhnajsjdnd 6y ago
What do you feel is so different about these two companies? They both do the same stuff.
- tworuweoiru243 6y ago
  Google's public image is slightly better than that of Facebook and Twitter.
  - jobigoud 6y ago
    There is a difference though, Twitter is usually critiqued for its user's behavior, not really for its own decisions. You can have a decent Twitter (or even Instagram) experience if you don't follow toxic people. Twitter is mostly a mirror of our behavior, the company itself isn't really actively evil. On the other hand you can't really escape Google as they are actively trying to insert themselves into everything. And Facebook is a bit of both, toxic communities and trying to be everywhere.
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      Twitter's own decisions regarding labeling disinformation are widely panned by right-wing circles and government. Twitter CEO Dorsey has been in congressional hearings multiple times over this.
  - kennywinker 6y ago
    Just one person, but ranked from worst to best it's definitely Facebook is better than Google is better than Twitter Twitter has a big impact socially, but they're so much smaller than fb and google, it's hard to put them in the same league
    - olliej 6y ago
      Facebook is absolutely worse than google, in addition to doing all of the horrific things google does, they’ve sold “privacy” VPNs that recorded information, repeatedly lied and reneged on promises.
      - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        Google got caught operating a service extremely similar to Onavo. It's called Screenwise Meter. Identically to how Facebook was exploited enterprise certificates to circumvent the App Store policy, Google was doing the exact same: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-data-collector-through-apples-back-door https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-da... While they backed off on iOS when they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Google kept it running on Android until this month, well over a year after Facebook shut down Onavo: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/03/googles-screenwise-meter-app-and-its-rewards-program-are-now-dead/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/03/googles-screenwise-... It's incredible to me that Facebook still has a worse image than Google: Google can do the exact same thing, for longer, and still people treat Facebook like they're a degree worse for some reason. Both ad companies are bad.
    - rutthenut 6y ago
      Nothing 'definite' about those statements, they are just opinions, as we all have. I'd say FB is worst because of their reuse and reselling of personal data, their deliberate designs of making their service more and more invasive, their purchase of competing services and monopolised approach to everything. Google are no saints either, not by a long stretch. Twitter has far more influence than anyone would expect
    - kennywinker 6y ago
  - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
    > Google's public image is slightly better than that of Facebook Well, it depends who you ask. You can stop using FB, but not using Google products, even passively. is practically impossible.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      Stopping using Facebook is easy. Stopping being used by Facebook is just as hard if not more. Facebook has its spyware embedded in the majority of apps out there, most companies willingly share their customers' personal details with them for ad targeting purposes and Facebook uses social engineering to trick people into sharing their contacts list which includes your details.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    It is better, but it shouldn't be. Google has destroyed or reshaped entire industries with their surveillance subsidized pricing model.
goatinaboat 6y ago
Also interesting that Google would want to be anywhere close to being associated with Facebook. Interesting but unsurprising. Maybe they’ve realised that by now no one in the entire world is still fooled by their “do no evil” pantomime.
laurent92 6y ago
« Let’s fight antitrust lawsuit by... forming a trust between top-level companies » – Indeed I agree it doesn’t look best.
_the_inflator 6y ago
I disagree. This is pretty common and normal. Even Apple and Google work together in certain areas. We should not rush to judgment here and they can defend themselves.
konschubert 6y ago
The first line of the article implies that this is an old agreement that they talked about "in case". This was from before the suits against them were filed.
- willis936 6y ago
  How does that change anything?
- zcw100 6y ago
  Why would it be better that they anticipated the current situation years ahead of time and then took actions that would allow them to continue to do it be better than it simply being reactionary? This is way worse.
  - konschubert 6y ago
    It makes it more evil. But also less stupid.

adrianN 6y ago

Form a bigger Trust to combat Antitrust action. What a bigbrain move.

odiroot 6y ago
Robber barons would be proud. What's old is new again.
- deepstack 6y ago
  If only Robber barons know what tech Billionaire are doing now days, it's their wet dream come true. When are we going to stop idolising these people?
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >When are we going to stop idolising these people? What's even better is most ethical and moral people know these companies do bad things, but in the best case are afraid to speak out because the companies wield so much career and economic influence. In the worst case, people are wilfully helping out for a pay cheque. There are some funny things going on in Silicon Valley. For years tech billionaires have been telling us how there's no place on earth for doing business like the Valley. Now they are packing up and moving to Texas because they never had any intention of sharing their ungodly wealth. This is not a "good" system. Here's hoping the Biden administration (with the help of advocates like AOC) come down hard, finally. But I'm skeptical.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- adventured 6y ago
  Will people in the future consider big tech employees to be the equivalent of war criminals? Guilty of vast human rights abuses and well paid for it. It's an interesting question I had never considered until this thread. Societies often change in such ways over time; what's mildly questionable today is considered an egregious human rights violation decades later. If privacy is a human right, then what are the employees of big tech guilty of? Simple question, obvious answer. Will societies in the future hold human rights abuse trials, looking back on what was done during this era? The employees of Google and Facebook are as guilty as the management. Without the employees, none of it happens. And they have been paid like princes for the deeds that they've done. After the robber barons, what should society do with the employees at big tech that make it all possible and knowingly assist criminal enterprises? Nobody that works at big tech can pretend to not know what these companies do at this point. These people are all morally responsible. Should they be social pariahs? Should they be held responsible for the damage they've caused? They all know what the big paychecks are bribes meant to cover. Here's $400k per year, have some moral flexibility, intentionally harm your fellow humans, look the other way. Nobody pretends employees at Blackwater just happened to be working for an evil corporation. If you worked at Blackwater you knew what you were doing, what you were contributing to. You cashed your paycheck regardless. If you've worked for big tech in the past decade plus, you knew what you were doing and what you were assisting, you knew what you were being paid so well to do.

NicoJuicy 6y ago

Why would Google wanted to be associated with Facebook? Teaming up in this case ain't good for their public image.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
enjoyyourlife 6y ago
For their legal teams to pool their resources together
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  They don't need it, the pro's aren't worth the cons from my POV.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    Depending on the population metric, sometimes the pros and the cons are the same folks.

scoot_718 6y ago

Wow - fucking tear those shits apart.

betwixthewires 6y ago

Say it with me folks: "cartel"

bayindirh 6y ago
From "Do no evil" to "Be evil". Magnificent.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  The people from the "Do No Evil" era, who built the company, have all retired with their millions. It's a very different crew running the mature company now.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    Larry Page was the CEO of Alphabet until the end of 2019. He owns over 40 million shares. Sergey Brin was the President of Alphabet until the end of 2019. He owns ~39 million shares. The actions of Google from inception until 2019 are the personal responsibility of these two men. They are both "retired" as of today but still have an extreme amount of influence on the company. This type of monopolistic behavior will not stop until the people who are personally responsible for corporate behavior are held personally liable.
mav3rick 6y ago
Say it with me folks: "I'm on HN, till I don't get 400k+ from FAANG my pitchforks will be out"
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Can I get my pitchfork out if I don't care about working at a FAANG? Because we can go back and forth with "you're just butthurt you didn't get in" "you would say that, you're a FAANG employee" all day long.

tomaszs 6y ago

It is also an interesting question to ask, why Microsoft with Bing search and ads platform does not vigorously compete with Google worldwide, but keeping a stable position in the US. Anyways the accusation from the article is shocking. But it may also explain why Facebook at some point stopped expansion of third site ads to only visitors that logged in into an app on such sites rather than chasings all users. Combined with latest articles about how Google supposably considers open web as an opponent for their app system, it is just worrying if the web is still safe with domination of these tech giants.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> why Microsoft with Bing search and ads platform does not vigorously compete with Google worldwide, but keeping a stable position in the US. They may not necessarily hold a great position in China, but they're cleaning up against Google there. ;D
Nkuna 6y ago
> Combined with latest articles about how Google supposably considers open web as an opponent for their app system, it is just worrying if the web is still safe with domination of these tech giants. This sounds like Apple. I mean, Google is pro web precisely because it translates positively to their bottom line. Android is a stop gap that is highly effective too. So web or mobile, they are fine. Would appreciate links to those articles.

ffpip 6y ago

Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google agreed to “cooperate and assist one another” if they ever faced an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising, according to an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed by 10 states against Google last week. The suit, as filed, cites internal company documents that were heavily redacted. The Wall Street Journal reviewed part of a recent draft version of the suit without redactions, which elaborated on findings and allegations in the court documents. Ten Republican attorneys general, led by Texas, are alleging that the two companies cut a deal in September 2018 in which Facebook agreed not to compete with Google’s online advertising tools in return for special treatment when it used them. Google used language from “Star Wars” as a code name for the deal, according to the lawsuit, which redacted the actual name. The draft version of the suit says it was known as “Jedi Blue.” The lawsuit itself said Google and Facebook were aware that their agreement could trigger antitrust investigations and discussed how to deal with them, in a passage that is followed by significant redactions. The draft version spells out some of the contract’s provisions, which state that the companies will “cooperate and assist each other in responding to any Antitrust Action” and “promptly and fully inform the Other Party of any Governmental Communication Related to the Agreement.” In the companies’ contract, “the word [REDACTED] is mentioned no fewer than 20 times,” the lawsuit says. The unredacted draft fills in the word: Antitrust. A Google spokesperson said such agreements over antitrust threats are extremely common. The states’ “claims are inaccurate. We don’t manipulate the auction,” the spokesperson said, adding that the deal wasn’t secret and that Facebook participates in other ad auctions. “There’s nothing exclusive about [Facebook’s] involvement and they don’t receive data that is not similarly made available to other buyers.” The redacted lawsuit filed last week makes no mention of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. According to the draft version, Ms. Sandberg signed the deal with Google. The draft version also cites an email where she told CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives: “This is a big deal strategically.” Like Google, Facebook has also disputed the allegations in the lawsuit, saying its agreements for bidding on advertising promote choice and create clear benefits for advertisers, publishers and small businesses. “Any allegation that this harms competition or any suggestion of misconduct on the part of Facebook is baseless,” a Facebook spokesperson said. The final version of the lawsuit didn’t make public details about the deal’s value. The draft states that starting in the deal’s fourth year, Facebook is locked into spending a minimum of $500 million annually in Google-run ad auctions. “Facebook is to win a fixed percent of those auctions,” the draft version says. The lawsuit says “Facebook is to [REDACTED].” According to the draft version, an internal Facebook document described the deal as “relatively cheap” when compared with direct competition, while a Google presentation said if the company couldn’t “avoid competing with” Facebook, it would collaborate to “build a moat.” The redacted lawsuit filed last week doesn’t include those quotes. The lawsuit alleges that Google executives worried ahead of the deal about competition from Facebook as well as others deploying “header bidding,” a technique for buying and selling online ads. In an internal Google presentation from October 2016, an employee expressed concern about the potential for competition from Facebook and other big tech companies, saying, “to stop these guys from doing HB [header bidding] we probably need to consider something more aggressive,” according to the draft. The redacted lawsuit discusses Google’s concerns about competition and mentions the presentation, but it doesn’t include the quote. According to an internal Google communication from November 2017 discussing a potential “Facebook Partnership” for Google’s “Top Partner Council,” Google said that its endgame was to “collaborate when necessary to maintain status quo…” The redacted lawsuit describes a presentation about Google’s endgame, but doesn’t include the quotes. As the two sides neared agreement, according to the draft, Facebook’s negotiating team sent an email to Mr. Zuckerberg, saying the company faced options: “invest hundreds more engineers” and spend billions of dollars to lock up inventory, exit the business, or do the deal with Google. Mr. Zuckerberg wanted to meet before making a decision, according to the draft. Those details don’t appear in the lawsuit filed last week, which only names Mr. Zuckerberg once, in a separate paragraph about another internal communication about the deal. For years, criticism of Google’s online advertising empire has focused on how the company leveraged its powerful consumer-facing platforms, such as Google Search and YouTube, to take over another lucrative but less visible business: the software that acts as a middleman for buying and selling ads across the web. The Facebook allegations add a new wrinkle—that Google cut a deal with a competing middleman, one that the states describe as Google’s “largest potential competitive threat.” They also represent a potent legal risk. Under U.S. law, agreements to fix prices can be easier to prove than the states’ other accusations—namely that Google is maintaining an illegal monopoly. In addition to the suit filed in Texas, Google was hit last week in a separate antitrust lawsuit joined by 38 attorneys general, which alleged that it maintained monopoly power over the internet-search market through anticompetitive contracts and conduct. Google has also disputed the contentions in that suit, as well as a previous lawsuit filed by the Justice Department on Oct. 20 over alleged monopoly practices.

tannhaeuser 6y ago

What's the outlook of antitrust action in US is like when Google, Fb are well-known sponsors of the Democratic Party?

bassman9000 6y ago
What's the outlook Tumbleweed-y and under-the-carpet-y.
biddit 6y ago
Both FB and Google corporate donate equally to both parties. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/C00428623/summary/2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs... https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/C00502906/summary/2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
The Democratic Party has a lot less interest in tolerating big tech than they have in the past. I'm cautiously optimistic Biden won't make the same mistakes Obama did here. But we'll see.
- zonethundery 6y ago
  Same here, but I wonder if Biden's pushback won't be more like mid-90's tech opposition (Piracy! Pornography! "You wouldn't encrypt a car, would you?"). We'll see what kind of hamfisted weirdness shows up in a compromise 230 bill in the next Congress.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Section 230 is going to die one way or another. Tech companies want you to believe it's an Internet apocalypse, but realistically, it means when someone sues a tech company, they are going to have to defend themselves on the merits of the case instead of using a "get out of jail free" card. Facebook, Google, and Twitter will need slightly more lawyers, and the rest of the Internet will get along just fine with "doing the best we can". Pornhub will survive 2020. And it's an example of what removing Section 230 protection can do, absolutely, since SESTA/FOSTA exempted child sexual exploitation from 230 protection. Pornhub now only accepting verified uploads from professional studios and performers will not end porn. And in fact, without the ability for anonymous uploaders to post pirated premium porn, adult performers are going to make more money than they ever have before. Piracy has been hurting pornography just as much as it's hurt every other type of content, perhaps even moreso. Yeah, the wild west of the Internet is over. Governments know how it works and how it can impact them. Businesses have massive influence over how it operates and evolves. And the Internet isn't just "out in space", it exists as real equipment in real sovereign countries, and that will continue to apply more to how the Internet works over time. I don't think that's bad for the Internet. With regulation comes protection for people who might be otherwise harmed by others online. And it highlights the need to continue to push for global individual freedom: As we push towards open communication and human rights, the Internet as a whole will reflect that.

what2build 6y ago

The only winning move is not to play. To that end I have been shipping friends and family Rpis with k8s and kilo installed to experiment with alternatives. The web as a concept need not be these corporations. And to be frank, I’ve seen what you all post on social media and are building with software. Most of it is, well, consider me unimpressed by most of it.

jgalt212 6y ago

This movie just writes itself.

zcw100 6y ago

Time to reevaluate what you think about Google and why you think that. Google is an advertising company not an IT company. Yes they use and create a lot of technology but they don’t get paid for any of it. They get paid for advertising. They’re an advertising company and they do their best advertising for themselves. Their public image is a very carefully crafted one. I interviewed with them years ago and they are very fake, Disneyland type fake. It was clear that things were very deliberately set up in a way to make a particular impression. It wasn’t the obvious things like a company’s logo in the lobby is put there to make a deliberate impression that you’ve arrived at the correct company which is obvious and served a clear purpose but small things that aren’t meant to be noticed. Just one of many examples, I was waiting in a lobby for my next interview. It was a fairly standard corporate lobby except I look to my right and there’s this purple, Dr Seuss looking phone. Something you’d find in a toy store. The initial impression was, “oh those kooky Google engineers. One of them must have thought this would be cute and brought it in”. It looked like it had never been touched and probably hadn’t. The thing is if you went to another building you’d find the same stupid purple phone. Someone from HR went out and probably bought a dozen of these things and spread them about. That wasn’t the only thing. That kind of crap was everywhere if you looked for it and I’m willing to bet that kind of crap and thinking went all the way to the top.

mav3rick 6y ago
"Couldn't get in, so they suck".
- sidlls 6y ago
  I failed a couple of FAANG interviews, and passed a couple others (working at one, now). I agree with the OP. This isn't about being able to pass their infantile, gatekeeping interview process.
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    Hypocrite much ? The process is infantile but I still want to work there ?

emptyparadise 6y ago

Google is just as bad as Facebook. It just has more goodwill to burn through.

rossdavidh 6y ago
...because it is actually of some use. Most people would miss Google Maps if it went away, and Android wouldn't have given ios competition if Google hadn't backed it. YouTube would have been shut down by lawsuits if Google hadn't bought it. Whereas if Facebook went away...uh, I don't really see any problem.

mroche 6y ago

https://archive.is/mbT0N https://archive.is/mbT0N

onetimemanytime 6y ago

>>Draft lawsuit quotes Facebook’s Sandberg saying Google pact was a ‘big deal strategically’ More like moronic and horrible optics. It's not like you can't afford lawyers for crying out loud

jhowell 6y ago

The crimes we commit give insight to society as a whole. It tough to imagine that this is only about targeted advertising.

Havoc 6y ago

What a bizarre situation. Accused of anti-competitive behaviour so they team up with a competitor?

cryptica 6y ago
Seems like they're going for a "Too big to fail, too big to jail" strategy.

cryptica 6y ago

Our society has turned into a competition between different organizations and communities to out-bribe and out-corrupt each other... I think it's a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. This trustless, lawless environment is ideal for cryptocurrencies.

3131s 6y ago
> This trustless, lawless environment is ideal for cryptocurrencies. Well, there's always rubber-hose cryptanalysis. Currency might just not be that feasible in a totally lawless society.
- cryptica 6y ago
  That's one way in which crypto is different from every other asset. The ownership relies on cryptography, not law. Legal ownership is one of the a weakest forms of ownership. A step above that is physical ownership (e.g. gold stored in a secret vault). Cryptographic ownership is even stronger than physical ownership because nobody can take it away from you unless you tell them that you own the thing to begin with and then you willingly give them the passphrase or transfer the tokens.

bsradcliffe 6y ago

If you have to team up against antitrust action, you're DEFINITELY doing the definition of monopolizing industries. Tear these companies apart.

wheelerwj 6y ago
"lets prove we're not too big by teaming up to become bigger" Not only do are they doing the exact thing they are being accused of, but they are doing with the worst company. I can't think of anything Google could have done that would be further from "Don't be evil."

jpster 6y ago

> A Google spokesperson said such agreements over antitrust threats are extremely common. Really? Any examples?

sershe 6y ago

Silly question based on every other comment; value judgments aside, isn't teaming up with a competitor in the same market (ads) for legal assistance serve more of a proof that they don't have a monopoly (there's a competitor viable enough to team up with!), than that they have one?

takeiteasyy 6y ago
They each have monopolies in their respective niches, but are in the same industry

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

Teaming up? Sounds like antitrust.