5 ms·

Google should be broken up like the US did with AT&T. I suspect a Biden administration will interfere with this process and save them from being broken up.

• dimitrios1 6y ago
  Biden during his tenure along with Obama displayed a propensity to utilize the "heavy hand of government" approach whenever necessary, in part due to the lame duck Congress, but nonetheless, the precedent has been set. If anything, we have evidence to believe he will intervene wherever he can.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• jayd16 6y ago
  I feel like "breaking up" big tech is not the right solution and furthermore almost impossible to execute. How about legislation that enforces the availability of third party app stores or something?
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    It's not impossible to execute: You order them to do it, and it's on them to develop anything necessary to make it happen. And yes, that might entail having to split up Google accounts into different accounts for different services, uncoupling products, removing exclusive integrations, and in the end, the consumer will benefit.
    • pmontra 6y ago
      Even if Google (or Facebook) are split into pieces many people will still do social logins, so no different accounts for different services. I don't do social login and I don't like the very idea of centralizing authentication and profile managment (probably also some of authorization) but I also don't think that there is any legal ground to forbid it.
      • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        That actually will likely be a short-term solution if companies are forced to unbundle. Say Google is required to sell Chrome and/or Android. Problem is, billion people's Google accounts are signed into those devices. Solution is, you replace the "Google account" on an Android device with an "Android account" that uses Google auth for login. Then, if a user wants after that point, they can detach that, set different credentials, whatever.
    • jedberg 6y ago
      I was at Netflix when we decided to undertake splitting DVD and Streaming. We had chosen to make that change, and had high motivation to do it. It still took about seven years to finish that task. Google is even more entangled than Netflix was. I suspect it would take them at least a decade to execute a split like that.
      • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        It's likely such an order would include a deadline for compliance and a cost for noncompliance after that. I suspect that it would happen faster than you think. Furthermore, companies like Facebook have actually made a point to deeply integrate otherwise disparate products (Instagram), solely to later claim it'd be "too hard" to spin them off if the court orders them to. The simple answer is to continue to fine them until they accomplish the task: If a company goes bankrupt trying to comply with the court, perhaps they shouldn't have violated the law so flagrantly in the first place. I think people are too hesitant to admit that companies that violate the law should be eligible for the "death penalty". It's absolutely fine for a very bad company to explode and die once brought to court.
        • jedberg 6y ago
          I'm sure it would include a deadline. My point is the government's deadline would surely be unreasonable. > I think people are too hesitant to admit that companies that violate the law should be eligible for the "death penalty". I don't believe in the death penalty for people, and I don't believe in it for companies either. I certainly think that companies get away with too much, and that their leadership should be more personally accountable for fragrant violations of the law. But death is too extreme a punishment. But at the same time it's the limited liability that allows for innovation. Companies would take far fewer risks, both good and bad, if the people running them were personally liable.
          • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
            I am pretty against the death penalty for people too. But corporations are particularly immoral, and I feel that if anything, we should be vastly more comfortable executing companies than people. I think personal accountability for CEOs and executives would help a lot. A CEO who knew an illegal business move might land them in jail would be much more hesitant to do it than a CEO that knew that move might cost investors some stock value. But I also think a company's behavior can be endemic and cultural, and that perhaps rather than trying to turn them around, we should just "execute" them. Shut down operations, auction off property to pay any debtors and assist employees with the transition elsewhere. One of the things I think about with Big Tech is that they are incredibly overvalued on their "too big to fail" status... that and the current reality that their illegal gains won't be meaningfully seized. If a company could be "executed" for it's misdeeds, investors would need to be real about the value of "rulebreaker" type companies, and the additional risk they carry. We'd not be in the situation we are now, where the crimes of Google and it's executives keep racking up... but so is it's stock price. I don't buy the claim that we need to limit liability in order to foster innovation, because our limited regulation has led these companies to squander so much innovation, it's insane. For every innovative thing one of these tech companies has done, it's killed dozens or hundreds of startups that were doing something more innovative and not focused on circling the wagons around their core stock value.
  • dariusj18 6y ago
    I think breaking up is the wrong way to put it too. I think big tech should be forced to federate.
    • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      Long term better solution, but doesn’t stop short term monopolies and antitrust practices. I’m a fan of doing it all.
  • inglor_cz 6y ago
    Android and YouTube do not really have to be under one roof. And neither WhatsApp and Facebook. But the best solution would be interoperable protocols.
    • LMYahooTFY 6y ago
      Android is not under a roof. Google's services are, and they are not Android.
      • kube-system 6y ago
        Technically true but practically irrelevant in terms of consumer impact. The number of Android devices in the US without Google services is easily a rounding error. ~100% of the Android handsets in the US have Google's software preinstalled.
        • LMYahooTFY 6y ago
          This is a fair point, yet I don't think it's good to disparage what's technically true here. There are people attempting to take advantage of the fact that Android remains free and open source, and they need support. Perhaps I should have included that in my comment above. It's not obvious to me that a legal solution would be better.
          • kube-system 6y ago
            I think Google's bundled services cements their grip on AOSP more than it supports it being independent. All Android handset OEMs basically have no choice to install Google services because AOSP isn't mass marketable on its own, and nobody can really compete with Google's combination of Play/Gmail/YouTube/Chrome/search. Once you have a Google account, you get funneled into these other services, and it makes it difficult for any other services to gain traction. If we want AOSP to truly be free, then it has to be useable outside of the Google ecosystem. Android is like a club with free drinks, but Google Services are the $150 cover charge.
• smileysteve 6y ago
  Coordinating political view: The House, with a democratic majority, led the research into the recent antitrust suits.
• px43 6y ago
  Hey fun fact, Google did actually break up in 2015, during the Obama administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.
  • kube-system 6y ago
    Google absolutely wasn't broken up, it was reorganized under a new parent. AT&T was split into entirely different companies... for instance, today's Verizon is a descendent of that breakup.
    • px43 6y ago
      So you think they should split up harder? What would that look like? Phone companies make some sense because they have to serve certain geographic regions which can't compete or collude with each other. Google serves the world, of which the US population is only 5%. Do you think the US government is going to split up Google such that "South American Google" is totally independent and brings back no revenue to the US? Same with "European Google"? Or you you want it split up by US region? Maybe "US-East Google" gets to make money from Europe, "US-West Google" gets to make money from Asian countries, and "US-Texas Google" gets to make money from services provided to South America? Is the goal to cripple Google so hard that companies like Baidu and Yandex can overtake the search market globally? Is that why the US congress should split up Google? The only people who have a rational argument for another Google split up are governments of non-US regions that are financially invested in competing services.
      • kube-system 6y ago
        I am not the person who said they should be split up. I am pointing out that they haven't currently been split up at all. They are still a part of the same company. Most people who have proposed a splitting up Google have obviously not suggested splitting it on geographical lines, because most of them understand how the internet works. Typically, the suggestions have been to split on product line -- not unlike how Alphabet has internally organized their divisions.
      • 6y ago
• adrr 6y ago
  AT&T you had no choice on your carrier or what you could even plug into the phone line. There are multiple app stores for android devices and you don’t even need an App Store to install an app on an Android device. Using at&t is a very bad example to use against google because under at&t consumers had 0 choice. AT&T used this monopoly to raise prices and limit choice. Google doesn’t even charge for android.
  • kube-system 6y ago
    Are Android users even customers of Google? Aren't customers the people who... buy stuff from a company?
    • gruez 6y ago
      AFAIK antitrust legislation is mainly about protecting consumer (ie. end users) welfare, not necessarily the customer (which can include businesses).
  • tpxl 6y ago
    > There are multiple app stores for android devices and you don’t even need an App Store to install an app on an Android device. There are, and google is preventing vendors from installing them.
• __turbobrew__ 6y ago
  The breakup of AT&T killed the most productive industrial research center of all time: Bell Labs. South Korea seems to be totally fine with Samsung running the majority of the economy, monopolies — when controlled through regulation — are not always a net negative for society.
  • Throwaway1771 6y ago
    Until a member of society (you?) is somehow screwed over by an Exec of one of these too-big-to-fail companies....
    • __turbobrew__ 6y ago
      I have enjoyed the benefits of information theory, fiber optics, lasers, UNIX, the transistor, and many other things which came out at Bell Labs. Industrial research which operates on the 5-10 year needs stable recurring revenue and reassurances that the company will still be around to reap the benefits of said research. Monopolies provide the environment for this research to take place. I think the proper way to mitigate the harm done to the consumer by the monopoly is to closely regulate the monopoly. For example, the fee structure for AT&T’s long distance rates was regulated to not exceed certain levels which were deemed to be acceptable. Customers payed a reasonable price for long distance rates, AT&T had a stable income, and there was no threat of their business being upended so they were willing to take on long term research to improve their margins on the fixed long distance prices. Yes, consumers could have been paying less for long distance rates, but where would society be today without Bell Labs? I think the harm AT&T inflicted upon their customers is heavily outweighed by the engineering and scientific progress they achieved.