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> 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly I think some historical background is necessary here. Nowadays IBM isn't a monopoly but during the 20th centu

by kens 5y ago

> 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly I think some historical background is necessary here. Nowadays IBM isn't a monopoly but during the 20th century, IBM was more or less a monopoly. IBM's antitrust problems go back to their 1936 consent decree and 1956 consent decree. IBM was subject to a huge antitrust case that went on from 1969 to 1982 as well as many other antitrust lawsuits. The first point is that of course IBM and other at-risk companies will have training to keep people from writing things that will cause antitrust problems. (Their antitrust case had 30 million pages of discovery.) Second, antitrust cases hinge on the "market" (as a legal term), so it's not surprising that Google wants employees to avoid using that word. In an antitrust case, each side will argue over what is "the market", and you don't want to lose the case because of a random email discussing the "market". Google's recommendation to say "Area" instead of "Market" hardly limits thought, but it makes a big different in antitrust. Third, I don't want to go all CLS, but antitrust law is pretty much incoherent and illogical. Even after the antitrust case against IBM ended (by fizzling out after 13 years), nobody agrees on whether IBM was violating antitrust laws or not.

sidlls 5y ago
No rational person is going to see “Area” in this context as anything but a synonym for “Market.”
- pc86 5y ago
  Especially when Google is distributing documentation saying to use the word "Area" explicitly instead of "Market."
  - gugagore 5y ago
    IANAL but it seems that it would succeed in requiring an additional layer of argumentation that “area” is code for “market”. My rough sense is that nothing is trivial in cases like this, but how difficult would it be to argue this?
    - lugged 5y ago
      Las I checked judges don't love it when you try to be clever or cute.
      - cormacrelf 5y ago
        Establishing the use of the word "market" in an email is not the end goal. The end goal is establishing the violation of US antitrust laws by, e.g. buying out the competition and taking actions that unreasonably restrict trade (generally in your competitors' goods/services). But there are two ways to hold a company to account. One is a civil mechanism, producing civil penalties and consent decrees (or damages, maybe?). The other is by the prosecution of a criminal offence. Enforcement via the latter is harder to do. It requires showing the actions were done intentionally, just like every criminal prosecution. It also has a very high standard of proof. Using the word "crushing the competition" in the context of buying competitors or engineering them out of the first page of search results is evidence of that. Google doesn't want exposure to criminal liability. It is undoubtedly harder to prove they did this stuff intentionally if they deliberately refrain from talking about it and do it in winks and nods. I don't know what you're referring to by "try to be clever or cute" but using these language guidelines to decode discovered materials and show a criminal intent to do things that constitute criminal violations of antitrust law is not cute, and neither is relying on the absence of directly incriminating language to absolve yourself.
      - rpmisms 5y ago
        "Your honor, my case is kawaii. The defense rests." In all seriousness, a clever argument can be very good, as long as it's also solid. Not mutually exclusive.
      - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        q: why do you ask people to use the word area instead of market? a: Because imprecise language clouds thinking and makes things less intelligible, and Google is a company that makes its money from intelligence. People have been incorrectly referring to areas as markets, in order to better communicate we laid down guidelines. We often lay down guidelines about corporate communications to heighten their efficiency, as do other companies on edit: I'm not saying that this is true, but one can easily make an argument as to why you use area instead of market in communication and ask your workers to do likewise. I would think the courts would require more evidence than that.
- rprwhite 5y ago
  That's true, but if this didn't make news then what would've happened in the future? Thousands, millions maybe, of documents talking about areas and no mention of markets make discover more difficult for a future anti-trust case.
roenxi 5y ago
> antitrust law is pretty much incoherent and illogical Most things antitrust are incoherent and illogical. The unofficial plan seems to be literally to find market leaders who are offering substantially better products than the competition and then attack them for unspecified and likely immeasurable gains. Whether or not we've seen benefits from past antitrust actions, I don't believe measurements and observations of the actual outcomes are part of the debate. There is just an assumption that because they happened and big companies are bad ergo the outcome must have been good. The article alludes to Google's 92% search engine market share as some sort of concealed monopoly. As a problem, this doesn't make sense! There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone switching to another search engine except the other search engines aren't generally very good. Google is better at providing search results than they are. Or presumably it is, I don't know since I stopped using Google Search a long while ago. This is a monopoly only in the sense that everyone agrees Google is a better option. The problem with Google is that it is likely integrated with the US intelligence services. No antitrust suit is ever going to attack that; because it is the part that the government supports.
- tibbetts 5y ago
  Once upon a time US regulators recognized that limited competition and market dominance can be a problem all by themselves, for their chilling effect on innovation. Unfortunately under Reagan the DOJ changed their policy and started arguing that concrete consumer harm has to be demonstrated for a business to be subject to antitrust. That’s a much higher bar. Imagine trying to build the modern internet under a telco monopoly, and trying to argue that consumers were being harmed because internet access was limited. Who would even want internet access under those circumstances? The same is true of Google. It’s hard to show concrete harm (though wrecking flight search counts for me) when we have no counterfactual to consider. For example, in a truly competitive display ad market (instead of a duopoly), maybe our civilization would have figured out that display ads are a waste of money and consumer product manufacturers and retailers would stop buying them. But it’s hard to know. This is why we should go after any company that is dominant in any market.
  - roenxi 5y ago
srswtf123 5y ago
Okay, but we can agree that IBM powered the holocaust, and that those tattoos on survivor’s arms represented the punch cards for IBM systems, right? Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?
- kortilla 5y ago
  What point are you trying to make?
  - srswtf123 5y ago
    Every corporation has secrets they’d like to hide. No one is beyond reproach. I don’t think anyone is disputing that — but every thing Google is doing is the result of fallible humans acting in pursuit of profit. It doesn’t matter who or when. What matters is that people put aside their ethics in pursuit of profits. I think that needs to end. </soapbox>
- imglorp 5y ago
  That's horrifying. I was not aware. The horror is hundreds of IBM employees were directly involved in extermination activities; literally maintaining tabulation machines on prem, as it were, in the camps. I hope every HN reader has the awareness and moral strength to resist, where the corporations are unable, the next time such à job comes. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/52879 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/52879
  - endominus 5y ago
    I wouldn't get my hopes up. The number of times I've seen people, even here, equate legality and morality is frightening.
    - lelanthran 5y ago
      > I wouldn't get my hopes up. The number of times I've seen people, even here, equate legality and morality is frightening. I have literally never seen anyone here argue that "murder and genocide isn't morally wrong if it is legally right". Are you sure you aren't equivocating "I don't support $FOO political position" with "I support murder and genocide"? Because I have seen a number of people argue that some aspect of their personal moral code, which isn't currently written into law, should be written into law and enforced on the rest of the people who don't have that moral code.
slownews45 5y ago
No question that anti-trust is currently pretty much incoherent. One frustration is that it has morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses. Google downranks some crappy content farm / shopping aggregator - bam - antitrust complaint. Yes, it hurt that business and so helps google shopping - but no one asks - do users like these crap content farms? Same with google finance - I liked it. Now google can't prioritize that - even through I want it and so I get sent to a giant ad laden garbage fest of another finance / stock quote site. The other issue consumers no longer have any leverage with respect to very large businesses and govt is no where. So Apple can build a very valuable offering by playing "cop" in their closed garden. That is a consumer benefit. In other words, you individually would never be able to negotiate a deal where someone would let you sign up for their service anonymously, but apple can force that. They can force trials signups to have full details of renewals (same font). They can force folks to allow you to cancel subscriptions without huge advance warnings and will remind you of subscriptions in advance. Yes, this sucks for developers, but the consumer is helped by these steps. Until govt steps in, I'd love for them to back off on folks creating these places where the tons of crap the govt allows on the broader internet is not permitted.
- richardfey 5y ago
  > Now google can't prioritize that - even through I want it Of course they can: they could let you opt-in to this specific facet of customised search results. The general issue is about the default search results.
- mpweiher 5y ago
  > morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses. As far as I know, it is actually the focus on "consumer harm" that is, well was, the new thing, introduced in the 1980s under Reagan, and it largely gutted antitrust law. And that was exactly the purpose. For much of that history, including the seminal breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911, the ruling antitrust theory was “harmful dominance.” That’s the idea that companies that dominate an industry are potentially dangerous merely because they are dominant. With dominance comes the ability to impose corporate will on workers, suppliers, other industries, people who live near factories, even politicians and regulators. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 saw the rise of a new antitrust theory, based on “consumer welfare.” Consumer welfare advocates argue that monopolies can be efficient, able to deliver better products at lower prices to consumers, and therefore the government does us all a disservice when it indiscriminately takes on monopolies. https://wolfstreet.com/2021/08/14/antitrust-bombshells-in-the-fine-print-executive-order-on-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/ https://wolfstreet.com/2021/08/14/antitrust-bombshells-in-th...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by kens 5y ago

sidlls 5y ago

No rational person is going to see “Area” in this context as anything but a synonym for “Market.”

pc86 5y ago
Especially when Google is distributing documentation saying to use the word "Area" explicitly instead of "Market."
- gugagore 5y ago
  IANAL but it seems that it would succeed in requiring an additional layer of argumentation that “area” is code for “market”. My rough sense is that nothing is trivial in cases like this, but how difficult would it be to argue this?
  - lugged 5y ago
    Las I checked judges don't love it when you try to be clever or cute.
    - cormacrelf 5y ago
      Establishing the use of the word "market" in an email is not the end goal. The end goal is establishing the violation of US antitrust laws by, e.g. buying out the competition and taking actions that unreasonably restrict trade (generally in your competitors' goods/services). But there are two ways to hold a company to account. One is a civil mechanism, producing civil penalties and consent decrees (or damages, maybe?). The other is by the prosecution of a criminal offence. Enforcement via the latter is harder to do. It requires showing the actions were done intentionally, just like every criminal prosecution. It also has a very high standard of proof. Using the word "crushing the competition" in the context of buying competitors or engineering them out of the first page of search results is evidence of that. Google doesn't want exposure to criminal liability. It is undoubtedly harder to prove they did this stuff intentionally if they deliberately refrain from talking about it and do it in winks and nods. I don't know what you're referring to by "try to be clever or cute" but using these language guidelines to decode discovered materials and show a criminal intent to do things that constitute criminal violations of antitrust law is not cute, and neither is relying on the absence of directly incriminating language to absolve yourself.
    - rpmisms 5y ago
      "Your honor, my case is kawaii. The defense rests." In all seriousness, a clever argument can be very good, as long as it's also solid. Not mutually exclusive.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      q: why do you ask people to use the word area instead of market? a: Because imprecise language clouds thinking and makes things less intelligible, and Google is a company that makes its money from intelligence. People have been incorrectly referring to areas as markets, in order to better communicate we laid down guidelines. We often lay down guidelines about corporate communications to heighten their efficiency, as do other companies on edit: I'm not saying that this is true, but one can easily make an argument as to why you use area instead of market in communication and ask your workers to do likewise. I would think the courts would require more evidence than that.
rprwhite 5y ago
That's true, but if this didn't make news then what would've happened in the future? Thousands, millions maybe, of documents talking about areas and no mention of markets make discover more difficult for a future anti-trust case.

roenxi 5y ago

> antitrust law is pretty much incoherent and illogical Most things antitrust are incoherent and illogical. The unofficial plan seems to be literally to find market leaders who are offering substantially better products than the competition and then attack them for unspecified and likely immeasurable gains. Whether or not we've seen benefits from past antitrust actions, I don't believe measurements and observations of the actual outcomes are part of the debate. There is just an assumption that because they happened and big companies are bad ergo the outcome must have been good. The article alludes to Google's 92% search engine market share as some sort of concealed monopoly. As a problem, this doesn't make sense! There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone switching to another search engine except the other search engines aren't generally very good. Google is better at providing search results than they are. Or presumably it is, I don't know since I stopped using Google Search a long while ago. This is a monopoly only in the sense that everyone agrees Google is a better option. The problem with Google is that it is likely integrated with the US intelligence services. No antitrust suit is ever going to attack that; because it is the part that the government supports.

tibbetts 5y ago
Once upon a time US regulators recognized that limited competition and market dominance can be a problem all by themselves, for their chilling effect on innovation. Unfortunately under Reagan the DOJ changed their policy and started arguing that concrete consumer harm has to be demonstrated for a business to be subject to antitrust. That’s a much higher bar. Imagine trying to build the modern internet under a telco monopoly, and trying to argue that consumers were being harmed because internet access was limited. Who would even want internet access under those circumstances? The same is true of Google. It’s hard to show concrete harm (though wrecking flight search counts for me) when we have no counterfactual to consider. For example, in a truly competitive display ad market (instead of a duopoly), maybe our civilization would have figured out that display ads are a waste of money and consumer product manufacturers and retailers would stop buying them. But it’s hard to know. This is why we should go after any company that is dominant in any market.
- roenxi 5y ago

srswtf123 5y ago

Okay, but we can agree that IBM powered the holocaust, and that those tattoos on survivor’s arms represented the punch cards for IBM systems, right? Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?

kortilla 5y ago
What point are you trying to make?
- srswtf123 5y ago
  Every corporation has secrets they’d like to hide. No one is beyond reproach. I don’t think anyone is disputing that — but every thing Google is doing is the result of fallible humans acting in pursuit of profit. It doesn’t matter who or when. What matters is that people put aside their ethics in pursuit of profits. I think that needs to end. </soapbox>
imglorp 5y ago
That's horrifying. I was not aware. The horror is hundreds of IBM employees were directly involved in extermination activities; literally maintaining tabulation machines on prem, as it were, in the camps. I hope every HN reader has the awareness and moral strength to resist, where the corporations are unable, the next time such à job comes. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/52879 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/52879
- endominus 5y ago
  I wouldn't get my hopes up. The number of times I've seen people, even here, equate legality and morality is frightening.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > I wouldn't get my hopes up. The number of times I've seen people, even here, equate legality and morality is frightening. I have literally never seen anyone here argue that "murder and genocide isn't morally wrong if it is legally right". Are you sure you aren't equivocating "I don't support $FOO political position" with "I support murder and genocide"? Because I have seen a number of people argue that some aspect of their personal moral code, which isn't currently written into law, should be written into law and enforced on the rest of the people who don't have that moral code.

slownews45 5y ago

No question that anti-trust is currently pretty much incoherent. One frustration is that it has morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses. Google downranks some crappy content farm / shopping aggregator - bam - antitrust complaint. Yes, it hurt that business and so helps google shopping - but no one asks - do users like these crap content farms? Same with google finance - I liked it. Now google can't prioritize that - even through I want it and so I get sent to a giant ad laden garbage fest of another finance / stock quote site. The other issue consumers no longer have any leverage with respect to very large businesses and govt is no where. So Apple can build a very valuable offering by playing "cop" in their closed garden. That is a consumer benefit. In other words, you individually would never be able to negotiate a deal where someone would let you sign up for their service anonymously, but apple can force that. They can force trials signups to have full details of renewals (same font). They can force folks to allow you to cancel subscriptions without huge advance warnings and will remind you of subscriptions in advance. Yes, this sucks for developers, but the consumer is helped by these steps. Until govt steps in, I'd love for them to back off on folks creating these places where the tons of crap the govt allows on the broader internet is not permitted.

richardfey 5y ago
> Now google can't prioritize that - even through I want it Of course they can: they could let you opt-in to this specific facet of customised search results. The general issue is about the default search results.
mpweiher 5y ago
> morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses. As far as I know, it is actually the focus on "consumer harm" that is, well was, the new thing, introduced in the 1980s under Reagan, and it largely gutted antitrust law. And that was exactly the purpose. For much of that history, including the seminal breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911, the ruling antitrust theory was “harmful dominance.” That’s the idea that companies that dominate an industry are potentially dangerous merely because they are dominant. With dominance comes the ability to impose corporate will on workers, suppliers, other industries, people who live near factories, even politicians and regulators. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 saw the rise of a new antitrust theory, based on “consumer welfare.” Consumer welfare advocates argue that monopolies can be efficient, able to deliver better products at lower prices to consumers, and therefore the government does us all a disservice when it indiscriminately takes on monopolies. https://wolfstreet.com/2021/08/14/antitrust-bombshells-in-the-fine-print-executive-order-on-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/ https://wolfstreet.com/2021/08/14/antitrust-bombshells-in-th...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]