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U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

415 points by mancerayder 5y ago

Angostura 5y ago
> Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to compete. Do you have examples, I’m aware of a few examples where Apple built features in that used to be 3rd party apps. But kick them off?
- skinkestek 5y ago
  I'm fairly sure there was a high profile case this spring (was it when Apple announced they'd let you use an iPad as a second screen?) I'm even more sure there was something going on even more recently with a third party apple watch keyboard for blind or something who got booted because "they abused accessible features" or something that had never been a problem before, and it so happened that Apple had a solution ready on their own launch a few days later.
- quitit 5y ago
  One of these things is not like the others - and making an “everyone is doing it” kind of statement really understates the seriousness of what Google is doing. Google’s actions here systematically undermine auctions to their direct financial benefit, while delivering sub-optimal results for advertisers. In a way that is not an accident, but deliberately engineered and even given snappy project names that allude to the exact purpose of the deception. A better comparison is how certain banks were found to be reordering transactions to maximise the number of overdraft fees owed. Apple only have a handful of apps and of those fewer are paid apps (they’re the pro-level tools). To claim that apple uses its knowledge of the store to make app duplications, then boot the original concepts off the store is plainly false. An example given below by another reader is talking (I believe) about a company called Luna which produces a dongle that allows the mac to share their screen onto an iPad. Apple has always had this feature through the screen sharing service (I did the same, without a dongle, using VLC on a gen 1 iPad, long before Luna had a product - thus the feature is arguably obvious.) Over the years Apple have increased the functionality and ease of use of the screensharing features as their hardware has become more capable of running them - including the latest macos update which expanded these features further. Luna however feels they should have a monopoly on any screensharing functions with their dongle hardware. I’m yet to hear a convincing argument from this developer. I think the core issue is that the app store is large and invariably any changes Apple make to their own software can be tenuously attributed as copying of some random title on the app store. Common-sense arguments such as: apple don’t charge for the feature, the feature is obvious, or the feature is merely an enhancement of an existing feature, are readily discounted in favour of depictions of an evil mastermind preying on utterly tiny revenue sources.
tennien 5y ago
Where’s the link to the amended filing?
syspec 5y ago
I didn't find it in the article, but what is the complaints goal? To break up google from its advertising business?
- ZhangSWEFAANG 5y ago
  I don't think there is one unified goal but a series of suggested changes. For example, in the linked article (https://www.reuters.com/technology/dozens-us-states-sue-google-alleging-antitrust-violations-2021-07-07/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/dozens-us-states-sue-goog...), "The states want the consumers to get their money back. They also called for civil penalties and a court-imposed monitor to ensure Google eases the process for consumers, app developers and smartphone makers to use or promote alternatives to the Play Store and the official payment system for 20 years. In addition, the states seek to stop Google's payments to Samsung and developers."
  - judge2020 5y ago
    That's a very different case. The HN article is about the Ad-rigging system abuse, not the consumer choice app store lawsuit. > accuses Google of using monopolistic and coercive tactics with advertisers in its efforts to dominate and drive out competition in online advertising.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- judge2020 5y ago
  Would be nice if a case number were included. I can't find it anywhere in any of the original articles reporting on the Texas-led lawsuit, unfortunately.
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  If it's antitrust then some sort of breakup would be the ends.
- codyogden 5y ago
Goety 5y ago
They found the gap in the armor.
ZhangSWEFAANG 5y ago
What incentive is there for states to sue over monopolies? Is it simply to advocate for their constituencies?
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
  Upholding the law? Having a functioning market and economy perhaps? It's the government's job to regulate the market. Abusing your (near) monopoly position to drive out competition is illegal.
  - t-3 5y ago
    > Abusing your (near) monopoly position to drive out competition is illegal. Yes, but it happens so often with so little attention paid that stories like this more often make me think a politician is looking for election funding rather than trying to enforce the law.
    - mhh__ 5y ago
      Is that looking a gift horse in the mouth?
      - t-3 5y ago
        Not really, when any investigations or actions are likely to be indefinitely delayed as soon as a lobbyist writes check. If they actually do something other than slap-on-the-wrist fines that don't even do damage, you won't hear me complaining, but I don't have high expectations. The EU seems to be far more interested in reigning in big tech, but they don't seem to be any more succesful, and their most substantive efforts have had lackluster results (I mean, really, is anyone's privacy improved by having more javascript popups added to every single page? Does it even lower the potential for tracking and abuse, let alone reduce the actual commission of such acts?).
        ziml77 5y ago
        Is it possible the EU is being careful because the major tech companies that it would want to punish are all American? People over here could see those actions as the EU trying to take down American companies so that companies in EU countries can take an overwhelmingly dominant position. I would imagine that perception could lead to restrictions and tariffs just like we've applied to China.
dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
"Project Bernanke" ie, a licence to print money. I bet they're perhaps regretting their witty code name right now.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  That they would even use that name indicates they hold themselves superior and beyond reproach. That bubble seems about to burst now.
- 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
  For the unfamiliar: in his role as Chair of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke became somewhat infamous for his endorsement of "quantitative easing" as a response to the 2008 financial crisis. This was (oversimplified) a mildly fancy way of flooding banks with newly-printed money to offset the impact of falling asset prices. Bernanke became known in some circles as "Helicopter Ben" in reference to an earlier speech in which he (in turn) approvingly referenced Milton Friedman's thought experiment of a "helicopter drop" of cash to the general public as a method for boosting liquidity in the economy [1]. (I feel compelled to point out that as far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a solid consensus that quantitative easing was objectively poor policy under the circumstances; a lot of this discourse apparently fell somewhere in the gray area between good-natured ribbing, vacuous memeing, economics school schisms, and mockery of the ostensible hypocrisy of "fiscally conservative" Republicans). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money
  - chalst 5y ago
    It's worth noting that the main beneficiaries of QE are the fixed-income desks at commercial banks, unlike the actual helicopter money proposal, which would benefit the people most hurt by recessions, holders of debt outside the financial system. It says a lot about the quality of public discourse on finance that the debate around QE has mostly been around whether it is inflationary, and not who benefits from this rather peculiar way of dealing with the failure of traditional monetary policy at the zero lower bound.
Jerry2 5y ago
I find it sad that all this is coming from state AGs and not from the DOJ and FTC. It just shows how corrupt our federal institutions are due to regulatory capture [1]. I still remember how Google escaped antitrust enforcement during the Obama presidency. There was a "revolving door" for Google execs and White House officials who would fill positions at both places [2]. When FTC prepared a massive report of Google's antitrust violations [3], the enforcement was quashed as a result of White House lobbying by Google's lobbyists (most of whom worked for the government a year or two prior.) [4] Lots of emails were released under FOIA showing how (former) Google execs who were at the White House told the FTC not to bring on the lawsuit. [5] [6] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture [2] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/ https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close... [3] https://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ https://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ [4] https://archive.md/74r5F https://archive.md/74r5F [5] https://www.theregister.com/2016/08/18/google_had_obamas_ear_on_antitrust_probe/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/08/18/google_had_obamas_ear... [6] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-makes-most-of-close-ties-to-white-house-1427242076 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-makes-most-of-close-ties...
- nverno 5y ago
  The DOJ has a lawsuit against Google in the works, it's even mentioned in the article. [[I'm hesitant to provide a citation as I'm not sure of the latest source]]
  - vmception 5y ago
    Also aside from corruption and capture, there are external forces. States really have little leverage, they want competition but could really just wind up completely unserviced as a corporation says bye bye to their irrelevant market. The feds dont go heavy handed as they have the capability to and massive leverage, but actually debilitating a company could be giving the market to the other remaining companies which from their perspective is worse because they created the monopoly.
numair 5y ago
> antitrust complaint against Alphabet's Google There’s gonna be high-fives and cigars for all of the lawyers and lobbyists who have successfully executed on the strategy to spin off the ultra-high-revenue-generating but secretly-ultra-toxic asset into a standalone entity before the heat got turned on. J&J is trying to do this with the whole talc thing but it’s probably too late. I am totally, totally impressed by Google’s government and legal people. They’ve gotten the company out of almost every mess unscathed, and even done something to erase its most senior executives’ rumored associations with Jeffrey Epstein. It’s truly remarkable. In my ultimate fantasy, they’d be working for the greater good, rather than against it, but alas.
- judge2020 5y ago
  The spinoff isn’t as significant as you might think - all the restructure did was aid in financial reporting and further separate things like Verily from the Ad business.
  - numair 5y ago
    Can’t they pull a J&J-type bankruptcy if things got really expensive for Google? I mean, obviously none of us expect this, but it’s still only possible when everything is in its own container.
- rabenbru 5y ago
  They took down ‘Don’t be Evil’ in 2018?
zwaps 5y ago
It is mentioned in the article, but Google lost an appeal in the EU recently, related to ranking of its price search engine. But one wonders whether that's really such a big deal for Google. An interesting detail instead arises from the other cases. The one case Google apparently WANTS to settle out of court is the case on the use of data! Now, this should tell the careful reader quite a bit about what Google thinks is really important here.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  > The one case Google apparently WANTS to settle out of court is the case on the use of data! Generally, companies want to settle out of court in order to bring a case to a defined conclusion and limit future liabilities. Along that vein, it's not an accident that this case is now news after the judgement in the EU.
  - zwaps 5y ago
    I should have been more clear. Google is settling this case because it matters, and because it does not want to have a public court judgment on the matter of data usage.
kaycebasques 5y ago
Supposing substantial antitrust actions are taken against Big Tech, would that have any effect on rank-and-file salaries in software? Big Tech kinda sets the bar regarding salaries, no? When MSFT was hit with antitrust action did it have any effect like this? Or is it an apples/orange comparison?
- djbusby 5y ago
  I've been in tech since 1997, spent some time at MS (back in NT4,Win2k). The only wage pullback I've seen was dot-com implosion. It lasted maybe two years of slightly reduced pay.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  My lead has been working for 30 years as a dev and has told me his salary has been pretty consistent throughout so I don't believe that's the case. The coastal cities project absurd salaries but when I look at indeed across all of the US, 60-120k is pretty standard depending on entry to senior. If they got knocked down a peg, I highly doubt a lot of people working for google or microsoft would be vying for the lame boring "conservative" work environments in the midwest or south.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  Higher wages. More market competition.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  Price of labor is a function of supply/demand. Developers still in very short supply vs demand. But profitability sets a ceiling on how much you can afford to pay. It seems to me that if antitrust action were taken that really eats into FAANG profits, that industry pay would decline. Not overnight of course, but gradually in real terms. May still rise in nominal terms. Startups/companies have been forced to raise wages over time to compete with FAANG.
  - larsiusprime 5y ago
    Unless of course deadweight loss from monopoly power n FAANG is causing the industry as a whole to be less productive and competitive. In that situation antitrust against FAANG could actually cause wages to rise.
kaycebasques 5y ago
> The lawsuit also highlights Google's use of a secret program dubbed "Project Bernanke" in 2013 that used bidding data to give its own ad-buying an advantage. For example, in a 2015 iteration of the program, Google allegedly dropped the second-highest bids from publishers' auctions, accumulated money into a pool and then spent that money to inflate only the bids belonging advertisers who used the company's Google Ads. They otherwise would have likely lost the auctions, the states alleged. Can someone rephrase this and possibly explain like I'm five? I'm not following the mechanics...
- ignoramous 5y ago
  This summary by Jason Kint is pretty digestible: https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1451621332983103492 https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1451621332983103492
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    Ok. So basically if i'm reading that correctly? : - google is basically offering bid shading on both sides of the transaction. (RPO on pub side according to this tweet) - Both dynamically increasing floor to buy NyTimes.com based on the current likely bid - And for buyers increasing/decreasing bid to pay the best 2nd price auction clearing price which imho is the main problem that should be legislated; you can't own all sides of a transaction AND the pipes. instead of trying to convince a jury of some complicated insider trading monopoly confusing mess.
- vrc 5y ago
  This article explains it somewhat [1]. Still not much more detail, but more nuance than the Reuters piece. I guess the claim was that they manipulated where bids were placed based on who had the highest bid. So that if a non Google advertiser was going to win the auction, they removed the second highest bid if it was a Google advertiser s.t. the price paid for the slot dropped (second price auction). So in effect, they maintained a higher payout for pubs when Google programmatic bidders won by dropping the second price floor on non Google-programmatic winners. Thus making more money AND converting people towards programmatic. I believe their counter argument is that the data they had actually just made programmatic better from the start by predicting these outcomes, no fraud needed [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-bernanke-revealed-in-texas-antitrust-case-11618097760 https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-bernanke...
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
Google does not want documents produced to the DOJ to be shared with the state AGs. https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903.145.0.pdf https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.56... Judge Castel reminded them that they must produce those documents to the state AGs. https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903.168.0.pdf https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.56... Perhaps this team can benefit from the discovery conducted by the DOJ.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Can document discovery really be this sweeping? Or is this some sort of request where the plaintiff can review potential documents before those documents are submitted into discovery and argued on?
- dotancohen 5y ago
  > Google does not want documents produced to the DOJ to be shared with the state AGs. Are the documents produced to the DOJ public? Can attorneys general not use any public information?
dantheman 5y ago
It'd be great if states actually focused on real problems like education and medicine instead of going after tech which provides services for free and is generally liked. No one is blaming tech for debt or financial ruin.
- krono 5y ago
  You cannot be serious. Where do you think all that money went?
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    Serious zero sum financial thinking there - assuming profiting from a transaction means the other party must be worse off. And implicitly applying the thieves's syllogism too that is "you have it, I want it, therefore you stole it from me".
    - krono 5y ago
      I was alluding to the antitrust accusations. My comment being placed in the broader context them was perhaps too far-fetched of a hint.
  - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
    Self driving cars, free email, free docs, sheets etc. It is a serious point. Protecting advertising companies from each other is a perplexing choice of resource allocation given the alternatives.
    - ajvs 5y ago
      "don't go after monopolies which are abusing their dominance to keep everyone else poorer"
    - onion2k 5y ago
      Given the choice between free email and Google paying enough tax to improve the entire education system of the US, why do you think people would pick email? Do you believe everyone is stupid?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mabbo 5y ago
As more data comes out about Google, Apple, Amazon, one simple underlying thing becomes clear: a single company cannot be trusted to operate a marketplace while also being a participant. Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to compete. Amazon sees what products are successful and profitable, then makes knock-offs which they promote over the originals. And now, reading into this, Google is manipulating their ad markets using inside knowledge. It's all very profitable. If we cannot trust large companies to not abuse this kind of power, then they should be prevented by law from playing both sides. This may result in the breakup of some very large companies, akin to the 1934 Air Mail Act that broke up Boeing.
- Bellamy 5y ago
  Another example: FDA is funded by pharma companies.
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    No wonder people think businesses run governments when they use bad metrics of control like that. The earth itself controls oil companies and is therefore responsible for global warming by that logic!
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  The underlying assumption is that this behavior is bad. Why is it bad? Especially bad enough to be regulated by a new law?
  - II2II 5y ago
    It is a conflict of interest that allows them to gain a disproportionate amount of control over the market. It causes direct harm to competitors, through both the access to confidential sales data and access to the market. It also causes harm to consumers (at least in cases of locked down platforms like iOS) since they no longer have access to competitor's products. In short, it is no longer a free market.
  - 5y ago
agent48 5y ago
h
lazyeye 5y ago
Excellent!
eitland 5y ago
Still waiting for investigators to look into Chrome. In 2009 we were finally getting rid of IE and the web browser market was a healthy ecosystem with lots and lots of innovation happening. Today we are soon back on a browser monoculture with the owner of the most popular product being a company that has enormous interest in killing certain parts of the ecosystem and also has a long history of killing of their own products. How did it happen? In my opinion: massive abuse of power in two other markets (search and ads) to push their way into browsers as well. (Well, I'm feeling I might have been too generous above: I could add 2 more - video and office tools - by pointing how they selectively make Google Docs and YouTube perform worse in Firefox, being so brazen about it that just changing the headers so that Firefox identifies itself as Chrome makes the problems go away.)
- diggan 5y ago
  Yeah, reminds me when Google purposefully blocked Firefox from accessing Inbox. Changing the user-agent revealed that they did that for no other purpose than "performance wasn't what we wanted" while the application worked fine as it was, proved by just changing the user-agent. They also let people use other applications that are slow in Firefox, like Google Photos, but somehow Inbox was different. Gist: https://gist.github.com/VictorB/1d0f4ee6dc5ec0d6646e https://gist.github.com/VictorB/1d0f4ee6dc5ec0d6646e HN comments at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8606879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8606879
  - eitland 5y ago
    Thanks! I've added it to my collection. I called authorities again earlier this week and they promised to get back to me if they need more evidence.
  - dlubarov 5y ago
    If you believe Google blocked Firefox for competitive reasons, how would you explain - The Google engineer's explanation (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498) - do you think he was just plain lying? - The Firefox performance bug he mentioned (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963). Do you think Google engineers went out of their way to search for new performance bugs in Firefox, then figure out how to introduce those bugs in Inbox's code? - If Google wanted to use Inbox support to hurt competitors, why would they invest engineering resources in making an Inbox app for iOS? Considering that Android vs iOS competition has much more impact on Google's business than Chrome vs Firefox competition (e.g. see how much Google pays to be the default iOS search provider).
perth 5y ago
Not sure if this was mentioned but does anyone else think it's sleazy that Google tries to poach employees from other companies via Foobar[1]? [1] https://foobar.withgoogle.com https://foobar.withgoogle.com
- BrianOnHN 5y ago
  What's that?
  - perth 5y ago
    Google hijacked my search result with that fine recruiting method at work a few weeks ago. I checked it out with a burner Google account and it seems like it was a recruiting method where they have you solve programming questions on that service[1]. I did a few of the "levels" and they're all just tricky programming questions. However.. Even not signed into an account, which, I don't sign in to any Google services at work in interest of protecting IP, Google was able to track enough via cookies / me being on an si corp network to throw that to me. [1] Pic I took on my phone: https://i.imgur.com/7X7ybUv.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/7X7ybUv.jpeg
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Google has done that for about a decade.
      - perth 5y ago
        And.. does doing something questionable for a long time make it good? Shouldn't abusing their dominance in the search engine marketplace to poach employees be a pretty big anti-trust thing?
    - sidibe 5y ago
      It has nothing to do with you being on a corp network. I've gotten that on my personal computer
eoo 5y ago
Breaking down Google is not gonna work. I guess that the simplest solution is to forbid Google from being in the ad exchange business. Take down AdX and most of the monopolizing effects they have on the ecosystem would be dampened.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Splitting Android and Chrome would be good enough for a start.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    Better to split off YouTube so it has to compete with search for ads.

415 points by mancerayder 5y ago

> Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to compete. Do you have examples, I’m aware of a few examples where Apple built features in that used to be 3rd party apps. But kick them off?

skinkestek 5y ago
I'm fairly sure there was a high profile case this spring (was it when Apple announced they'd let you use an iPad as a second screen?) I'm even more sure there was something going on even more recently with a third party apple watch keyboard for blind or something who got booted because "they abused accessible features" or something that had never been a problem before, and it so happened that Apple had a solution ready on their own launch a few days later.
quitit 5y ago
One of these things is not like the others - and making an “everyone is doing it” kind of statement really understates the seriousness of what Google is doing. Google’s actions here systematically undermine auctions to their direct financial benefit, while delivering sub-optimal results for advertisers. In a way that is not an accident, but deliberately engineered and even given snappy project names that allude to the exact purpose of the deception. A better comparison is how certain banks were found to be reordering transactions to maximise the number of overdraft fees owed. Apple only have a handful of apps and of those fewer are paid apps (they’re the pro-level tools). To claim that apple uses its knowledge of the store to make app duplications, then boot the original concepts off the store is plainly false. An example given below by another reader is talking (I believe) about a company called Luna which produces a dongle that allows the mac to share their screen onto an iPad. Apple has always had this feature through the screen sharing service (I did the same, without a dongle, using VLC on a gen 1 iPad, long before Luna had a product - thus the feature is arguably obvious.) Over the years Apple have increased the functionality and ease of use of the screensharing features as their hardware has become more capable of running them - including the latest macos update which expanded these features further. Luna however feels they should have a monopoly on any screensharing functions with their dongle hardware. I’m yet to hear a convincing argument from this developer. I think the core issue is that the app store is large and invariably any changes Apple make to their own software can be tenuously attributed as copying of some random title on the app store. Common-sense arguments such as: apple don’t charge for the feature, the feature is obvious, or the feature is merely an enhancement of an existing feature, are readily discounted in favour of depictions of an evil mastermind preying on utterly tiny revenue sources.

tennien 5y ago

Where’s the link to the amended filing?

syspec 5y ago

I didn't find it in the article, but what is the complaints goal? To break up google from its advertising business?

ZhangSWEFAANG 5y ago
I don't think there is one unified goal but a series of suggested changes. For example, in the linked article (https://www.reuters.com/technology/dozens-us-states-sue-google-alleging-antitrust-violations-2021-07-07/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/dozens-us-states-sue-goog...), "The states want the consumers to get their money back. They also called for civil penalties and a court-imposed monitor to ensure Google eases the process for consumers, app developers and smartphone makers to use or promote alternatives to the Play Store and the official payment system for 20 years. In addition, the states seek to stop Google's payments to Samsung and developers."
- judge2020 5y ago
  That's a very different case. The HN article is about the Ad-rigging system abuse, not the consumer choice app store lawsuit. > accuses Google of using monopolistic and coercive tactics with advertisers in its efforts to dominate and drive out competition in online advertising.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
judge2020 5y ago
Would be nice if a case number were included. I can't find it anywhere in any of the original articles reporting on the Texas-led lawsuit, unfortunately.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
If it's antitrust then some sort of breakup would be the ends.
codyogden 5y ago

Goety 5y ago

They found the gap in the armor.

ZhangSWEFAANG 5y ago

What incentive is there for states to sue over monopolies? Is it simply to advocate for their constituencies?

dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
Upholding the law? Having a functioning market and economy perhaps? It's the government's job to regulate the market. Abusing your (near) monopoly position to drive out competition is illegal.
- t-3 5y ago
  > Abusing your (near) monopoly position to drive out competition is illegal. Yes, but it happens so often with so little attention paid that stories like this more often make me think a politician is looking for election funding rather than trying to enforce the law.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Is that looking a gift horse in the mouth?
    - t-3 5y ago
      Not really, when any investigations or actions are likely to be indefinitely delayed as soon as a lobbyist writes check. If they actually do something other than slap-on-the-wrist fines that don't even do damage, you won't hear me complaining, but I don't have high expectations. The EU seems to be far more interested in reigning in big tech, but they don't seem to be any more succesful, and their most substantive efforts have had lackluster results (I mean, really, is anyone's privacy improved by having more javascript popups added to every single page? Does it even lower the potential for tracking and abuse, let alone reduce the actual commission of such acts?).
      - ziml77 5y ago
        Is it possible the EU is being careful because the major tech companies that it would want to punish are all American? People over here could see those actions as the EU trying to take down American companies so that companies in EU countries can take an overwhelmingly dominant position. I would imagine that perception could lead to restrictions and tariffs just like we've applied to China.

dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago

"Project Bernanke" ie, a licence to print money. I bet they're perhaps regretting their witty code name right now.

IncRnd 5y ago
That they would even use that name indicates they hold themselves superior and beyond reproach. That bubble seems about to burst now.
0xcde4c3db 5y ago
For the unfamiliar: in his role as Chair of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke became somewhat infamous for his endorsement of "quantitative easing" as a response to the 2008 financial crisis. This was (oversimplified) a mildly fancy way of flooding banks with newly-printed money to offset the impact of falling asset prices. Bernanke became known in some circles as "Helicopter Ben" in reference to an earlier speech in which he (in turn) approvingly referenced Milton Friedman's thought experiment of a "helicopter drop" of cash to the general public as a method for boosting liquidity in the economy [1]. (I feel compelled to point out that as far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a solid consensus that quantitative easing was objectively poor policy under the circumstances; a lot of this discourse apparently fell somewhere in the gray area between good-natured ribbing, vacuous memeing, economics school schisms, and mockery of the ostensible hypocrisy of "fiscally conservative" Republicans). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money
- chalst 5y ago
  It's worth noting that the main beneficiaries of QE are the fixed-income desks at commercial banks, unlike the actual helicopter money proposal, which would benefit the people most hurt by recessions, holders of debt outside the financial system. It says a lot about the quality of public discourse on finance that the debate around QE has mostly been around whether it is inflationary, and not who benefits from this rather peculiar way of dealing with the failure of traditional monetary policy at the zero lower bound.

Jerry2 5y ago

I find it sad that all this is coming from state AGs and not from the DOJ and FTC. It just shows how corrupt our federal institutions are due to regulatory capture [1]. I still remember how Google escaped antitrust enforcement during the Obama presidency. There was a "revolving door" for Google execs and White House officials who would fill positions at both places [2]. When FTC prepared a massive report of Google's antitrust violations [3], the enforcement was quashed as a result of White House lobbying by Google's lobbyists (most of whom worked for the government a year or two prior.) [4] Lots of emails were released under FOIA showing how (former) Google execs who were at the White House told the FTC not to bring on the lawsuit. [5] [6] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture [2] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/ https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close... [3] https://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ https://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ [4] https://archive.md/74r5F https://archive.md/74r5F [5] https://www.theregister.com/2016/08/18/google_had_obamas_ear_on_antitrust_probe/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/08/18/google_had_obamas_ear... [6] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-makes-most-of-close-ties-to-white-house-1427242076 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-makes-most-of-close-ties...

nverno 5y ago
The DOJ has a lawsuit against Google in the works, it's even mentioned in the article. [[I'm hesitant to provide a citation as I'm not sure of the latest source]]
- vmception 5y ago
  Also aside from corruption and capture, there are external forces. States really have little leverage, they want competition but could really just wind up completely unserviced as a corporation says bye bye to their irrelevant market. The feds dont go heavy handed as they have the capability to and massive leverage, but actually debilitating a company could be giving the market to the other remaining companies which from their perspective is worse because they created the monopoly.

numair 5y ago

> antitrust complaint against Alphabet's Google There’s gonna be high-fives and cigars for all of the lawyers and lobbyists who have successfully executed on the strategy to spin off the ultra-high-revenue-generating but secretly-ultra-toxic asset into a standalone entity before the heat got turned on. J&J is trying to do this with the whole talc thing but it’s probably too late. I am totally, totally impressed by Google’s government and legal people. They’ve gotten the company out of almost every mess unscathed, and even done something to erase its most senior executives’ rumored associations with Jeffrey Epstein. It’s truly remarkable. In my ultimate fantasy, they’d be working for the greater good, rather than against it, but alas.

judge2020 5y ago
The spinoff isn’t as significant as you might think - all the restructure did was aid in financial reporting and further separate things like Verily from the Ad business.
- numair 5y ago
  Can’t they pull a J&J-type bankruptcy if things got really expensive for Google? I mean, obviously none of us expect this, but it’s still only possible when everything is in its own container.
rabenbru 5y ago
They took down ‘Don’t be Evil’ in 2018?

zwaps 5y ago

It is mentioned in the article, but Google lost an appeal in the EU recently, related to ranking of its price search engine. But one wonders whether that's really such a big deal for Google. An interesting detail instead arises from the other cases. The one case Google apparently WANTS to settle out of court is the case on the use of data! Now, this should tell the careful reader quite a bit about what Google thinks is really important here.

IncRnd 5y ago
> The one case Google apparently WANTS to settle out of court is the case on the use of data! Generally, companies want to settle out of court in order to bring a case to a defined conclusion and limit future liabilities. Along that vein, it's not an accident that this case is now news after the judgement in the EU.
- zwaps 5y ago
  I should have been more clear. Google is settling this case because it matters, and because it does not want to have a public court judgment on the matter of data usage.

kaycebasques 5y ago

Supposing substantial antitrust actions are taken against Big Tech, would that have any effect on rank-and-file salaries in software? Big Tech kinda sets the bar regarding salaries, no? When MSFT was hit with antitrust action did it have any effect like this? Or is it an apples/orange comparison?

djbusby 5y ago
I've been in tech since 1997, spent some time at MS (back in NT4,Win2k). The only wage pullback I've seen was dot-com implosion. It lasted maybe two years of slightly reduced pay.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
My lead has been working for 30 years as a dev and has told me his salary has been pretty consistent throughout so I don't believe that's the case. The coastal cities project absurd salaries but when I look at indeed across all of the US, 60-120k is pretty standard depending on entry to senior. If they got knocked down a peg, I highly doubt a lot of people working for google or microsoft would be vying for the lame boring "conservative" work environments in the midwest or south.
R0b0t1 5y ago
Higher wages. More market competition.
adam_arthur 5y ago
Price of labor is a function of supply/demand. Developers still in very short supply vs demand. But profitability sets a ceiling on how much you can afford to pay. It seems to me that if antitrust action were taken that really eats into FAANG profits, that industry pay would decline. Not overnight of course, but gradually in real terms. May still rise in nominal terms. Startups/companies have been forced to raise wages over time to compete with FAANG.
- larsiusprime 5y ago
  Unless of course deadweight loss from monopoly power n FAANG is causing the industry as a whole to be less productive and competitive. In that situation antitrust against FAANG could actually cause wages to rise.

kaycebasques 5y ago

> The lawsuit also highlights Google's use of a secret program dubbed "Project Bernanke" in 2013 that used bidding data to give its own ad-buying an advantage. For example, in a 2015 iteration of the program, Google allegedly dropped the second-highest bids from publishers' auctions, accumulated money into a pool and then spent that money to inflate only the bids belonging advertisers who used the company's Google Ads. They otherwise would have likely lost the auctions, the states alleged. Can someone rephrase this and possibly explain like I'm five? I'm not following the mechanics...

ignoramous 5y ago
This summary by Jason Kint is pretty digestible: https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1451621332983103492 https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1451621332983103492
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Ok. So basically if i'm reading that correctly? : - google is basically offering bid shading on both sides of the transaction. (RPO on pub side according to this tweet) - Both dynamically increasing floor to buy NyTimes.com based on the current likely bid - And for buyers increasing/decreasing bid to pay the best 2nd price auction clearing price which imho is the main problem that should be legislated; you can't own all sides of a transaction AND the pipes. instead of trying to convince a jury of some complicated insider trading monopoly confusing mess.
vrc 5y ago
This article explains it somewhat [1]. Still not much more detail, but more nuance than the Reuters piece. I guess the claim was that they manipulated where bids were placed based on who had the highest bid. So that if a non Google advertiser was going to win the auction, they removed the second highest bid if it was a Google advertiser s.t. the price paid for the slot dropped (second price auction). So in effect, they maintained a higher payout for pubs when Google programmatic bidders won by dropping the second price floor on non Google-programmatic winners. Thus making more money AND converting people towards programmatic. I believe their counter argument is that the data they had actually just made programmatic better from the start by predicting these outcomes, no fraud needed [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-bernanke-revealed-in-texas-antitrust-case-11618097760 https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-bernanke...

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

Google does not want documents produced to the DOJ to be shared with the state AGs. https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903.145.0.pdf https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.56... Judge Castel reminded them that they must produce those documents to the state AGs. https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903.168.0.pdf https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.56... Perhaps this team can benefit from the discovery conducted by the DOJ.

judge2020 5y ago
Can document discovery really be this sweeping? Or is this some sort of request where the plaintiff can review potential documents before those documents are submitted into discovery and argued on?
dotancohen 5y ago
> Google does not want documents produced to the DOJ to be shared with the state AGs. Are the documents produced to the DOJ public? Can attorneys general not use any public information?

dantheman 5y ago

It'd be great if states actually focused on real problems like education and medicine instead of going after tech which provides services for free and is generally liked. No one is blaming tech for debt or financial ruin.

krono 5y ago
You cannot be serious. Where do you think all that money went?
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Serious zero sum financial thinking there - assuming profiting from a transaction means the other party must be worse off. And implicitly applying the thieves's syllogism too that is "you have it, I want it, therefore you stole it from me".
  - krono 5y ago
    I was alluding to the antitrust accusations. My comment being placed in the broader context them was perhaps too far-fetched of a hint.
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  Self driving cars, free email, free docs, sheets etc. It is a serious point. Protecting advertising companies from each other is a perplexing choice of resource allocation given the alternatives.
  - ajvs 5y ago
    "don't go after monopolies which are abusing their dominance to keep everyone else poorer"
  - onion2k 5y ago
    Given the choice between free email and Google paying enough tax to improve the entire education system of the US, why do you think people would pick email? Do you believe everyone is stupid?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mabbo 5y ago

As more data comes out about Google, Apple, Amazon, one simple underlying thing becomes clear: a single company cannot be trusted to operate a marketplace while also being a participant. Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to compete. Amazon sees what products are successful and profitable, then makes knock-offs which they promote over the originals. And now, reading into this, Google is manipulating their ad markets using inside knowledge. It's all very profitable. If we cannot trust large companies to not abuse this kind of power, then they should be prevented by law from playing both sides. This may result in the breakup of some very large companies, akin to the 1934 Air Mail Act that broke up Boeing.

Bellamy 5y ago
Another example: FDA is funded by pharma companies.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  No wonder people think businesses run governments when they use bad metrics of control like that. The earth itself controls oil companies and is therefore responsible for global warming by that logic!
sillysaurusx 5y ago
The underlying assumption is that this behavior is bad. Why is it bad? Especially bad enough to be regulated by a new law?
- II2II 5y ago
  It is a conflict of interest that allows them to gain a disproportionate amount of control over the market. It causes direct harm to competitors, through both the access to confidential sales data and access to the market. It also causes harm to consumers (at least in cases of locked down platforms like iOS) since they no longer have access to competitor's products. In short, it is no longer a free market.
- 5y ago

agent48 5y ago

lazyeye 5y ago

Excellent!

eitland 5y ago

Still waiting for investigators to look into Chrome. In 2009 we were finally getting rid of IE and the web browser market was a healthy ecosystem with lots and lots of innovation happening. Today we are soon back on a browser monoculture with the owner of the most popular product being a company that has enormous interest in killing certain parts of the ecosystem and also has a long history of killing of their own products. How did it happen? In my opinion: massive abuse of power in two other markets (search and ads) to push their way into browsers as well. (Well, I'm feeling I might have been too generous above: I could add 2 more - video and office tools - by pointing how they selectively make Google Docs and YouTube perform worse in Firefox, being so brazen about it that just changing the headers so that Firefox identifies itself as Chrome makes the problems go away.)

diggan 5y ago
Yeah, reminds me when Google purposefully blocked Firefox from accessing Inbox. Changing the user-agent revealed that they did that for no other purpose than "performance wasn't what we wanted" while the application worked fine as it was, proved by just changing the user-agent. They also let people use other applications that are slow in Firefox, like Google Photos, but somehow Inbox was different. Gist: https://gist.github.com/VictorB/1d0f4ee6dc5ec0d6646e https://gist.github.com/VictorB/1d0f4ee6dc5ec0d6646e HN comments at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8606879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8606879
- eitland 5y ago
  Thanks! I've added it to my collection. I called authorities again earlier this week and they promised to get back to me if they need more evidence.
- dlubarov 5y ago
  If you believe Google blocked Firefox for competitive reasons, how would you explain - The Google engineer's explanation (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498) - do you think he was just plain lying? - The Firefox performance bug he mentioned (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963). Do you think Google engineers went out of their way to search for new performance bugs in Firefox, then figure out how to introduce those bugs in Inbox's code? - If Google wanted to use Inbox support to hurt competitors, why would they invest engineering resources in making an Inbox app for iOS? Considering that Android vs iOS competition has much more impact on Google's business than Chrome vs Firefox competition (e.g. see how much Google pays to be the default iOS search provider).

perth 5y ago

Not sure if this was mentioned but does anyone else think it's sleazy that Google tries to poach employees from other companies via Foobar[1]? [1] https://foobar.withgoogle.com https://foobar.withgoogle.com

BrianOnHN 5y ago
What's that?
- perth 5y ago
  Google hijacked my search result with that fine recruiting method at work a few weeks ago. I checked it out with a burner Google account and it seems like it was a recruiting method where they have you solve programming questions on that service[1]. I did a few of the "levels" and they're all just tricky programming questions. However.. Even not signed into an account, which, I don't sign in to any Google services at work in interest of protecting IP, Google was able to track enough via cookies / me being on an si corp network to throw that to me. [1] Pic I took on my phone: https://i.imgur.com/7X7ybUv.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/7X7ybUv.jpeg
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Google has done that for about a decade.
    - perth 5y ago
      And.. does doing something questionable for a long time make it good? Shouldn't abusing their dominance in the search engine marketplace to poach employees be a pretty big anti-trust thing?
  - sidibe 5y ago
    It has nothing to do with you being on a corp network. I've gotten that on my personal computer

eoo 5y ago

Breaking down Google is not gonna work. I guess that the simplest solution is to forbid Google from being in the ad exchange business. Take down AdX and most of the monopolizing effects they have on the ecosystem would be dampened.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Splitting Android and Chrome would be good enough for a start.
- thebean11 5y ago
  Better to split off YouTube so it has to compete with search for ads.