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The topic of discussion from the original comment is a claim that Google has a monopoly on internet search. Whether or not Google has a monopoly in advertising

The topic of discussion from the original comment is a claim that Google has a monopoly on internet search. Whether or not Google has a monopoly in advertising is a separate topic and not one of huge significance because consumer protection laws exist to protect consumers. Google operates a multi-sided marketplace, and has both consumers (in the legal sense, users that consumer protection laws protect) and more complex business-to-business relationships with advertisers. Profit-seeking businesses in business-to-business relationships are not given the same sort of affordances and protections as end-users, and generally only get protections in consumer protection law if there's a clear relationship between them being scalped and a negative impact on consumer welfare. To your examples of Google's exercise of market power, these things have all broadly been great for consumers, and in each case listed have even also been great for a variety of businesses, further compounding the benefit to consumers. If this drove competitors out of business because they couldn't compete, that's fine. The point of antitrust legislation is to ensure competition exists so that consumer welfare is upheld. Nobody is owed a viable business model. I don't see the argument for these actions reducing competition in the economy or harming consumers. Competition to Youtube crops up from time to time and never seems to go anywhere because Youtube is a business that is extremely difficult to make profitable (i.e. they can't compete because their product is inferior). Many competing email clients exist, paid and non-paid. Buying Android, investing in it, and making it available to hardware manufacturers was a pro-competitive move, since it countered Apple's iPhone and brought a diversity of competing products into the marketplace. Building Google Cloud to compete with AWS is straightforwardly a pro-competitive move as well.

Clubber 4y ago
>Whether or not Google has a monopoly in advertising is a separate topic and not one of huge significance because consumer protection laws exist to protect consumers. Again, you are misidentifying who the customer is. The customer is the advertisers not the users. The product is highly targeted advertising to users. The more Google knows about the user, the better their product (targeted advertising) is. Business to business sales are not exempt from anti-trust laws. One of the things Microsoft got charged for was selling DOS to manufacturers based on the number of computers sold rather than the number of DOS installs. This was deemed anti-competitive and Microsoft's customer in this example was a business (computer manufacturers). This was a business to business anti-trust case. https://www.justice.gov/atr/competitive-impact-statement-us-v-microsoft-corporation https://www.justice.gov/atr/competitive-impact-statement-us-... >If this drove competitors out of business because they couldn't compete, that's fine. I mean maybe. It gets murky because the customer is the advertisers. Imagine if Google released a car and gave it away for free. Almost all other car manufacturers would cease to exist. They were able to offer it for free because of the profits from search. The cost of running Gmail and YouTube is paid for by search profits. All this needs to be argued / decided in court, you and I can just speculate all we want. It won't be tried in court because of regulatory capture, which is really what the article is about. >Competition to Youtube crops up from time to time and never seems to go anywhere because Youtube is a business that is extremely difficult to make profitable (i.e. they can't compete because their product is inferior). Yes, this makes a lot more sense if you consider the product is the network of users to sell ads too, not the users themselves. Now you have the network effect which was built by being able to run YouTube for 2 years without selling a single ad. >Many competing email clients exist, paid and non-paid Yes but Gmail is #1 and it jumped there really quick because they were able to offer what no-one else could, because the subsidized moving into that industry with search profits, which no one else could. That's the anti-trust part. https://corp.inntopia.com/most-common-domains-update-2019/ https://corp.inntopia.com/most-common-domains-update-2019/

Clubber 4y ago

>Whether or not Google has a monopoly in advertising is a separate topic and not one of huge significance because consumer protection laws exist to protect consumers. Again, you are misidentifying who the customer is. The customer is the advertisers not the users. The product is highly targeted advertising to users. The more Google knows about the user, the better their product (targeted advertising) is. Business to business sales are not exempt from anti-trust laws. One of the things Microsoft got charged for was selling DOS to manufacturers based on the number of computers sold rather than the number of DOS installs. This was deemed anti-competitive and Microsoft's customer in this example was a business (computer manufacturers). This was a business to business anti-trust case. https://www.justice.gov/atr/competitive-impact-statement-us-v-microsoft-corporation https://www.justice.gov/atr/competitive-impact-statement-us-... >If this drove competitors out of business because they couldn't compete, that's fine. I mean maybe. It gets murky because the customer is the advertisers. Imagine if Google released a car and gave it away for free. Almost all other car manufacturers would cease to exist. They were able to offer it for free because of the profits from search. The cost of running Gmail and YouTube is paid for by search profits. All this needs to be argued / decided in court, you and I can just speculate all we want. It won't be tried in court because of regulatory capture, which is really what the article is about. >Competition to Youtube crops up from time to time and never seems to go anywhere because Youtube is a business that is extremely difficult to make profitable (i.e. they can't compete because their product is inferior). Yes, this makes a lot more sense if you consider the product is the network of users to sell ads too, not the users themselves. Now you have the network effect which was built by being able to run YouTube for 2 years without selling a single ad. >Many competing email clients exist, paid and non-paid Yes but Gmail is #1 and it jumped there really quick because they were able to offer what no-one else could, because the subsidized moving into that industry with search profits, which no one else could. That's the anti-trust part. https://corp.inntopia.com/most-common-domains-update-2019/ https://corp.inntopia.com/most-common-domains-update-2019/