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Google 2021 revenue: $258B Meta 2021 revenue: $118B Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league?

okamiueru 4y ago
In every article about abusive "monopolies", just read it as "abusing market position".
- basch 4y ago
  To be fair, and I don't agree with this, the word monopoly appears in the complaint 66 times. The NYT is reporting the story, but the FTC is the one "misusing" the word. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.533508/gov.uscourts.vaed.533508.1.0_2.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.53...
  - okamiueru 4y ago
    I'm just trying to help out here. I don't disagree with you, but it gets tiring that every single time some market position is abused, and the word "monopoly" gets used, there is at least one pedantic getting hung up on the "mono" part. Android/iOS market share? Duopoly really. Call it a monopoly? "How is it a monopoly when..." What they mean. What is always meant, is, you have a market position so significant, that you can use to get an unfair advantage on competition. That's what this is about, that is what all of these usually are about. But, it gets sidetracked by misuse of words that should be understood from context. Antitrust, isn't exclusively about monopolies abusing their market position. It doesn't care that much about whether it is one actor abusing it's position, or if it's two... Or three.
    - basch 4y ago
      But this new paradigm of antitrust isn’t about if there’s one two or three of something. It’s a more complex form of antitrust. The Amazon antitrust paradox is about how they aren’t a market leader in tons of their product categories but that they can cross leverage advantages between product categories and verticals to create anticompetitiveness. It’s an analysis of the internal structure of the business, not if they have competition in a narrow subset of outcomes. Monopoly is being used as a substitute for the words bad actor or predatory not duopoly etc. IMHO it’s sloppiness and jargon to invoke emotion, and I’d prefer they used more precise words.
      - okamiueru 4y ago
        Aren't we arguing the same point? Or am I missing something?
        basch 4y ago
        I am saying the word monopoly IS being misused, but I am not arguing that it is because its actually a duopoly, but it is being used as a substitute word in places better words belong.
        okamiueru 4y ago
        I do not disagree at all with that. In fact, I also think I said, or implied at the least, that it was used incorrectly. However, for the sake of discussing the articles, every time this comes up, it would be more productive if people still understood that it isn't the monopoly part that is important, but the antitrust. Similar to what you were saying.
speeder 4y ago
Well, can Meta provide search engine ads for my company that use the expensive Google ones?
- jefftk 4y ago
  Reading the article and skimming the suit, it's only about ads on the general web ("display ads"), not ads on search pages.
  - makapuf 4y ago
    There are ads on websites ?
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Honestly, I'm surprised the US government hasn't tried to ban ad-blocking yet.
deleted 4y ago
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dahfizz 4y ago
Anti-trust lawsuits don't require an absolute monopoly. It requires proving that a company behaved anti-competitively. > The lawsuit said Google had “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising.”
- postalrat 4y ago
  Then their first target should be Apple.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Epic Games is still fighting their antitrust case against Apple so the federal government isn’t going to swoop in and take over the case. If Epic truly fails and DOJ doesn’t see it as a favorable outcome, they might further explore antitrust litigation.
  - brookst 4y ago
    I've never understood this kind of "regulators should ignore evidence of wrongdoing as long as there is also evidence of someone else engaging in wrongdoing" thinking. Even granting that Apple is super-mega-unbearably evil, do you really think regulators should serialize investigations and actions, only moving on to the #2 worst offender once the #1 is sorted?
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >do you really think regulators should serialize investigations and actions, only moving on to the #2 worst offender once the #1 is sorted? Actually, yes. Because if they take down the #2 worst offender, that leaves #1 as the default option for consumers, and strengthens #1's position at #2's expense. It makes the problem even worse than before. As a consumer who doesn't want to use Apple devices, and uses Google because that's basically the only other option for many things, anything that greatly harms Google harms me. Take down Apple and create more competition, and then I'll have more options and I'll be able to maybe choose some things other than Google. After Apple is broken apart, then Google becomes the #1 problem, so go after them at that time. (Yes, I know this particular case probably won't have that much effect on Google.)
Closi 4y ago
> Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league? Being a monopoly doesn’t mean you have no competitors - it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something (ie that there was not enough competition for efficient pricing).
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something Does it? Then why isn't every App Store's 30% developer fee a much more obvious monopoly?
  - dannyr 4y ago
    That's a different antitrust violation. This one is about ad tech. DoJ is probably filing this lawsuit first either it's easier to win and/or they have gathered enough evidence. Pretty sure they are looking into App Store antitrust too.
  - paulluuk 4y ago
    The 30% fee is being targeted in the EU as monopolistic abuse (or whatever the proper legal term is)
  - minhazm 4y ago
    I think in the case of Apple it's more difficult to challenge due to the existence of Android. iOS doesn't even have 50% of the market mobile OS market share globally. You can argue Apple has a monopoly on their own products, but then we'd need to also discuss the same for Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, and any other device that has its own marketplace.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      I'm not sure about the stats on gaming consoles, but Apple has over 50% marketshare in the US last I checked, and we're talking about US law here so US marketshare is really more important than how many Android phones people in India and China have. So having a majority of the market which almost everyone these days buys from (almost everyone has a smartphone now, not like gaming consoles which are a niche market), and then forcing everyone with an iDevice to use the Apple App store, is a clear monopoly unlike some gaming console that a small single-digit percentage of the population (or less) owns, and competes with 2 other big competitors, is not the same.
kryptiskt 4y ago
There is evidence that Facebook and Google aren't competing all that hard, see for example https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-facebook-ad-deal-antitrust.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-faceboo....
jboydyhacker 4y ago
Google owns 90%+ of search, Android, and the Ad side. The three together allow it to crush competitors from both ends all while taking a 35% cut. The most lucrative part of the ad business is paid downloads. how many of those searches start in Google with e.g. "Download Spotify". Google makes money selling that to Spotify and they can do it at a much higher rate because no other ad seller has access to search inventory for "download Spotify" or similar searches.
- riversflow 4y ago
  > no other ad seller has access to search inventory for "download Spotify” I think that behavior should be broadly illegal on the basis that it’s tantamount to false advertising and extortion. Google claims to be a search engine; if you search for something very specific and well known like Spotify, providing you a paid advertisement as the top hit is essentially fraud.
snowwrestler 4y ago
I haven't read the complaint yet but I'd be surprised if the Google/Facebook deal over open bidding is not part of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
cldellow 4y ago
Meta is cited in the complaint [1]. Google and Facebook realized there was a risk they could each cannibalize the others' margins if they both had to compete in a market with many players. They made a deal to avoid that. The relevant part is around paragraph 187, under the "Google Further Stunts Header Bidding by Working to Bring Facebook and Amazon into Its Open Bidding Fold" header. Maybe relevant disclosure: I used to work for a company that was a launch partner of Facebook's Audience Network [2]. In a separate lawsuit in 2020, some state attorneys general claimed that Facebook's internal communications showed that FAN was just a smokescreen to get Facebook leverage to make a deal with Google. Oops, silly us. [1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1563746/download https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1563746/downl... [2]: https://www.facebook.com/audiencenetwork/news-and-insights/header-bidding-through-partnerships https://www.facebook.com/audiencenetwork/news-and-insights/h...
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okamiueru 4y ago

In every article about abusive "monopolies", just read it as "abusing market position".

basch 4y ago
To be fair, and I don't agree with this, the word monopoly appears in the complaint 66 times. The NYT is reporting the story, but the FTC is the one "misusing" the word. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.533508/gov.uscourts.vaed.533508.1.0_2.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.53...
- okamiueru 4y ago
  I'm just trying to help out here. I don't disagree with you, but it gets tiring that every single time some market position is abused, and the word "monopoly" gets used, there is at least one pedantic getting hung up on the "mono" part. Android/iOS market share? Duopoly really. Call it a monopoly? "How is it a monopoly when..." What they mean. What is always meant, is, you have a market position so significant, that you can use to get an unfair advantage on competition. That's what this is about, that is what all of these usually are about. But, it gets sidetracked by misuse of words that should be understood from context. Antitrust, isn't exclusively about monopolies abusing their market position. It doesn't care that much about whether it is one actor abusing it's position, or if it's two... Or three.
  - basch 4y ago
    But this new paradigm of antitrust isn’t about if there’s one two or three of something. It’s a more complex form of antitrust. The Amazon antitrust paradox is about how they aren’t a market leader in tons of their product categories but that they can cross leverage advantages between product categories and verticals to create anticompetitiveness. It’s an analysis of the internal structure of the business, not if they have competition in a narrow subset of outcomes. Monopoly is being used as a substitute for the words bad actor or predatory not duopoly etc. IMHO it’s sloppiness and jargon to invoke emotion, and I’d prefer they used more precise words.
    - okamiueru 4y ago
      Aren't we arguing the same point? Or am I missing something?
      - basch 4y ago
        I am saying the word monopoly IS being misused, but I am not arguing that it is because its actually a duopoly, but it is being used as a substitute word in places better words belong.
        okamiueru 4y ago
        I do not disagree at all with that. In fact, I also think I said, or implied at the least, that it was used incorrectly. However, for the sake of discussing the articles, every time this comes up, it would be more productive if people still understood that it isn't the monopoly part that is important, but the antitrust. Similar to what you were saying.

speeder 4y ago

Well, can Meta provide search engine ads for my company that use the expensive Google ones?

jefftk 4y ago
Reading the article and skimming the suit, it's only about ads on the general web ("display ads"), not ads on search pages.
- makapuf 4y ago
  There are ads on websites ?
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Honestly, I'm surprised the US government hasn't tried to ban ad-blocking yet.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dahfizz 4y ago

Anti-trust lawsuits don't require an absolute monopoly. It requires proving that a company behaved anti-competitively. > The lawsuit said Google had “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising.”

postalrat 4y ago
Then their first target should be Apple.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Epic Games is still fighting their antitrust case against Apple so the federal government isn’t going to swoop in and take over the case. If Epic truly fails and DOJ doesn’t see it as a favorable outcome, they might further explore antitrust litigation.
- brookst 4y ago
  I've never understood this kind of "regulators should ignore evidence of wrongdoing as long as there is also evidence of someone else engaging in wrongdoing" thinking. Even granting that Apple is super-mega-unbearably evil, do you really think regulators should serialize investigations and actions, only moving on to the #2 worst offender once the #1 is sorted?
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >do you really think regulators should serialize investigations and actions, only moving on to the #2 worst offender once the #1 is sorted? Actually, yes. Because if they take down the #2 worst offender, that leaves #1 as the default option for consumers, and strengthens #1's position at #2's expense. It makes the problem even worse than before. As a consumer who doesn't want to use Apple devices, and uses Google because that's basically the only other option for many things, anything that greatly harms Google harms me. Take down Apple and create more competition, and then I'll have more options and I'll be able to maybe choose some things other than Google. After Apple is broken apart, then Google becomes the #1 problem, so go after them at that time. (Yes, I know this particular case probably won't have that much effect on Google.)

Closi 4y ago

> Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league? Being a monopoly doesn’t mean you have no competitors - it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something (ie that there was not enough competition for efficient pricing).

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something Does it? Then why isn't every App Store's 30% developer fee a much more obvious monopoly?
- dannyr 4y ago
  That's a different antitrust violation. This one is about ad tech. DoJ is probably filing this lawsuit first either it's easier to win and/or they have gathered enough evidence. Pretty sure they are looking into App Store antitrust too.
- paulluuk 4y ago
  The 30% fee is being targeted in the EU as monopolistic abuse (or whatever the proper legal term is)
- minhazm 4y ago
  I think in the case of Apple it's more difficult to challenge due to the existence of Android. iOS doesn't even have 50% of the market mobile OS market share globally. You can argue Apple has a monopoly on their own products, but then we'd need to also discuss the same for Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, and any other device that has its own marketplace.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    I'm not sure about the stats on gaming consoles, but Apple has over 50% marketshare in the US last I checked, and we're talking about US law here so US marketshare is really more important than how many Android phones people in India and China have. So having a majority of the market which almost everyone these days buys from (almost everyone has a smartphone now, not like gaming consoles which are a niche market), and then forcing everyone with an iDevice to use the Apple App store, is a clear monopoly unlike some gaming console that a small single-digit percentage of the population (or less) owns, and competes with 2 other big competitors, is not the same.

kryptiskt 4y ago

There is evidence that Facebook and Google aren't competing all that hard, see for example https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-facebook-ad-deal-antitrust.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-faceboo....

jboydyhacker 4y ago

Google owns 90%+ of search, Android, and the Ad side. The three together allow it to crush competitors from both ends all while taking a 35% cut. The most lucrative part of the ad business is paid downloads. how many of those searches start in Google with e.g. "Download Spotify". Google makes money selling that to Spotify and they can do it at a much higher rate because no other ad seller has access to search inventory for "download Spotify" or similar searches.

riversflow 4y ago
> no other ad seller has access to search inventory for "download Spotify” I think that behavior should be broadly illegal on the basis that it’s tantamount to false advertising and extortion. Google claims to be a search engine; if you search for something very specific and well known like Spotify, providing you a paid advertisement as the top hit is essentially fraud.

snowwrestler 4y ago

I haven't read the complaint yet but I'd be surprised if the Google/Facebook deal over open bidding is not part of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

cldellow 4y ago

Meta is cited in the complaint [1]. Google and Facebook realized there was a risk they could each cannibalize the others' margins if they both had to compete in a market with many players. They made a deal to avoid that. The relevant part is around paragraph 187, under the "Google Further Stunts Header Bidding by Working to Bring Facebook and Amazon into Its Open Bidding Fold" header. Maybe relevant disclosure: I used to work for a company that was a launch partner of Facebook's Audience Network [2]. In a separate lawsuit in 2020, some state attorneys general claimed that Facebook's internal communications showed that FAN was just a smokescreen to get Facebook leverage to make a deal with Google. Oops, silly us. [1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1563746/download https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1563746/downl... [2]: https://www.facebook.com/audiencenetwork/news-and-insights/header-bidding-through-partnerships https://www.facebook.com/audiencenetwork/news-and-insights/h...

deleted 4y ago

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