6 ms·

> But this was not enough for the court to conclude Apple has monopoly power. I don't understand that. How is a single company controlling more than half of th

by lapcat 4y ago

> But this was not enough for the court to conclude Apple has monopoly power. I don't understand that. How is a single company controlling more than half of the entire market not monopoly power?

giobox 4y ago
I'm not passing judgement on this case and this comment has no relation to its facts, but generally speaking a single company controlling ~51 percent of the market is not the definition of a monopoly, at least not for anti-trust purposes. Indeed a company can have market share well beyond this and not fall foul of anti-trust law, depending on facts of the case. It's much harder to unfairly distort an open marketplace with 51% share than say 90%, most of the time. Again, this is why the marketplace definition step of this process matters so much!
- lapcat 4y ago
  > unfairly distort an open marketplace I'd hardly call it open. Whether or not you call Apple a monopoly, Apple and Google indisputably have a duopoly over mobile OS. Moreover, Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) And the craziest part is, our so-called antitrust laws allow Google to pay Apple $billions per year to be the default search engine in Safari. The duopolists openly conspiring.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    > Whether or not you call Apple a monopoly, Apple and Google indisputably have a duopoly over mobile OS. In mobile gaming, Apple and Google are the largest participants, but not the only participants. We have the Switch, the Steam Deck, and other smaller companies as well.
    - greiskul 4y ago
      Neither my switch nor my steam deck fits inside of my pants pocket. They are also not the device that dominates almost every human beings life. Cellphones and their evolution of smartphones is probably the single biggest technology revolution we had in a very long time. It's bigger than the invention of computers and the PC. While PCs changed work life for a huge population, smartphones are owned by 86% of humans.
      - pseg134 4y ago
        We better get your pants to the judge so he can check all the mobile devices to see if they fit in your pocket.
  - pb7 4y ago
    A duopoly isn't a monopoly. Uber and Lyft coexisting is extremely different than just Uber existing, for example. Luckily, it's not even a duopoly since there are other mobile gaming options like the extremely popular Nintendo Switch. >(I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) Because using an alternative, of which there are many, is as easy as typing in a different URL. They're all just inferior products and the market knows it. >The duopolists openly conspiring. Making a deal is not a conspiracy. It would be of concern if part of the deal was prohibiting switching to other search engines but nothing is stopping you from switching to Bing and having Google waste a few dollars of that deal.
    - 6510 4y ago
      There was multilingual topic talking about some research not showing advantages. One advantage is that one has to learn how to describe something when you cant think of the word for it. Fitting the definition of a monopoly is probably a lot harder than to ask what is undesirable about monopolies. If google or apple hold a monopoly isn't very interesting. We can easily agree that the motivation to innovate is not there if there is no real competitor. We are kinda blessed by there being 2 platforms but that they are like prisons for developers is not beneficial. We are also blessed with the www in how incredibly open it is. With the phones we got entities that dictates the rules of the game. In stead of domain names the www could have been what these mobile application stores are: a web directory with enormous fees. Before the www I tried to create a teletext page. We had countless TV channels each with their own text pages. Even the smallest TV stations wanted me to pay for hardware and charge an enormous monthly fee. They made it into a completely useless offer. It didn't have to be a monopoly to get there. In the US rent-seeking percentage fees on transactions are quite normal, in the EU many just pay for the transaction. How large it is is quite irrelevant? We are also blessed with a relatively open Android OS. For a new OS it is hard to get any of the other popular prison builders onthere. Government should regulate where companies try to own and control things that are non of their business or clearly not theirs to own. For example chat history or email is important for the legal process. People need to prove conversations happened. I just send a whatsapp screenshot to my boss where my previous manager approved my day off. I could easily doctor such an image. We have the technology to grant someone access to part of a conversation in a legally binding way, technology just didn't mature enough, its to childish to do those things. To have corporate platform owners decide which company lives or dies is simply undesirable. They [may] do it without dialog and without explanation. A company should not be forced to put it self in that position. People purchase mobile computer. Companies desire to offer software for their mobile computer. The manufacturer then gets to decide if they approve? I buy a toaster, you make bread, the manufacturer disapproves of the bread? Or they desire 30% of the money? Manufacturers can't stipulate which cartridges you have to use in your printer. They may have a preference (using their own brand) but they can't force you to. Car makers can't make you use a certain brand of fuel. Dishwasher manufacturer may not force you to use a specific brand of tablet. Coffee machines may not lock you into their preferred brand of coffee. It's not a position that arises from logic, it is just that making the hardware created the possibility. It is quite unusual to force customers to not just buy specific coffee but also buy it from a specific store. If we are going to allow that other manufacturers should be allowed to do the same. We should allow MS to force users to use Edge for everything. If you want to use libreoffice you can install a linux?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dev_tty01 4y ago
    >I'd hardly call it open. Whether or not you call Apple a monopoly, Apple and Google indisputably have a duopoly over mobile OS. Why is that relevant? That was not the question before the court. However, to prove an illegal duopoly you have to show collusion. IANAL, but I think it is unlikely anyone could show enough collusion between Apple and Google to reach the threshold of an illegal duopoly.
    - thayne 4y ago
      With a duopoly you don't need direct collusion, you can exercise monopoly power just by watching what your "competitor" is doing. You don't have to meet behind closed doors to fix prices, you just set your prices to be exactly equal to your competitor. Or if the market is segmented in some way, and one competitor enters a specific segment, the other one can focus on other segments. Like say Lyft focusing on cities that don't already have Uber, and vice versa, to reference another comment.
      - kergonath 4y ago
        > you can exercise monopoly power just by watching what your "competitor" is doing That is not a monopoly, which implies that the market is controlled by only one company. Not two. “Monopoly” is not just something you say when you don’t like a company. Also, a monopoly in itself is not necessarily illegal or problematic. The real issue is a company abusing its market power, which does not require anything like a monopoly. > You don't have to meet behind closed doors to fix prices, you just set your prices to be exactly equal to your competitor. Then it is not collusion. It’s just a poorly functioning market, or something that cannot work as a free market (some natural monopolies are like that).
  - IMTDb 4y ago
    > Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) What do you suggest we do over this ? Forbid some people to search on Google ? Or give each user X queries / day then say "please use another search engine; here are some alternatives ...". The laws are against monopolies abusing their power. As long as it's trivial to change provider we are in the clear; but the trouble come if a company uses their position to gain an unfair advantage. For example if Google says "You have to un-index you site from bing otherwise we will apply a ranking penalty on your search results". But "being the default choice with a trivial switch possible" is hardly an abuse of power.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > What do you suggest we do over this ? Break it up! That's what you do with monopolies. That's what they did with Standard Oil. That's what they did with AT&T. That's what they talked about doing and should have done with Microsoft. > but the trouble come if a company uses their position to gain an unfair advantage Google has leveraged its search dominance to gain dominance in a number of other areas too. For example, whenever I do a Google Search in Safari (without my content blocking extensions running), I see a big popup that says "Google recommends using Chrome". That's an abuse of power. (And naturally, Google is the default search engine of Google Chrome). Google AMP is an abuse of power, forcing websites to redesign themselves specifically for Google, on penalty of lower search ranking. I've already mentioned how the two duopolists colluding is an abuse of power. Google has been accused by Mozilla of systematically sabotaging Firefox in various ways, for example on YouTube. The list goes on and on.
      - miahi 4y ago
        MS is still "the best" in this case. Searching for Firefox on a fresh Windows install (with Edge) will show Chrome and Opera as first two options (keyword ads), then Firefox. And then, when you download the Firefox installer, you are announced that it could harm your device.
        hardware2win 4y ago
  - KyeRussell 4y ago
    It genuinely sounds like you are generally not aware of the common definitions of the words you’re using. You seem to just be…intuiting them, and using that as the basis for some sort of legal argument.
  - imoverclocked 4y ago
    > Moreover, Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) There are other free search engines. Also Google makes money as an advertiser, not as a search service. Search itself has always been free, even before Google existed.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Some of the first search engines I used were paid: JSTOR and LexisNexis.
      - imoverclocked 4y ago
        I can’t tell if you are trolling or not. Both of those are alive and well. Since at least the early 1990s, there have been free search engines. eg: Archie, Infoseek, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, etc…
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        kube-system 4y ago
        I’m serious. Just saying: paid options like LexisNexis (and a couple others) offered online information search services that date back to the 70s. The 90s was the advent of free World Wide Web search. It wasn’t the advent of online search engines.
        imoverclocked 4y ago
        I mean, card catalogues and the Dewey decimal system go back a century before that. Public libraries go back much further in different forms. Just because you can pay for information/search, doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to get it for free. In the context of this thread, these all feel like straw man arguments.
        4y ago
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >Apple and Google indisputably have a duopoly over mobile OS. A duopoly is not a monopoly. Unfortunately, anti-trust law seems to only be concerned with monopolies, and totally ignores duopolies and oligopolies. >The duopolists openly conspiring. Exactly. >Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) This isn't quite a monopoly (Bing does exist, you know), plus it's free (or "free"). It doesn't help when the competition is so awful, though. See yesterday's article and discussion about DDG. Many times, monopolies (or near-monopolies, or duopolies) arise because the competition is so inept and incompetent.
    - happymellon 4y ago
      Having competition doesn't stop a monopoly. A monopoly is where there is a single player that has enough power to manipulate the market. Despite Bing existing, Google can manipulate traffic by altering its search results and due to it having 93% of the search share, it can manipulate it's position to direct people to one site over another or kill a site by no longer including it in results.
      - andsoitis 4y ago
        What is your proposed solution? Prevent people from using Google to search?
        happymellon 4y ago
        That would be Googles solution so that it could show meaningful competition and Bing would be a credible alternative. My solution would be to fine them 25% of their total revenue every time we see market manipulation due to Google altering search results. If we have no evidence of that, then I don't see a problem with the current situation. As for Epic, they have plenty of alternative platforms to use. The fact that they don't target the Steam Deck because Tim Sweeney is petty makes me have very little sympathy for their argument.
    - threeseed 4y ago
  - simonh 4y ago
    Having a huge market share by itself is not a problem. If you just make a hugely popular product that more people buy without coercion or exploitation, that's fine. It's just people making that choice, and they are free to do so. What that does do is create an increased onus on the company holding that position not to abuse it. So that kicks the can down the road to disagreements about what constitutes abuse, but just being popular isn't a crime. You'd need to demonstrate actual harm to consumers. In the case of search, the web search market and the mobile phone market are two different markets. You can't constrain Google from doing commercial deals with other companies in different markets, just because it's search product is hugely popular. Again you'd have to demonstrate harm to consumers. I'm not saying there isn't any harm, just this is the situation. Only once we have the issue properly framed can we discuss whether there's harm.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > What that does do is create an increased onus on the company holding that position not to abuse it. Power corrupts. That's an iron law.
  - nodamage 4y ago
    > Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) You seem to be under the misconception that it is illegal for Google to possess a monopoly over web search. This is not the case. It is only illegal if such a monopoly was obtained or maintained via anticompetitive means. If the monopoly was obtained via "growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident", then it is entirely legal. Source: https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-1 https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol... Moreover, the government has done something about it when Google tried to use their monopoly over web search to obtain a monopoly in other markets via anticompetitive means.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > You seem to be under the misconception that it is illegal for Google to possess a monopoly over web search. This is not the case. It is only illegal if such a monopoly was obtained or maintained via anticompetitive means. I said, "And the craziest part is, our so-called antitrust laws allow Google to pay Apple $billions per year to be the default search engine in Safari. The duopolists openly conspiring." But you chose to completely ignore that and accuse me of misconception. I also mentioned several anticompetitive practices in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35695705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35695705 > Moreover, the government has done something about it when Google tried to use their monopoly over web search to obtain a monopoly in other markets via anticompetitive means. What have they done?
      - nodamage 4y ago
        You said: "I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this." But nothing you've described is necessarily illegal so I think my point about your misconception stands. It might be anticompetitive (in your opinion) but that does not mean it is actually a violation of the law.
        lapcat 4y ago
- gizmo 4y ago
  If your social game is not on iOS you won't lose out on that 50% of the market, you lose period. Even single player apps that need to go viral must be on iOS, because network effects are intrinsically social. It doesn't matter whether your product is Facebook, Whatsapp, Trello, Angry Birds, or Uber. If you're not on iOS you're done. Game over. If that isn't monopoly power, I don't know what is.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - woofcat 4y ago
    I don't believe this. There are plenty of huge apps that are only on one platform or another. As an example third party Reddit apps largely are single platform.
    - XajniN 4y ago
      And none of them are huge.
    - newjersey 4y ago
      » As an example third party Reddit apps largely are single platform. I don't have skin in this conversation but I just want to call out your fallacy here. It is kind of cheating a little to give reddit apps as an example here because as long as you can get on reddit somehow, you are a part of the network. You don't have to use the same app as the other guy...
    - wvenable 4y ago
      Reddit is not single platform so that's not a valid comparison.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    The same can be said for Android (given that that’s the other 50%), no? Would you then say that both Apple and Google are monopolists of the same market?
- thfuran 4y ago
  I believe the UK's legal standard for considering monopoly power is 25%. The US has seemingly largely given up on actually promoting competition.
woofcat 4y ago
Because there is the other half of the market?
pb7 4y ago
Kindly, it would help to familiarize yourself with the definition of monopoly: >the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service What is exclusive about 52%?
- lapcat 4y ago
  Kindly, it would help to familiarize yourself with antitrust history: "Standard's market share was 64 percent by 1911 when Standard was ordered broken up." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Monopoly_charges_and_antitrust_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Monopoly_charges_...
  - pb7 4y ago
    Monopoly != anti-trust. Sounds like we have 12% more to go before we reach precedent.
- tzs 4y ago
  He said "monopoly power", not "monopoly". You can have monopoly power without having a monopoly. Antitrust law in the US doesn't actually really care about monopoly. It cares about monopoly power.
  - pb7 4y ago
    Clearly not. See: the results of this case.
  - bilbo0s 4y ago
    Law is predicated on conditions. If you're going to argue that someone used "monopoly power", then you have to show discriminatory practices. A lot of people keep bringing up Standard Oil, and completely overlook the court's consideration of discrimination in rendering its verdict. It is a necessary condition. So it has neither a monopoly market share, (~27% globally and ~50% locally), nor does it discriminate in favor of wholly owned sham companies in the fashion of Standard Oil's practices. Guys, we can't go into courts of law and make poop up. Judges will toss you out. My own opinion is that the laws themselves have to change. A company like Apple will very likely never meet the legal definition of a monopoly. The digital age has outstripped these definitions, and laws need to change to reflect that fact.
Maursault 4y ago
> How is a single company controlling more than half of the entire market not monopoly power? AppStore is merely a package manager for iDevices. It is not it's own market any more than YUM is for RHEL or FreeBSD Ports is for FreeBSD. The market is software. Apple does not control half the entire software market.
- NekkoDroid 4y ago
  The difference is: on both all Linux distros I know and from as far as I know all BSD derivitives (except PS' BSD) you can compile and use software that doesn't need to blessed by Tim Apple, be it either through the AppStore or via you forking over money to compile on other Apple hardware with an Apple certified license.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    Sign up for a free Apple Developer account, learn to use the tools, and you can compile and install all the software you want on your Apple devices.
bmitc 4y ago
If I recall correctly, needing to have a majority market share is not even srictly a requirement to have monopoly power. I have looked up the actual law before, and it's just that majority market share is the more common way to obtain monopoly power but not the only way. If I understood what I read correctly.
- kergonath 4y ago
  You don’t recall correctly. There is no such a thing as “monopoly power”. A monopoly is a situation in which a market is controlled by a single company. It is a purely descriptive term, unrelated to whether that companies abuses that situation or not. What you are saying seems closer to “abuse of dominant position”, which is the cornerstone in EU antitrust law, but not so clear in US law where the bar to prove abuse is higher. This does not require a monopoly, just a market share large enough to steer the market. It’s hard to allege this when a company has a minority market share, though.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    > There is no such a thing as “monopoly power”. Yes there is, so I remembered fine on that count. Here is the article I read. https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol... Where I was off a little was in mixing market power and monopoly power. As the article explains and corrects my statement to a degree, courts have found it difficult to assign monopoly power when market share is below 50%. However, it does seem possible that a monopoly power can still exist without historical levels of market share. I believe the historical cases do not necessarily apply to technology companies, because these companies throw their power around and enforce it via software and not materialized objects like railroads or commodities. I think being overly preferential to market share is a mistake, particularly for global companies where the market share will vary drastically. In addition, these technology markets are massive. Abuses and competition stiflingly can be very disruptive. They are also very easy to hide behind the complexities of software.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
They don't control more than half of the entire market. Come on, you know that. It's trivially easy to show that Android has greater "market share" than iOS. Now... do buyers of third-world shitphones buy a bunch of expensive (or any) applications? Hell no. But they still count as Android "market share."
- IshKebab 4y ago
  They have 56% of the market in the US.
  - ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
    And?
    - lapcat 4y ago
      And the US is the legal jurisdiction. US antitrust law doesn't apply to the third world.
      - awill88 4y ago
        Developing world, not third world
        lapcat 4y ago
        I was just following the terminology of the OP: "buyers of third-world shitphones" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35696458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35696458 For some reason you chose to be pedantic with me but not with the OP. Go away.
      - ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
        I must say that for this case, you have a point.
  - anthk 4y ago
mbernstein 4y ago
Because in this market there is a set of oligopolies not a monopoly.

by lapcat 4y ago

> But this was not enough for the court to conclude Apple has monopoly power. I don't understand that. How is a single company controlling more than half of the entire market not monopoly power?

giobox 4y ago

I'm not passing judgement on this case and this comment has no relation to its facts, but generally speaking a single company controlling ~51 percent of the market is not the definition of a monopoly, at least not for anti-trust purposes. Indeed a company can have market share well beyond this and not fall foul of anti-trust law, depending on facts of the case. It's much harder to unfairly distort an open marketplace with 51% share than say 90%, most of the time. Again, this is why the marketplace definition step of this process matters so much!

lapcat 4y ago
> unfairly distort an open marketplace I'd hardly call it open. Whether or not you call Apple a monopoly, Apple and Google indisputably have a duopoly over mobile OS. Moreover, Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) And the craziest part is, our so-called antitrust laws allow Google to pay Apple $billions per year to be the default search engine in Safari. The duopolists openly conspiring.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  > Whether or not you call Apple a monopoly, Apple and Google indisputably have a duopoly over mobile OS. In mobile gaming, Apple and Google are the largest participants, but not the only participants. We have the Switch, the Steam Deck, and other smaller companies as well.
  - greiskul 4y ago
    Neither my switch nor my steam deck fits inside of my pants pocket. They are also not the device that dominates almost every human beings life. Cellphones and their evolution of smartphones is probably the single biggest technology revolution we had in a very long time. It's bigger than the invention of computers and the PC. While PCs changed work life for a huge population, smartphones are owned by 86% of humans.
    - pseg134 4y ago
      We better get your pants to the judge so he can check all the mobile devices to see if they fit in your pocket.
- pb7 4y ago
  A duopoly isn't a monopoly. Uber and Lyft coexisting is extremely different than just Uber existing, for example. Luckily, it's not even a duopoly since there are other mobile gaming options like the extremely popular Nintendo Switch. >(I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) Because using an alternative, of which there are many, is as easy as typing in a different URL. They're all just inferior products and the market knows it. >The duopolists openly conspiring. Making a deal is not a conspiracy. It would be of concern if part of the deal was prohibiting switching to other search engines but nothing is stopping you from switching to Bing and having Google waste a few dollars of that deal.
  - 6510 4y ago
    There was multilingual topic talking about some research not showing advantages. One advantage is that one has to learn how to describe something when you cant think of the word for it. Fitting the definition of a monopoly is probably a lot harder than to ask what is undesirable about monopolies. If google or apple hold a monopoly isn't very interesting. We can easily agree that the motivation to innovate is not there if there is no real competitor. We are kinda blessed by there being 2 platforms but that they are like prisons for developers is not beneficial. We are also blessed with the www in how incredibly open it is. With the phones we got entities that dictates the rules of the game. In stead of domain names the www could have been what these mobile application stores are: a web directory with enormous fees. Before the www I tried to create a teletext page. We had countless TV channels each with their own text pages. Even the smallest TV stations wanted me to pay for hardware and charge an enormous monthly fee. They made it into a completely useless offer. It didn't have to be a monopoly to get there. In the US rent-seeking percentage fees on transactions are quite normal, in the EU many just pay for the transaction. How large it is is quite irrelevant? We are also blessed with a relatively open Android OS. For a new OS it is hard to get any of the other popular prison builders onthere. Government should regulate where companies try to own and control things that are non of their business or clearly not theirs to own. For example chat history or email is important for the legal process. People need to prove conversations happened. I just send a whatsapp screenshot to my boss where my previous manager approved my day off. I could easily doctor such an image. We have the technology to grant someone access to part of a conversation in a legally binding way, technology just didn't mature enough, its to childish to do those things. To have corporate platform owners decide which company lives or dies is simply undesirable. They [may] do it without dialog and without explanation. A company should not be forced to put it self in that position. People purchase mobile computer. Companies desire to offer software for their mobile computer. The manufacturer then gets to decide if they approve? I buy a toaster, you make bread, the manufacturer disapproves of the bread? Or they desire 30% of the money? Manufacturers can't stipulate which cartridges you have to use in your printer. They may have a preference (using their own brand) but they can't force you to. Car makers can't make you use a certain brand of fuel. Dishwasher manufacturer may not force you to use a specific brand of tablet. Coffee machines may not lock you into their preferred brand of coffee. It's not a position that arises from logic, it is just that making the hardware created the possibility. It is quite unusual to force customers to not just buy specific coffee but also buy it from a specific store. If we are going to allow that other manufacturers should be allowed to do the same. We should allow MS to force users to use Edge for everything. If you want to use libreoffice you can install a linux?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dev_tty01 4y ago
  >I'd hardly call it open. Whether or not you call Apple a monopoly, Apple and Google indisputably have a duopoly over mobile OS. Why is that relevant? That was not the question before the court. However, to prove an illegal duopoly you have to show collusion. IANAL, but I think it is unlikely anyone could show enough collusion between Apple and Google to reach the threshold of an illegal duopoly.
  - thayne 4y ago
    With a duopoly you don't need direct collusion, you can exercise monopoly power just by watching what your "competitor" is doing. You don't have to meet behind closed doors to fix prices, you just set your prices to be exactly equal to your competitor. Or if the market is segmented in some way, and one competitor enters a specific segment, the other one can focus on other segments. Like say Lyft focusing on cities that don't already have Uber, and vice versa, to reference another comment.
    - kergonath 4y ago
      > you can exercise monopoly power just by watching what your "competitor" is doing That is not a monopoly, which implies that the market is controlled by only one company. Not two. “Monopoly” is not just something you say when you don’t like a company. Also, a monopoly in itself is not necessarily illegal or problematic. The real issue is a company abusing its market power, which does not require anything like a monopoly. > You don't have to meet behind closed doors to fix prices, you just set your prices to be exactly equal to your competitor. Then it is not collusion. It’s just a poorly functioning market, or something that cannot work as a free market (some natural monopolies are like that).
- IMTDb 4y ago
  > Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) What do you suggest we do over this ? Forbid some people to search on Google ? Or give each user X queries / day then say "please use another search engine; here are some alternatives ...". The laws are against monopolies abusing their power. As long as it's trivial to change provider we are in the clear; but the trouble come if a company uses their position to gain an unfair advantage. For example if Google says "You have to un-index you site from bing otherwise we will apply a ranking penalty on your search results". But "being the default choice with a trivial switch possible" is hardly an abuse of power.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > What do you suggest we do over this ? Break it up! That's what you do with monopolies. That's what they did with Standard Oil. That's what they did with AT&T. That's what they talked about doing and should have done with Microsoft. > but the trouble come if a company uses their position to gain an unfair advantage Google has leveraged its search dominance to gain dominance in a number of other areas too. For example, whenever I do a Google Search in Safari (without my content blocking extensions running), I see a big popup that says "Google recommends using Chrome". That's an abuse of power. (And naturally, Google is the default search engine of Google Chrome). Google AMP is an abuse of power, forcing websites to redesign themselves specifically for Google, on penalty of lower search ranking. I've already mentioned how the two duopolists colluding is an abuse of power. Google has been accused by Mozilla of systematically sabotaging Firefox in various ways, for example on YouTube. The list goes on and on.
    - miahi 4y ago
      MS is still "the best" in this case. Searching for Firefox on a fresh Windows install (with Edge) will show Chrome and Opera as first two options (keyword ads), then Firefox. And then, when you download the Firefox installer, you are announced that it could harm your device.
      - hardware2win 4y ago
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  It genuinely sounds like you are generally not aware of the common definitions of the words you’re using. You seem to just be…intuiting them, and using that as the basis for some sort of legal argument.
- imoverclocked 4y ago
  > Moreover, Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) There are other free search engines. Also Google makes money as an advertiser, not as a search service. Search itself has always been free, even before Google existed.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Some of the first search engines I used were paid: JSTOR and LexisNexis.
    - imoverclocked 4y ago
      I can’t tell if you are trolling or not. Both of those are alive and well. Since at least the early 1990s, there have been free search engines. eg: Archie, Infoseek, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, etc…
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - kube-system 4y ago
        I’m serious. Just saying: paid options like LexisNexis (and a couple others) offered online information search services that date back to the 70s. The 90s was the advent of free World Wide Web search. It wasn’t the advent of online search engines.
        imoverclocked 4y ago
        I mean, card catalogues and the Dewey decimal system go back a century before that. Public libraries go back much further in different forms. Just because you can pay for information/search, doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to get it for free. In the context of this thread, these all feel like straw man arguments.
        4y ago
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >Apple and Google indisputably have a duopoly over mobile OS. A duopoly is not a monopoly. Unfortunately, anti-trust law seems to only be concerned with monopolies, and totally ignores duopolies and oligopolies. >The duopolists openly conspiring. Exactly. >Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) This isn't quite a monopoly (Bing does exist, you know), plus it's free (or "free"). It doesn't help when the competition is so awful, though. See yesterday's article and discussion about DDG. Many times, monopolies (or near-monopolies, or duopolies) arise because the competition is so inept and incompetent.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    Having competition doesn't stop a monopoly. A monopoly is where there is a single player that has enough power to manipulate the market. Despite Bing existing, Google can manipulate traffic by altering its search results and due to it having 93% of the search share, it can manipulate it's position to direct people to one site over another or kill a site by no longer including it in results.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      What is your proposed solution? Prevent people from using Google to search?
      - happymellon 4y ago
        That would be Googles solution so that it could show meaningful competition and Bing would be a credible alternative. My solution would be to fine them 25% of their total revenue every time we see market manipulation due to Google altering search results. If we have no evidence of that, then I don't see a problem with the current situation. As for Epic, they have plenty of alternative platforms to use. The fact that they don't target the Steam Deck because Tim Sweeney is petty makes me have very little sympathy for their argument.
  - threeseed 4y ago
- simonh 4y ago
  Having a huge market share by itself is not a problem. If you just make a hugely popular product that more people buy without coercion or exploitation, that's fine. It's just people making that choice, and they are free to do so. What that does do is create an increased onus on the company holding that position not to abuse it. So that kicks the can down the road to disagreements about what constitutes abuse, but just being popular isn't a crime. You'd need to demonstrate actual harm to consumers. In the case of search, the web search market and the mobile phone market are two different markets. You can't constrain Google from doing commercial deals with other companies in different markets, just because it's search product is hugely popular. Again you'd have to demonstrate harm to consumers. I'm not saying there isn't any harm, just this is the situation. Only once we have the issue properly framed can we discuss whether there's harm.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > What that does do is create an increased onus on the company holding that position not to abuse it. Power corrupts. That's an iron law.
- nodamage 4y ago
  > Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.) You seem to be under the misconception that it is illegal for Google to possess a monopoly over web search. This is not the case. It is only illegal if such a monopoly was obtained or maintained via anticompetitive means. If the monopoly was obtained via "growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident", then it is entirely legal. Source: https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-1 https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol... Moreover, the government has done something about it when Google tried to use their monopoly over web search to obtain a monopoly in other markets via anticompetitive means.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > You seem to be under the misconception that it is illegal for Google to possess a monopoly over web search. This is not the case. It is only illegal if such a monopoly was obtained or maintained via anticompetitive means. I said, "And the craziest part is, our so-called antitrust laws allow Google to pay Apple $billions per year to be the default search engine in Safari. The duopolists openly conspiring." But you chose to completely ignore that and accuse me of misconception. I also mentioned several anticompetitive practices in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35695705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35695705 > Moreover, the government has done something about it when Google tried to use their monopoly over web search to obtain a monopoly in other markets via anticompetitive means. What have they done?
    - nodamage 4y ago
      You said: "I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this." But nothing you've described is necessarily illegal so I think my point about your misconception stands. It might be anticompetitive (in your opinion) but that does not mean it is actually a violation of the law.
      - lapcat 4y ago
gizmo 4y ago
If your social game is not on iOS you won't lose out on that 50% of the market, you lose period. Even single player apps that need to go viral must be on iOS, because network effects are intrinsically social. It doesn't matter whether your product is Facebook, Whatsapp, Trello, Angry Birds, or Uber. If you're not on iOS you're done. Game over. If that isn't monopoly power, I don't know what is.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- woofcat 4y ago
  I don't believe this. There are plenty of huge apps that are only on one platform or another. As an example third party Reddit apps largely are single platform.
  - XajniN 4y ago
    And none of them are huge.
  - newjersey 4y ago
    » As an example third party Reddit apps largely are single platform. I don't have skin in this conversation but I just want to call out your fallacy here. It is kind of cheating a little to give reddit apps as an example here because as long as you can get on reddit somehow, you are a part of the network. You don't have to use the same app as the other guy...
  - wvenable 4y ago
    Reddit is not single platform so that's not a valid comparison.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  The same can be said for Android (given that that’s the other 50%), no? Would you then say that both Apple and Google are monopolists of the same market?
thfuran 4y ago
I believe the UK's legal standard for considering monopoly power is 25%. The US has seemingly largely given up on actually promoting competition.

woofcat 4y ago

Because there is the other half of the market?

pb7 4y ago

Kindly, it would help to familiarize yourself with the definition of monopoly: >the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service What is exclusive about 52%?

lapcat 4y ago
Kindly, it would help to familiarize yourself with antitrust history: "Standard's market share was 64 percent by 1911 when Standard was ordered broken up." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Monopoly_charges_and_antitrust_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Monopoly_charges_...
- pb7 4y ago
  Monopoly != anti-trust. Sounds like we have 12% more to go before we reach precedent.
tzs 4y ago
He said "monopoly power", not "monopoly". You can have monopoly power without having a monopoly. Antitrust law in the US doesn't actually really care about monopoly. It cares about monopoly power.
- pb7 4y ago
  Clearly not. See: the results of this case.
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  Law is predicated on conditions. If you're going to argue that someone used "monopoly power", then you have to show discriminatory practices. A lot of people keep bringing up Standard Oil, and completely overlook the court's consideration of discrimination in rendering its verdict. It is a necessary condition. So it has neither a monopoly market share, (~27% globally and ~50% locally), nor does it discriminate in favor of wholly owned sham companies in the fashion of Standard Oil's practices. Guys, we can't go into courts of law and make poop up. Judges will toss you out. My own opinion is that the laws themselves have to change. A company like Apple will very likely never meet the legal definition of a monopoly. The digital age has outstripped these definitions, and laws need to change to reflect that fact.

Maursault 4y ago

> How is a single company controlling more than half of the entire market not monopoly power? AppStore is merely a package manager for iDevices. It is not it's own market any more than YUM is for RHEL or FreeBSD Ports is for FreeBSD. The market is software. Apple does not control half the entire software market.

NekkoDroid 4y ago
The difference is: on both all Linux distros I know and from as far as I know all BSD derivitives (except PS' BSD) you can compile and use software that doesn't need to blessed by Tim Apple, be it either through the AppStore or via you forking over money to compile on other Apple hardware with an Apple certified license.
- Maursault 4y ago
  Sign up for a free Apple Developer account, learn to use the tools, and you can compile and install all the software you want on your Apple devices.

bmitc 4y ago

If I recall correctly, needing to have a majority market share is not even srictly a requirement to have monopoly power. I have looked up the actual law before, and it's just that majority market share is the more common way to obtain monopoly power but not the only way. If I understood what I read correctly.

kergonath 4y ago
You don’t recall correctly. There is no such a thing as “monopoly power”. A monopoly is a situation in which a market is controlled by a single company. It is a purely descriptive term, unrelated to whether that companies abuses that situation or not. What you are saying seems closer to “abuse of dominant position”, which is the cornerstone in EU antitrust law, but not so clear in US law where the bar to prove abuse is higher. This does not require a monopoly, just a market share large enough to steer the market. It’s hard to allege this when a company has a minority market share, though.
- bmitc 4y ago
  > There is no such a thing as “monopoly power”. Yes there is, so I remembered fine on that count. Here is the article I read. https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol... Where I was off a little was in mixing market power and monopoly power. As the article explains and corrects my statement to a degree, courts have found it difficult to assign monopoly power when market share is below 50%. However, it does seem possible that a monopoly power can still exist without historical levels of market share. I believe the historical cases do not necessarily apply to technology companies, because these companies throw their power around and enforce it via software and not materialized objects like railroads or commodities. I think being overly preferential to market share is a mistake, particularly for global companies where the market share will vary drastically. In addition, these technology markets are massive. Abuses and competition stiflingly can be very disruptive. They are also very easy to hide behind the complexities of software.
heavyset_go 4y ago

ShadowBanThis01 4y ago

They don't control more than half of the entire market. Come on, you know that. It's trivially easy to show that Android has greater "market share" than iOS. Now... do buyers of third-world shitphones buy a bunch of expensive (or any) applications? Hell no. But they still count as Android "market share."

IshKebab 4y ago
They have 56% of the market in the US.
- ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
  And?
  - lapcat 4y ago
    And the US is the legal jurisdiction. US antitrust law doesn't apply to the third world.
    - awill88 4y ago
      Developing world, not third world
      - lapcat 4y ago
        I was just following the terminology of the OP: "buyers of third-world shitphones" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35696458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35696458 For some reason you chose to be pedantic with me but not with the OP. Go away.
    - ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
      I must say that for this case, you have a point.
- anthk 4y ago

mbernstein 4y ago

Because in this market there is a set of oligopolies not a monopoly.