24 ms·

The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

318 points by gcheong 3y ago

account-5 3y ago
Hopefully this is won and followed by similar for all other tech monopolies: Amazon, apple, meta, Microsoft, etc.
- jitl 3y ago
  Google has 95% of search market, but none of the other examples have 95% of anything. What are Amazon, Apple, Microsoft’s monopolies? They all have substantial competitors across their various verticals. Amazon: Walmart (goods), Netflix (media) Microsoft: Apple (OS), Google, Amazon (enterprise compute) Apple: Microsoft (O, services), Samsung (mobile), Google (mobile, services), Netflix (media)
  - p_j_w 3y ago
    Microsoft has over 90% of the desktop OS and Office software markets. It’s impossible to come up with a reasonable definition of monopoly that doesn’t include them in those markets.
    - prepend 3y ago
      They don’t have 90% [0]. They have about 70% of just desktop, but there’s lots of competition with devices since desktops have replacements with tablets and phones and other devices. Also, as the 90s Microsoft case showed, just having a monopoly isn’t bad. It’s the harm caused by having the monopoly. Back in the 90s, Microsoft was found to harm other browsers. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
      - Retric 3y ago
        Read up on past monopoly busts, you don’t need an overwhelming market share to be broken up. Standard oil was down to 64% and that didn’t save it.
        mcpackieh 3y ago
        People have this "folk" definition of monopoly saying that a monopoly is 100% total market domination. Maybe because this is the win condition for the board game Monopoly? I think this idea is a serious impediment to addressing anti-competitive behavior in America.
        prepend 3y ago
        When antitrust proceedings starts against Standard Oil in 1904, they had 91% market share [0]. By 1911 when they were broken up they were down to 64%, but that’s because the case progressed. And after the breakup they had 0%. But I think if Standard had 64% in the beginning and there was a competitive market, they would not have been broken up. [0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-evolution-standard-oil/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-evolution-standard-oi...
        Retric 3y ago
        Which is why I said down to, they didn’t get to say we’re below the magic X% number can you please leave us alone. But presumably if their market share had fallen to 10% that would have happened. As to when the case started, it’s impossible to know what the minimum threshold was. It could just as easily been well below 64% as people where in monopoly busting push at the time.
      - wak90 3y ago
        >Also, as the 90s Microsoft case showed, just having a monopoly isn’t bad. It’s the harm caused by having the monopoly. Can you elaborate your thoughts here because the point of breaking up companies with monopolistic power is they cannot be divorced from monopolistic abuse of that power. It is written into US law that the company has a legal duty to it's shareholders. It seems your point is a distinction without a difference.
        prepend 3y ago
        The issue is that having a monopoly in the US isn’t a reason to break up a company, even though it might make it possible to abuse. Antitrust law in the US requires some consumer harm, so it’s the abuse of monopoly power that’s the crux, not just having it. And duty to shareholders would actually mean that management would not abuse their monopoly power because of the risk of breakup.
        joshuamorton 3y ago
        Basically all of this is false. The legal duty to shareholders doesn't mean that companies need to violate the law. In reality, saying " we don't abuse our market position to avoid regulatory scrutiny" is acting in the interests of shareholders, and a lawsuit wouldn't go further. Otherwise you'd be saying that companies had a duty to break all laws in pursuit of shareholder value, which is obviously silly. And yeah under us law you have to prove consumer harm or anticompetitive practice, not just having a significant market majority.
        wak90 3y ago
        I am aware of the legal duty. The legal duty is to maximize shareholder value but not explicitly break the law. What do you think this looks like in practice? Because it makes logical sense to me that monopolistic companies would use their monopolistic power to come as close as they can with anti competitive behavior without attracting scrutiny which is why you break them up in the first place. And it's not theoretical, there are many examples not least of which is Microsoft.
        3y ago
    - constantcrying 3y ago
      It isn't about market share, but about anti-competitive practices. Is Microsoft abusing their market position to keep competitors out of the market?
      - gmerc 3y ago
        laughs in constant bing, onedrive, fucking edge, teams upsells on my paid version of windows. Laughs in edge ignoring browser preferences screwing over firefox laughs in constantly returning widgets, Microsoft reward currency on the start menu, forced telemetry. Laughs in teams bundling. Laughs in the coming super monopoly of cross domain AI finetuning in teams. Lol, by the standards of the last century, they are worse than what did them in in the 90s
        constantcrying 3y ago
        [flagged]
        yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        You asked, > Is Microsoft abusing their market position to keep competitors out of the market? and they replied with a list of places MS uses their position to try and push their offerings over competitors.
        constantcrying 3y ago
        >You asked No, I did not. I stated the question which would need to be answered if you wanted to figure out if Microsoft should face an anti-trust.
        lolinder 3y ago
        That's not at all how your initial comment reads. You didn't frame the question as a question other people would have to ask, you framed it in a way that clearly invited a response. You might not have liked the way they replied, but your follow-up was super dismissive given that you asked a question.
    - JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
      But you can have them for free so it doesn't count
      - lolinder 3y ago
        You can't have them for free—you pay for Windows in the form of a higher OEM cost for your computer. EDIT: OP eventually clarified in the thread that they're talking about piracy. So apparently the argument is that because Microsoft products can be pirated, Microsoft isn't a monopoly. Make of that what you will.
        JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
        Only if you buy an already assembled computer, not if you take the time to assemble the components yourself. And also as a small fish the higher OEM price is being subsidised by the Fortune 500 companies which buy millions of dollars worth of products from Dell etc.
        lolinder 3y ago
        If you assemble the components yourself, you still don't get Windows for free, you just get out of paying the Windows tax if you intend to install Linux. Edit: The idea that OEMs only tack on the extra cost to big companies is demonstrably false. For one thing, margins per-item are always lower on bulk purchases, not higher—Fortune 500 do not pay list price on anything. For another, you can see the difference in cost on the Dell XPS 13 by switching between Linux and Windows: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-developer-edition/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/usexcucto9320rpl01 https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-dev... Computers that don't offer a Linux option just all come with that $149 surcharge baked in.
        JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
        > > If you assemble the components yourself, you still don't get Windows for free, you just get out of paying the Windows tax if you intend to install Linux. You get Windows for free from the combo of self-assemble + torrenting + Microsoft not pursuing individual users for piracy > > Dell XPS 13 And that is what I said, if you don't assemble the thing yourself buy the cheapest option from an OEM and then you can get Microsoft products for free if you are a wise guy. And Microsoft tolerates it.
    - delfinom 3y ago
      >Microsoft has over 90% of the desktop OS and Office software markets. Their market has been shrinking due to the rise of tablets and smartphones (so a majority of the population doesn't need PCs at home beyond certain professionals, gamers and hobbyists) They do have a large business market share, but that is also shrinking as many "modern" businesses diversify with Apple computers due to employees growing up with them. Depending on stats, it has fallen from 90% to 75% in a decade and will most likely continue to fall. This is part of the business case for Microsoft to make their software work cross-platform in order to diversify. Otherwise their position is a natural monopoly. Companies opted to all use Windows because there are certain economies of scale that occur when you all standardize on the same software, including, and this is the biggest one, your employees not needing to relearn whatever ridiculous snowflake UI scheme came up by each different linux distro. It's why Windows and macOS will continue to remain dominant in the PC space. The same goes for Office 365. Sure there are certain elements of it that are a bit _too pushy. But companies buy into it because it's one standardized and integrated system. Going elsewhere has overhead of increased training costs for end users and even the IT admin side.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Platforms are ecosystems with a monopoly intentionally created by copyright. But the copyright monopoly is supposed to be for the copyrighted work. You shouldn't be able to anti-competitively leverage it into a monopoly over everything else it touches, from hardware to app distribution to services. And there is no inherent reason it has to be that way. Microsoft doesn't have any kind of a monopoly on app distribution for Windows, for example. POSIX applications aren't tied to any specific vendor's proprietary Unix. You don't have to run Windows on most PCs even if that's what it comes with, and the same has been true of many Macs, but not iPhones. Taking a monopoly you have legitimately and leveraging it into control over some other market is called tying.
  - tomComb 3y ago
    Google’s search monopoly is the easiest to escape: the moment I decide Bing or chatGPT are better I can switch with ease. And chatGPT is already replacing many Google searches. So, it will take care of itself, and I think there are many other competition issues that need government intervention.
    - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
      There's a network effect too in that by being the search monopoly gives Google several advantages: 1) They have free data about what most users want (i.e. click on) 2) Websites fight for being indexed by Google, but crawlers other than Google basically have to fight to access websites
    - skinkestek 3y ago
      Google is bigger than that: IMO Chrome needs to be split out too as does Android.
  - LorenzoGood 3y ago
    Apple has over 75% of 18-24 year olds with their phone in their pocket.
    - constantcrying 3y ago
      But how is this the result of Apple engaging in anti-competitive practices? 75% of people choosing your product can not be grounds to breakup a company and the fact that it looks different for other age groups is just further evidence that Apple is engaging in fair competition.
      - ewoodrich 3y ago
        You could make an argument that number would be smaller if Apple was forced to make iMessage interoperable with Android devices.
        charcircuit 3y ago
        It is interoperable already using SMS.
        constantcrying 3y ago
        Seems like a very weak argument. Practically irrelevant for an anti-trust case I would say.
      - satvikpendem 3y ago
        Blocking iMessage on non Apple devices and generally making Apple stuff only work with other Apple stuff, not to mention their 30% fees on their app store while also not allowing other app stores, are all anticompetitive practices, which the EU is well regulating soon.
        constantcrying 3y ago
        Some of those may be reason to bring legal action, but breaking up Apple over this seems insane.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    Many have made cases against Amazon, e.g. https://doctorow.medium.com/californias-antitrust-case-against-amazon-82b8e4177fb7 https://doctorow.medium.com/californias-antitrust-case-again...
  - barnabee 3y ago
    I realise its not how current laws work, but I think the threshold for any large/mature market for anti-trust should be more like 33% than near 100%. There's no need for companies supplying a product en masse to be anywhere near that large.
  - joe_the_user 3y ago
    Amazon: Walmart (goods), Netflix (media) Walmart and Amazon are both huge but it seems just wrong to say a brick-and-mortar store as equivalent to an online market place. The direct competitors to Amazon are Ebay, Baidu, Etsy, Temu and others, all of which are much smaller in the US (but some are huge elsewhere). You say that Facebook is a Google competitor because it offers eyeballs and because people sometimes go there to get stuff and it uses it's info for ads providing. The actual situation imo is that online enterprises compete via monopolistic competition [1]. No large high tech company wants to offer exactly the same thing as it's because at best neither will make a lot of money - instead, any company entering a crowded marketplace will come up with something guaranteeing them more engagement, higher profits and so-forth (thus something even worse from the consumer's view). See Meta's Threads. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition
    - jitl 3y ago
      I go to Walmart a bit less frequently than I go to Amazon in person (Fresh or Whole Foods), but I order from Walmart quite frequently. Their online delivery services are very competitive and comparable to Amazon's. If Amazon is out of stock on an item or showing long delivery time, I'll order from Walmart instead. Most recently I ordered a Synology RT6600AX Wifi router/media server because Amazon had 2 week delivery time, and Walmart had 2 day.
    - tzs 3y ago
      > Walmart and Amazon are both huge but it seems just wrong to say a brick-and-mortar store as equivalent to an online market place Walmart is also an online market place. Walmart.com includes third party reseller products with many significant similarities to Amazon. They've got fulfilled by Walmart, free shipping, and if you join Walmart+ it includes Paramount+ video streaming (also free grocery delivery).
- dantheman 3y ago
  Hopefully the government loses.
  - hackernewds 3y ago
    I would rather give my data to one entity, than thousands of fragmented ones. Some things can only be accomplished at scale, and also risk getting into the wrong hands (re Twitter)
    - jart 3y ago
      If Google gets broken up, Gmail will end up like the PSTN. Anyone can monitor your location. Anyone can read your messages. Anyone can spoof your address.
      - waithuh 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - growingentropy 3y ago
      If you only want one entity having your data, you're better off being abused by Apple. Google invites all his friends over to run a train on you.
      - waithuh 3y ago
        Why do you think that Apple doesnt do that?
        growingentropy 3y ago
        https://fossbytes.com/apple-data-collection-explained/ https://fossbytes.com/apple-data-collection-explained/ "Now that we’ve established that Apple collects and uses your data to serve ads, does it sell your data too? Turns out the answer is No, Apple doesn’t sell your data to third-party advertisers. The Cupertino giant possesses the exclusive rights of showing you ads on the App Store and other apps."
throwawaysleep 3y ago
It is all the other search engines that are crap. Plenty exist, they just suck.
- wavemode 3y ago
  People who say this are never able to produce a single actual search query for which Google returns acceptable results but other engines do not. Perhaps you can be the exception.
- blain 3y ago
  I switched a while ago to DDG and about a year ago to Startpage and both are good enough. It was sure hard to get used to because of presumption that Google has better results but after a while you don't care anymore and find what you're looking for anyway.
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    > DDG and about a year ago to Startpage do they have their own search infra?
  - hoppyhoppy2 3y ago
    Startpage uses Google search results. >Startpage delivers Google search results via our proprietary personal data protection technology. (source: https://www.startpage.com/en/ https://www.startpage.com/en/ )
charcircuit 3y ago
>Google has maintained this monopoly, the government alleges, not by making a better product, but by locking down everywhere that consumers might be able to find a different search engine option, and making sure they only see Google. Google improves search every year. Internally they have data to back this up. Google doesn't lock down everywhere consumers can learn about a new browser. The most notable being the default search engine on Windows is Bing. I have also seen ads for other search engines and discussion about search engines on social media.It isn't like you say the word Bing on the internet and you get contacted by Google's lawyers with a C&D. >To understand why this case makes sense, look no further than the experience of Neeva, a search engine whose quality was as high or higher than that of Google, but died a few months ago because it just couldn’t get access to customers. Better technology does not necessarily mean that you will have the better business. There are other reasons that you can fail. The link about Neeva having better quality actually states the opposite: "Neeva ended up building a search engine they were proud of, a search engine that came close to beating Google both by Neeva’s internal metrics and in user studies."
- prepend 3y ago
  > Google improves search every year. I don’t believe this based on my own search experience getting worse year over year. I believe they know how to improve it, but they choose to increase revenue instead. Results seem to be less relevant to me and there are frequently more ad results than organic that display on the page. I think they are able to do this because of lock in with users and vendors. If there was more competition, there wouldn’t be such bad results.
  - dantheman 3y ago
    I think you don't understand how much worse the internet has gotten - there are a large amount of bad actors actively trying to make google worse (junk content, etc) - Even just providing the same level of quality results with decreasing quality source data is an improvement. If it was easy to extract better results there would be competition with better results.
    - 3y ago
andsoitis 3y ago
> controlling much of our communications Google doesn't control my communication with others.
- prepend 3y ago
  Google controls mine as search and gmail and chrome are major ways that I communicate with others. It’s difficult not to use them because my employer and many sites require chrome. I’m not sure what the gmail market share is, but chrome and search are over 50% and they’ve used that market position to harm users (showing ads for their own products until you choose chrome) and harm competitors (showing their own ads above competitors).
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    Can you communicate anything you want or does Google control what you're able to say (i.e. "control your communications")
    - prepend 3y ago
      There’s different levels of control. I think control means affect how I communicate. I can’t communicate anything I want as chrome blocks certain apps from installing. And gmail blocks some communication. And search filters results from what I want to find. Etc etc. So yes, google controls what I’m able to say.
      - andsoitis 3y ago
        > I think control means affect how I communicate Many things affect how I communicate, but that is very different from controlling. > chrome blocks certain apps from installing Chrome blocks apps from installing? > And gmail blocks some communication. Such as?
        prepend 3y ago
        Google removed NukeRedditHistory from their App Store. And lots of others. There’s a system of how gmail decides what is spam and what isn’t. And there’s a large percentage of non-spam that gets blocked or sent to spam [0]. [0] https://www.inboxally.com/blog/why-is-gmail-blocking-my-emails-and-what-to-do-about-it https://www.inboxally.com/blog/why-is-gmail-blocking-my-emai...
lucasfcosta 3y ago
I think one argument that’s missing from the article is how that impacts foreign policies. What about competing with foreign giants, for example? China probably won’t break up their large companies, and, in a global market, those can then use their outsized economic power to impose themselves against the counterparts elsewhere. I’m not saying that will necessarily happen, just mentioning an argument I’ve heard quite often. I think the intention here is good, it’s just the side effects that are dangerous if not handled cautiously.
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  The flip side is that dead giants that dominate the landscape stifle all innovation here and charge expensive rates. Eventually allowing someone else to get much further ahead technically.
- pphysch 3y ago
  > What about competing with foreign giants, for example? China probably won’t break up their large companies ANT Group? Alibaba?
- lumost 3y ago
  There is a weird assumption that Chinese tech corporations are permanently immune to American law. At most, this is an artifact of unidirectional free trade agreements written generations ago. Similar to Europe, I doubt US regulators would dissolve one giant just to see it replaced by a foreign one. The current status quo that Chinese tech companies can operate in the US, but US ones are unable to operate in China is an historic abnormality.
- growingentropy 3y ago
  We need multiple large companies, not a few huge ones. Google's "internet DRM" web integrity API is honestly frightening stuff. The Internet as we know it would change.
- ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  I think fear of China is a convenient excuse used by monopolists to justify letting them continue to abuse the rest of us. The right call is to regulate our tech companies and also restrict foreign companies who violate the rules.
offtwit 3y ago
It sounds like this is only about google search. How can that be broken up? Or are they just going to get fined many billions of dollars and they lose their right to being the default search engine on iPhones?
- bbor 3y ago
  The author is just focusing on this aspect bc that’s this case, but there’s multiple ongoing. E.g. there’s one about monopolistic practices in the online ad business. Specifically here: How does Google lock out rivals? Well, it pays $45 billion a year to have distributors refuse to carry its competitor’s products, signing deals with “Apple, LG, Motorola, and Samsung; major U.S. wireless carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; and browser developers such as Mozilla, Opera, and UCWeb— to secure default status for its general search engine and, in many cases, to specifically prohibit Google’s counterparties from dealing with Google’s competitors.”
  - ttul 3y ago
    That sounds anticompetitive to me. But I understand that proving criminal anticompetitive behavior is extremely difficult under US law, which is why it almost never happens. And companies as large as Google can outpunch regulators on legal spending, paying ex-government lawyers millions per year to work around the rules.
  - asah 3y ago
    Refuse to carry? Or just not the default?
- advisedwang 3y ago
  > lose their right to being the default search engine on iPhones? It would mean they can't PAY apple to make Google the default search engine. Apple would then (in theory) pick whichever search engine is best and not just play ball with Google's lock in. This would therefore enable competition. In theory.
  - ladon86 3y ago
nathias 3y ago
woa, so many people are still using google for search?
- concordDance 3y ago
  Please state what you use in your post.
  - bogwog 3y ago
    I've been using Kagi for almost a year now, and I love it. Every now and then I'll check Google out of curiosity, and it's always shocking how bad the results are. Inaccurate results, spam sites everywhere, and sensory overload of advertisements.
    - nathias 3y ago
      yes it's like coming back to cable, completely infested with ads
concordDance 3y ago
Won't this kill Firefox if Google gets told it cant pay browsers to put it as default? That would suck.
- voytec 3y ago
  It would kill Mitchell Baker's salary. The browser would survive - as Firefox or forks.
  - summerlight 3y ago
    And all other Mozilla engineer's salary as well? Developing a modern browser is a very expensive business nowadays.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  It would kill the Mozilla Corporation in its current form and hopefully get us Baker's head (as least metaphorically if nothing else) but it will not necessarily be the end of the browser itself.
  - advisedwang 3y ago
    Who else will pay salaries to maintain Firefox? Firefox can't survive on community contributions alone.
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      Wikipedia having a higher turnover than Mozilla from contribution alone is a counter-example. And if Google is being split, then Chrome will also need to find a monetization strategy, opening the perspective for Mozilla.
      - Karunamon 3y ago
        The bar to contribute to a software project of any size is many times higher than the bar to contribute to Wikipedia. If you were speaking monetarily, Wikipedia has a gargantuan user count and good will to match, where Mozilla has spent the last few years squandering both of those.
siliconc0w 3y ago
It's hard to tell if it's Google's dominance causing search to suck or just the web ecosystem naturally optimizing for clicks. I will say most queries with even vaguely commercial intent do seem to get the max or nearly a full page of sponsored links. I don't recall what it was like years ago but I'm pretty sure it is worse. I also think it's pretty clear the platform take-rate needs to be generally lowered across the board, likely making it illegal to lock customers to a store or require payments go through the same store. This is a tax on basically everyone and provides very little value.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  The problem here is authority. What makes you an authority on a subject? Books written? Credentials (diploma?)? References? These things aren't all true in real life, and on the internet it's even easier to fake all of that. In the beginning Google went by 'amount of text' (which is why you read everybody's life story on how they had sex next to a magma flow in Hawaii which created the idea of doing burnt ends on a pizza stone), references (remember all those backlinks which would boost your page). Credentials are a lot harder to track. There is no API at my school where you can put in my name and see my credentials (and all you'd see is 'we got governments subsidies for this person, which is why we let him pass'). And all of this worked at the start. Knowledgeable people naturally had references on the web, as only knowledgeable people were on the web. Now we literally have people writing text purely to make it look like their website has more content on them, even if it is remotely related to what they serve. Great example, even posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36740400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36740400 Or any coding problem where you end up on logrocket / some partitioning app / some generated website with which has an 'answer' for KB0000000 -> KB9999999...
  - rolph 3y ago
    >>What makes you an authority on a subject<< the ability to make accurate predictions of outcome by way of knowledge, observation, and logical deliberation.
    - 3y ago
mattlondon 3y ago
Hmm we got the internet and cellular phones because AT&T were broken up? Citation needed I think. That sounds pretty far-fetched and over-reaching to me.
- convolvatron 3y ago
  not very far-fetched. back in the beginning your local bell was where you went to get wide-area link level service. and it was a huge pain. extremely costly, months long installations, abysmal service. somewhat later, these same people were responsible for nonsense like ATM. they were going to prop up their own internet - with hookers, and circuits, and per-cell QOS based charging. and they were gonna do it right. and it was gonna be great. would they have leveraged their monopoly on the underlying circuits to try to dominate layer 3? almost certainly.
  - mattlondon 3y ago
    Yes but there is a world outside of America. GSM for example came from Finland, and I believe that ARPANET et al were military and wouldn't give a shit about what AT&T were doing, and even then the inventor of packet switching networks (Donald Davies) was from the UK. If AT&T had just carried on I am sure that the internet and mobile phones would have happened anyway. Sure things may have been different it happened at different times, but I don't think AT&T not being broken up would have stopped things that were already happening elsewhere from continuing to happen.
- eitland 3y ago
  The quality of telephone services took of and the prices plummeted here in Norway when the phone monopoly was broken around 1998. I was there and remember going from expensive landlines with complicated pricing structures all the way to cell phone plans so cheap every kid has one. IMO no way it would have happened with the monopoly we had in the nineties.
riku_iki 3y ago
So, what are the demands in this trial? Do they want to divide google? How?
- advisedwang 3y ago
  From the complaint [1]: > VIII. REQUEST FOR RELIEF > To remedy these illegal acts, Plaintiffs request that the Court: > a. Adjudge and decree that Google acted unlawfully to maintain general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising monopolies in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 2; > b. Enter structural relief as needed to cure any anticompetitive harm; > c. Enjoin Google from continuing to engage in the anticompetitive practices described herein and from engaging in any other practices with the same purpose and effect as the challenged practices; > d. Enter any other preliminary or permanent relief necessary and appropriate to restore competitive conditions in the markets affected by Google’s unlawful conduct; > e. Enter any additional relief the Court finds just and proper; and > f. Award each Plaintiff an amount equal to its costs incurred in bringing this action on behalf of its citizens. So basically just banning whatever anti-competative behaviour the court finds and fining Google a bunch. [1] https://www.justice.gov/d9/press-releases/attachments/2020/10/20/google_complaint_filed_0.pdf https://www.justice.gov/d9/press-releases/attachments/2020/1...
- summerlight 3y ago
  So-called "break-up" may not be effective as expected and it's easy to workaround that for tech companies as they're less tied to physical infrastructures unlike conventional monopolies. It's likely that they'll got billions of fine as well as be forced to implement corrective measures on their anti-competitive behaviors, of course if they lose.
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    I think they very tied together because all google services run on the same internal infra and use shared collected data, and for example moving ads out of google and force them to pay market cloud prices, deal with all bugs and complexity other market players are facing and more importantly cut from data collected internally at google will produce significant damage on them.
hgs3 3y ago
Antitrust laws are too reactive. We need proactive laws that break up companies if they grow beyond a certain size criteria. Ideally, the criteria would be aggressive enough to kill large corporations leaving behind only small to medium-sized businesses. The result would be markets with increased competition, more innovation, lower prices, more options for employment and self-employment, and the elimination of Big Corp's big money political influence.
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  Is there a model anywhere for this having been tried, successfully or otherwise? The obvious hesitation I have is just that some companies really do benefit from a lot of vertical integration. Could Apple be Apple if they were forced to spin off the phone business, or the chip design house, or the OS? What would it mean for the startup ecosystem if getting bought by a conglomerate was a less plausible exit? How would regulators enforce that the split off entities were truly independent vs faking it and then having exclusivity deals that meant they were basically still the same singular entity?
  - dmbche 3y ago
    Should Apple exist in it's current form? If it weren't, the things that are integrated become available for others - meaning better products for all, no? What's the societal benefit of integrating all these advances in single companies?
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      Not so much because then, for example, you become Qualcomm and have 50 different customers all asking for different things from your chips and you reach a local optimum where you solve everyone’s issue a little bit but don’t actually do a good job. There’s a reason that Apple’s chips are so much better in terms of performance and energy efficiency. Similarly, it’s why Apple did the W1 first and it took a very long time before any competitor figured out how to do the same thing. And you’ll see the same with VR where FB will struggle to make HW with comparable specs while Apple’s chip gives their SW a leg up. TLDR: it’s complex, but successful vertical businesses have fairly different products, efficiencies, and outcomes.
prakhar897 3y ago
The Indian govt imposed restrictions that a payment provider in India can fulfill max 30% of the total volume of transactions in an year [1]. After that, they have to restrict themselves. This completely avoids monopoly and concentration risks. This can be done for search as well which makes sure at least 4 players stay in the market at all times. Why isn't US govt doing this? 1. https://www.indiatimes.com/worth/news/upi-apps-may-soon-have-transaction-volume-limit-585440.html https://www.indiatimes.com/worth/news/upi-apps-may-soon-have...
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  It makes perfect sense. Doesn't happen in the US because of regulatory capture
- halflings 3y ago
  > Why isn't US govt doing this? Why isn't the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, ... doing this? Because it's a pretty strong form of controlled economy that distorts the market. How would this work for search engines? Would you force people to use a different search engine than the one they want? (e.g. they type Google.com and end up redirected to Bing.com) ; or somehow just funnel revenue to other companies... then who gets to decide which companies this gets funneled to? Anti-trust is about preventing anti-competitive tactics, but the scheme you is ironically anti-competitive: it artificially inflates usage of other services even if they don't provide an equal/superior service, with consumers paying the price. [disclaimer: I work at Google, so likely biased]
  - Forgeties79 3y ago
    What would you propose instead?
    - halflings 3y ago
      Banning anti-competitive behavior (which is what antitrust laws are for in the first place). For instance: a company actively blocking competition (e.g. coffee machine manufacturers that make it impossible for people to buy pods from another brand). Again, I am probably biased here, but I don't see much anti-competitive behaviour in the search engine space. If people have a clear superior alternative to Google, then by all means please share it here. Even during the brief period where I used duckduckgo, I was constantly finding myself typing "!g" to get results from Google as they were just consistently more relevant.
huitzitziltzin 3y ago
I appreciate the passion Matt Stoller brings to antitrust issues but his analyses are not good on the economics, to say the very least. I agree that some of google’s conduct is very questionable. It’s not obvious to me that paying to be the default search product is pro-competitive. On the other hand, the case that Google is going to make (and which I think is going to be really hard for the government to overcome) is this: we (google) give our product away for free and so do our competitors. What’s more, the cost of switching search engines is literally zero: just type Bing instead of Google. If customers are choosing our search product among two free options, then our product is better. It’s going to be very difficult to establish that there’s an abuse of dominant position in that case. (There is other behavior by google which is more questionable, but in search they are on firm ground.) Having a large market share is not an antitrust violation, nor should it be.
- DannyBee 3y ago
  In the legal realm, I actually like to read blogs, newsletters, podcasts of folks that are often on the other side of an issue or thing than I am. I find it useful to gain perspective/etc. When i have no opinion, i try to find folks on "both" sides. Like say insurance lawyers and injury lawyers takes on a thing or whatever. So I tried to read Matt on antitrust (though it turns out we share some of the same views), but once you get beyond the "forcefulness", everything only gets worse in my experience. It's a lot of bloviation, and when you get into the details, he often will, charitably, take interesting interpretations of the actual opinions and views of courts and others, especially when they disagree with his view. Once I read enough to have a sense of continuity (IE how did claims/views/predictions turn out), I ended up giving up my subscription because i just couldn't read it anymore. There are those who are much better at representing what's going on as a whole in a thing, even when they have a point of view and share it. Even when it's a point of view i think is totally wrongheaded. It's not as passionate, for sure, but I find it more useful and enjoyable in the end, whether i agree or not. In Matt's case, let's take this one: "Judge Mehta tossed these claims, saying that services like Yelp and Expedia aren’t general search engines and are therefore not in the same market as Google. It was a highly technical and annoying way to read certain legal questions, but bringing an antitrust case has become virtually impossible unless it’s done perfectly." You'll note that Matt does what he often does here - when he can't explain why he's right, things become more abstract - there aren't any examples of how it was "highly technical" or "annoying" or what "certain legal questions" are. Not a single example anywhere to be found. No example or data that backs up that it is "virtually impossible" to bring antitrust cases unless they are "done perfectly". Nope, just some abstract complaint and throwaway language about how, you know, whatever he said in the last newsletter about how this part was gonna be a slam dunk or whatever is really right, it's just, you know, "highly technical" things got in the way. Which ones? Oh, well, you wouldn't know them, they live in Canada, and only visit in the summer. Let's look at what actually happened here: No, the judge did not throw the claims out because they aren't general search engines. He threw it out because he felt the plaintiffs were way short on the evidence, because they rely entirely on an expert who cites no evidence himself, only makes up theories. This sounds like an exaggerated opinion of what happened, but it's not :) See page 46 of the opinion. "The court agrees with Google’s second argument. Plaintiffs’ theory of anticompetitive harm rests on a multi-linked causal sequence that relies not on evidence but almost entirely on the opinion and speculation of its expert, Professor Jonathan Baker. Plaintiffs cite Professor Baker’s report for the following propositions: < a page of propositions elided > Remarkably, not one of Professor Baker’s opinions, on which these fact assertions are based, cites to any record evidence. Indeed, a closer inspection of Professor Baker's reports shows he has largely theorized the anticompetitive effects in the relevant market of Google's conduct toward the SVP's ... Plaintiffs are required to show with proof "that the monopolist's conduct indeed has the requisite anticompetitive effect", and they have fallen well short of that burden". This isn't even the end. It goes on, where the Judge points out this state at oral argument and the states confirm they have no evidence, etc. It then explains why unsupported expert opinions aren't enough to get past summary judgement, etc. It is a clear step by step refutation of the claims, unrelated to the market question. It does then end with "Professor Baker's opinions do not rest on facts; only his ruminations about the market effects of Google's conduct" as one final jab. To read all that, and believe that this is about, you know, some highly technical legal questions being read in an annoying way and that it's the judge requiring them to "do it perfectly" is, uh, an interesting take for sure. It's one thing if Matt went into this and said "I think that random theorization should be enough, because facts are a lagging indicator" or "I think the court is wrong on the following legal standard", or whatever, but nope, this just gets painted as the nonsense we started with. This is very common in his writing, and at least for me, made it not worth reading.
nologic01 3y ago
Advertising is not intrinsically evil but mix an incompetent and captured political class with the surveillance and personal targeting possibilities opened by fast moving information technology (the advent of the web and mobile) and you get the closest approximation to dystopia that has ever existed: Surveillance Capitalism [1], as first defined and analyzed by Zuboff. People have normalized that an advertiser is the technology gatekeeper for the vast majority of web users and enjoying an unassailable duopoly in mobile. People have normalized being the product and not the client. Yet this is not normal. It is a farcical, grotesque parody of how a non-dystopic digital economy should be structured. Advertising intermediaries should not control general purpose information technologies that vast numbers of people rely on. This is a job for ring-fenced and properly regulated technology companies. It is incredible to have come that, but its now obvious that the much despised Microsoft monopoly of yesteryear was a far more benign condition, being actually a monopoly facing client users and within the tech sector proper. The world has paid a heavy price for this regulatory abnormality. Counterfactuals are hard to make concrete but there is at least a decade of stagnation, productivity loss and value destruction across the technology space from the lack of competition and innovation. Beyond economics, this will be a defining moment for the shape and nature of digital society. You can't resolve any of the brewing disruptions (digital finance, AI) when there is such commingling of conflicting interests, so much hypocrisy, such systemic, large scale breach of trust. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
- zdragnar 3y ago
  I will happily take this "dystopia" over many places in the world. Of course, it would be nice if we could change some things, but opening the argument with this level of hyperbole makes the rest difficult to follow.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    You are entitled to a sanguine view of the status quo. You are in good numerical company. A lot of perceptive and incisive thinkers are actually horrified.
LatteLazy 3y ago
There are very solid reasons the average human / American does NOT want more competitive as markets. Until anyone is willing to address those, this is us communally shooting ourselves in the foot because Google fell from popularity. Not much else to see here sadly.
- 0xDEF 3y ago
  As a European I would fully support the US shooting itself in the foot by breaking up its Big Tech companies if it meant that European alternatives would replace them. However we all know it's going to be Chinese alternatives.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
exabrial 3y ago
Every part of Google needs to be split: Youtube, Gmail, Adwords, Drive/Office, Play Store, etc. Then next carve up Apple, then Facebook, then we need to FTC to stop approving dumb shit like Microsoft buying Activision.

318 points by gcheong 3y ago

account-5 3y ago

Hopefully this is won and followed by similar for all other tech monopolies: Amazon, apple, meta, Microsoft, etc.

jitl 3y ago
Google has 95% of search market, but none of the other examples have 95% of anything. What are Amazon, Apple, Microsoft’s monopolies? They all have substantial competitors across their various verticals. Amazon: Walmart (goods), Netflix (media) Microsoft: Apple (OS), Google, Amazon (enterprise compute) Apple: Microsoft (O, services), Samsung (mobile), Google (mobile, services), Netflix (media)
- p_j_w 3y ago
  Microsoft has over 90% of the desktop OS and Office software markets. It’s impossible to come up with a reasonable definition of monopoly that doesn’t include them in those markets.
  - prepend 3y ago
    They don’t have 90% [0]. They have about 70% of just desktop, but there’s lots of competition with devices since desktops have replacements with tablets and phones and other devices. Also, as the 90s Microsoft case showed, just having a monopoly isn’t bad. It’s the harm caused by having the monopoly. Back in the 90s, Microsoft was found to harm other browsers. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
    - Retric 3y ago
      Read up on past monopoly busts, you don’t need an overwhelming market share to be broken up. Standard oil was down to 64% and that didn’t save it.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        People have this "folk" definition of monopoly saying that a monopoly is 100% total market domination. Maybe because this is the win condition for the board game Monopoly? I think this idea is a serious impediment to addressing anti-competitive behavior in America.
      - prepend 3y ago
        When antitrust proceedings starts against Standard Oil in 1904, they had 91% market share [0]. By 1911 when they were broken up they were down to 64%, but that’s because the case progressed. And after the breakup they had 0%. But I think if Standard had 64% in the beginning and there was a competitive market, they would not have been broken up. [0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-evolution-standard-oil/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-evolution-standard-oi...
        Retric 3y ago
        Which is why I said down to, they didn’t get to say we’re below the magic X% number can you please leave us alone. But presumably if their market share had fallen to 10% that would have happened. As to when the case started, it’s impossible to know what the minimum threshold was. It could just as easily been well below 64% as people where in monopoly busting push at the time.
    - wak90 3y ago
      >Also, as the 90s Microsoft case showed, just having a monopoly isn’t bad. It’s the harm caused by having the monopoly. Can you elaborate your thoughts here because the point of breaking up companies with monopolistic power is they cannot be divorced from monopolistic abuse of that power. It is written into US law that the company has a legal duty to it's shareholders. It seems your point is a distinction without a difference.
      - prepend 3y ago
        The issue is that having a monopoly in the US isn’t a reason to break up a company, even though it might make it possible to abuse. Antitrust law in the US requires some consumer harm, so it’s the abuse of monopoly power that’s the crux, not just having it. And duty to shareholders would actually mean that management would not abuse their monopoly power because of the risk of breakup.
      - joshuamorton 3y ago
        Basically all of this is false. The legal duty to shareholders doesn't mean that companies need to violate the law. In reality, saying " we don't abuse our market position to avoid regulatory scrutiny" is acting in the interests of shareholders, and a lawsuit wouldn't go further. Otherwise you'd be saying that companies had a duty to break all laws in pursuit of shareholder value, which is obviously silly. And yeah under us law you have to prove consumer harm or anticompetitive practice, not just having a significant market majority.
        wak90 3y ago
        I am aware of the legal duty. The legal duty is to maximize shareholder value but not explicitly break the law. What do you think this looks like in practice? Because it makes logical sense to me that monopolistic companies would use their monopolistic power to come as close as they can with anti competitive behavior without attracting scrutiny which is why you break them up in the first place. And it's not theoretical, there are many examples not least of which is Microsoft.
        3y ago
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    It isn't about market share, but about anti-competitive practices. Is Microsoft abusing their market position to keep competitors out of the market?
    - gmerc 3y ago
      laughs in constant bing, onedrive, fucking edge, teams upsells on my paid version of windows. Laughs in edge ignoring browser preferences screwing over firefox laughs in constantly returning widgets, Microsoft reward currency on the start menu, forced telemetry. Laughs in teams bundling. Laughs in the coming super monopoly of cross domain AI finetuning in teams. Lol, by the standards of the last century, they are worse than what did them in in the 90s
      - constantcrying 3y ago
        [flagged]
        yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        You asked, > Is Microsoft abusing their market position to keep competitors out of the market? and they replied with a list of places MS uses their position to try and push their offerings over competitors.
        constantcrying 3y ago
        >You asked No, I did not. I stated the question which would need to be answered if you wanted to figure out if Microsoft should face an anti-trust.
        lolinder 3y ago
        That's not at all how your initial comment reads. You didn't frame the question as a question other people would have to ask, you framed it in a way that clearly invited a response. You might not have liked the way they replied, but your follow-up was super dismissive given that you asked a question.
  - JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
    But you can have them for free so it doesn't count
    - lolinder 3y ago
      You can't have them for free—you pay for Windows in the form of a higher OEM cost for your computer. EDIT: OP eventually clarified in the thread that they're talking about piracy. So apparently the argument is that because Microsoft products can be pirated, Microsoft isn't a monopoly. Make of that what you will.
      - JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
        Only if you buy an already assembled computer, not if you take the time to assemble the components yourself. And also as a small fish the higher OEM price is being subsidised by the Fortune 500 companies which buy millions of dollars worth of products from Dell etc.
        lolinder 3y ago
        If you assemble the components yourself, you still don't get Windows for free, you just get out of paying the Windows tax if you intend to install Linux. Edit: The idea that OEMs only tack on the extra cost to big companies is demonstrably false. For one thing, margins per-item are always lower on bulk purchases, not higher—Fortune 500 do not pay list price on anything. For another, you can see the difference in cost on the Dell XPS 13 by switching between Linux and Windows: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-developer-edition/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/usexcucto9320rpl01 https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-dev... Computers that don't offer a Linux option just all come with that $149 surcharge baked in.
        JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
        > > If you assemble the components yourself, you still don't get Windows for free, you just get out of paying the Windows tax if you intend to install Linux. You get Windows for free from the combo of self-assemble + torrenting + Microsoft not pursuing individual users for piracy > > Dell XPS 13 And that is what I said, if you don't assemble the thing yourself buy the cheapest option from an OEM and then you can get Microsoft products for free if you are a wise guy. And Microsoft tolerates it.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    >Microsoft has over 90% of the desktop OS and Office software markets. Their market has been shrinking due to the rise of tablets and smartphones (so a majority of the population doesn't need PCs at home beyond certain professionals, gamers and hobbyists) They do have a large business market share, but that is also shrinking as many "modern" businesses diversify with Apple computers due to employees growing up with them. Depending on stats, it has fallen from 90% to 75% in a decade and will most likely continue to fall. This is part of the business case for Microsoft to make their software work cross-platform in order to diversify. Otherwise their position is a natural monopoly. Companies opted to all use Windows because there are certain economies of scale that occur when you all standardize on the same software, including, and this is the biggest one, your employees not needing to relearn whatever ridiculous snowflake UI scheme came up by each different linux distro. It's why Windows and macOS will continue to remain dominant in the PC space. The same goes for Office 365. Sure there are certain elements of it that are a bit _too pushy. But companies buy into it because it's one standardized and integrated system. Going elsewhere has overhead of increased training costs for end users and even the IT admin side.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Platforms are ecosystems with a monopoly intentionally created by copyright. But the copyright monopoly is supposed to be for the copyrighted work. You shouldn't be able to anti-competitively leverage it into a monopoly over everything else it touches, from hardware to app distribution to services. And there is no inherent reason it has to be that way. Microsoft doesn't have any kind of a monopoly on app distribution for Windows, for example. POSIX applications aren't tied to any specific vendor's proprietary Unix. You don't have to run Windows on most PCs even if that's what it comes with, and the same has been true of many Macs, but not iPhones. Taking a monopoly you have legitimately and leveraging it into control over some other market is called tying.
- tomComb 3y ago
  Google’s search monopoly is the easiest to escape: the moment I decide Bing or chatGPT are better I can switch with ease. And chatGPT is already replacing many Google searches. So, it will take care of itself, and I think there are many other competition issues that need government intervention.
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    There's a network effect too in that by being the search monopoly gives Google several advantages: 1) They have free data about what most users want (i.e. click on) 2) Websites fight for being indexed by Google, but crawlers other than Google basically have to fight to access websites
  - skinkestek 3y ago
    Google is bigger than that: IMO Chrome needs to be split out too as does Android.
- LorenzoGood 3y ago
  Apple has over 75% of 18-24 year olds with their phone in their pocket.
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    But how is this the result of Apple engaging in anti-competitive practices? 75% of people choosing your product can not be grounds to breakup a company and the fact that it looks different for other age groups is just further evidence that Apple is engaging in fair competition.
    - ewoodrich 3y ago
      You could make an argument that number would be smaller if Apple was forced to make iMessage interoperable with Android devices.
      - charcircuit 3y ago
        It is interoperable already using SMS.
      - constantcrying 3y ago
        Seems like a very weak argument. Practically irrelevant for an anti-trust case I would say.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      Blocking iMessage on non Apple devices and generally making Apple stuff only work with other Apple stuff, not to mention their 30% fees on their app store while also not allowing other app stores, are all anticompetitive practices, which the EU is well regulating soon.
      - constantcrying 3y ago
        Some of those may be reason to bring legal action, but breaking up Apple over this seems insane.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Many have made cases against Amazon, e.g. https://doctorow.medium.com/californias-antitrust-case-against-amazon-82b8e4177fb7 https://doctorow.medium.com/californias-antitrust-case-again...
- barnabee 3y ago
  I realise its not how current laws work, but I think the threshold for any large/mature market for anti-trust should be more like 33% than near 100%. There's no need for companies supplying a product en masse to be anywhere near that large.
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  Amazon: Walmart (goods), Netflix (media) Walmart and Amazon are both huge but it seems just wrong to say a brick-and-mortar store as equivalent to an online market place. The direct competitors to Amazon are Ebay, Baidu, Etsy, Temu and others, all of which are much smaller in the US (but some are huge elsewhere). You say that Facebook is a Google competitor because it offers eyeballs and because people sometimes go there to get stuff and it uses it's info for ads providing. The actual situation imo is that online enterprises compete via monopolistic competition [1]. No large high tech company wants to offer exactly the same thing as it's because at best neither will make a lot of money - instead, any company entering a crowded marketplace will come up with something guaranteeing them more engagement, higher profits and so-forth (thus something even worse from the consumer's view). See Meta's Threads. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition
  - jitl 3y ago
    I go to Walmart a bit less frequently than I go to Amazon in person (Fresh or Whole Foods), but I order from Walmart quite frequently. Their online delivery services are very competitive and comparable to Amazon's. If Amazon is out of stock on an item or showing long delivery time, I'll order from Walmart instead. Most recently I ordered a Synology RT6600AX Wifi router/media server because Amazon had 2 week delivery time, and Walmart had 2 day.
  - tzs 3y ago
    > Walmart and Amazon are both huge but it seems just wrong to say a brick-and-mortar store as equivalent to an online market place Walmart is also an online market place. Walmart.com includes third party reseller products with many significant similarities to Amazon. They've got fulfilled by Walmart, free shipping, and if you join Walmart+ it includes Paramount+ video streaming (also free grocery delivery).
dantheman 3y ago
Hopefully the government loses.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  I would rather give my data to one entity, than thousands of fragmented ones. Some things can only be accomplished at scale, and also risk getting into the wrong hands (re Twitter)
  - jart 3y ago
    If Google gets broken up, Gmail will end up like the PSTN. Anyone can monitor your location. Anyone can read your messages. Anyone can spoof your address.
    - waithuh 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - growingentropy 3y ago
    If you only want one entity having your data, you're better off being abused by Apple. Google invites all his friends over to run a train on you.
    - waithuh 3y ago
      Why do you think that Apple doesnt do that?
      - growingentropy 3y ago
        https://fossbytes.com/apple-data-collection-explained/ https://fossbytes.com/apple-data-collection-explained/ "Now that we’ve established that Apple collects and uses your data to serve ads, does it sell your data too? Turns out the answer is No, Apple doesn’t sell your data to third-party advertisers. The Cupertino giant possesses the exclusive rights of showing you ads on the App Store and other apps."

throwawaysleep 3y ago

It is all the other search engines that are crap. Plenty exist, they just suck.

wavemode 3y ago
People who say this are never able to produce a single actual search query for which Google returns acceptable results but other engines do not. Perhaps you can be the exception.
blain 3y ago
I switched a while ago to DDG and about a year ago to Startpage and both are good enough. It was sure hard to get used to because of presumption that Google has better results but after a while you don't care anymore and find what you're looking for anyway.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > DDG and about a year ago to Startpage do they have their own search infra?
- hoppyhoppy2 3y ago
  Startpage uses Google search results. >Startpage delivers Google search results via our proprietary personal data protection technology. (source: https://www.startpage.com/en/ https://www.startpage.com/en/ )

charcircuit 3y ago

>Google has maintained this monopoly, the government alleges, not by making a better product, but by locking down everywhere that consumers might be able to find a different search engine option, and making sure they only see Google. Google improves search every year. Internally they have data to back this up. Google doesn't lock down everywhere consumers can learn about a new browser. The most notable being the default search engine on Windows is Bing. I have also seen ads for other search engines and discussion about search engines on social media.It isn't like you say the word Bing on the internet and you get contacted by Google's lawyers with a C&D. >To understand why this case makes sense, look no further than the experience of Neeva, a search engine whose quality was as high or higher than that of Google, but died a few months ago because it just couldn’t get access to customers. Better technology does not necessarily mean that you will have the better business. There are other reasons that you can fail. The link about Neeva having better quality actually states the opposite: "Neeva ended up building a search engine they were proud of, a search engine that came close to beating Google both by Neeva’s internal metrics and in user studies."

prepend 3y ago
> Google improves search every year. I don’t believe this based on my own search experience getting worse year over year. I believe they know how to improve it, but they choose to increase revenue instead. Results seem to be less relevant to me and there are frequently more ad results than organic that display on the page. I think they are able to do this because of lock in with users and vendors. If there was more competition, there wouldn’t be such bad results.
- dantheman 3y ago
  I think you don't understand how much worse the internet has gotten - there are a large amount of bad actors actively trying to make google worse (junk content, etc) - Even just providing the same level of quality results with decreasing quality source data is an improvement. If it was easy to extract better results there would be competition with better results.
  - 3y ago

andsoitis 3y ago

> controlling much of our communications Google doesn't control my communication with others.

prepend 3y ago
Google controls mine as search and gmail and chrome are major ways that I communicate with others. It’s difficult not to use them because my employer and many sites require chrome. I’m not sure what the gmail market share is, but chrome and search are over 50% and they’ve used that market position to harm users (showing ads for their own products until you choose chrome) and harm competitors (showing their own ads above competitors).
- andsoitis 3y ago
  Can you communicate anything you want or does Google control what you're able to say (i.e. "control your communications")
  - prepend 3y ago
    There’s different levels of control. I think control means affect how I communicate. I can’t communicate anything I want as chrome blocks certain apps from installing. And gmail blocks some communication. And search filters results from what I want to find. Etc etc. So yes, google controls what I’m able to say.
    - andsoitis 3y ago
      > I think control means affect how I communicate Many things affect how I communicate, but that is very different from controlling. > chrome blocks certain apps from installing Chrome blocks apps from installing? > And gmail blocks some communication. Such as?
      - prepend 3y ago
        Google removed NukeRedditHistory from their App Store. And lots of others. There’s a system of how gmail decides what is spam and what isn’t. And there’s a large percentage of non-spam that gets blocked or sent to spam [0]. [0] https://www.inboxally.com/blog/why-is-gmail-blocking-my-emails-and-what-to-do-about-it https://www.inboxally.com/blog/why-is-gmail-blocking-my-emai...

lucasfcosta 3y ago

I think one argument that’s missing from the article is how that impacts foreign policies. What about competing with foreign giants, for example? China probably won’t break up their large companies, and, in a global market, those can then use their outsized economic power to impose themselves against the counterparts elsewhere. I’m not saying that will necessarily happen, just mentioning an argument I’ve heard quite often. I think the intention here is good, it’s just the side effects that are dangerous if not handled cautiously.

light_hue_1 3y ago
The flip side is that dead giants that dominate the landscape stifle all innovation here and charge expensive rates. Eventually allowing someone else to get much further ahead technically.
pphysch 3y ago
> What about competing with foreign giants, for example? China probably won’t break up their large companies ANT Group? Alibaba?
lumost 3y ago
There is a weird assumption that Chinese tech corporations are permanently immune to American law. At most, this is an artifact of unidirectional free trade agreements written generations ago. Similar to Europe, I doubt US regulators would dissolve one giant just to see it replaced by a foreign one. The current status quo that Chinese tech companies can operate in the US, but US ones are unable to operate in China is an historic abnormality.
growingentropy 3y ago
We need multiple large companies, not a few huge ones. Google's "internet DRM" web integrity API is honestly frightening stuff. The Internet as we know it would change.
ocdtrekkie 3y ago
I think fear of China is a convenient excuse used by monopolists to justify letting them continue to abuse the rest of us. The right call is to regulate our tech companies and also restrict foreign companies who violate the rules.

offtwit 3y ago

It sounds like this is only about google search. How can that be broken up? Or are they just going to get fined many billions of dollars and they lose their right to being the default search engine on iPhones?

bbor 3y ago
The author is just focusing on this aspect bc that’s this case, but there’s multiple ongoing. E.g. there’s one about monopolistic practices in the online ad business. Specifically here: How does Google lock out rivals? Well, it pays $45 billion a year to have distributors refuse to carry its competitor’s products, signing deals with “Apple, LG, Motorola, and Samsung; major U.S. wireless carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; and browser developers such as Mozilla, Opera, and UCWeb— to secure default status for its general search engine and, in many cases, to specifically prohibit Google’s counterparties from dealing with Google’s competitors.”
- ttul 3y ago
  That sounds anticompetitive to me. But I understand that proving criminal anticompetitive behavior is extremely difficult under US law, which is why it almost never happens. And companies as large as Google can outpunch regulators on legal spending, paying ex-government lawyers millions per year to work around the rules.
- asah 3y ago
  Refuse to carry? Or just not the default?
advisedwang 3y ago
> lose their right to being the default search engine on iPhones? It would mean they can't PAY apple to make Google the default search engine. Apple would then (in theory) pick whichever search engine is best and not just play ball with Google's lock in. This would therefore enable competition. In theory.
- ladon86 3y ago

nathias 3y ago

woa, so many people are still using google for search?

concordDance 3y ago
Please state what you use in your post.
- bogwog 3y ago
  I've been using Kagi for almost a year now, and I love it. Every now and then I'll check Google out of curiosity, and it's always shocking how bad the results are. Inaccurate results, spam sites everywhere, and sensory overload of advertisements.
  - nathias 3y ago
    yes it's like coming back to cable, completely infested with ads

concordDance 3y ago

Won't this kill Firefox if Google gets told it cant pay browsers to put it as default? That would suck.

voytec 3y ago
It would kill Mitchell Baker's salary. The browser would survive - as Firefox or forks.
- summerlight 3y ago
  And all other Mozilla engineer's salary as well? Developing a modern browser is a very expensive business nowadays.
littlestymaar 3y ago
It would kill the Mozilla Corporation in its current form and hopefully get us Baker's head (as least metaphorically if nothing else) but it will not necessarily be the end of the browser itself.
- advisedwang 3y ago
  Who else will pay salaries to maintain Firefox? Firefox can't survive on community contributions alone.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    Wikipedia having a higher turnover than Mozilla from contribution alone is a counter-example. And if Google is being split, then Chrome will also need to find a monetization strategy, opening the perspective for Mozilla.
    - Karunamon 3y ago
      The bar to contribute to a software project of any size is many times higher than the bar to contribute to Wikipedia. If you were speaking monetarily, Wikipedia has a gargantuan user count and good will to match, where Mozilla has spent the last few years squandering both of those.

siliconc0w 3y ago

It's hard to tell if it's Google's dominance causing search to suck or just the web ecosystem naturally optimizing for clicks. I will say most queries with even vaguely commercial intent do seem to get the max or nearly a full page of sponsored links. I don't recall what it was like years ago but I'm pretty sure it is worse. I also think it's pretty clear the platform take-rate needs to be generally lowered across the board, likely making it illegal to lock customers to a store or require payments go through the same store. This is a tax on basically everyone and provides very little value.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
The problem here is authority. What makes you an authority on a subject? Books written? Credentials (diploma?)? References? These things aren't all true in real life, and on the internet it's even easier to fake all of that. In the beginning Google went by 'amount of text' (which is why you read everybody's life story on how they had sex next to a magma flow in Hawaii which created the idea of doing burnt ends on a pizza stone), references (remember all those backlinks which would boost your page). Credentials are a lot harder to track. There is no API at my school where you can put in my name and see my credentials (and all you'd see is 'we got governments subsidies for this person, which is why we let him pass'). And all of this worked at the start. Knowledgeable people naturally had references on the web, as only knowledgeable people were on the web. Now we literally have people writing text purely to make it look like their website has more content on them, even if it is remotely related to what they serve. Great example, even posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36740400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36740400 Or any coding problem where you end up on logrocket / some partitioning app / some generated website with which has an 'answer' for KB0000000 -> KB9999999...
- rolph 3y ago
  >>What makes you an authority on a subject<< the ability to make accurate predictions of outcome by way of knowledge, observation, and logical deliberation.
  - 3y ago

mattlondon 3y ago

Hmm we got the internet and cellular phones because AT&T were broken up? Citation needed I think. That sounds pretty far-fetched and over-reaching to me.

convolvatron 3y ago
not very far-fetched. back in the beginning your local bell was where you went to get wide-area link level service. and it was a huge pain. extremely costly, months long installations, abysmal service. somewhat later, these same people were responsible for nonsense like ATM. they were going to prop up their own internet - with hookers, and circuits, and per-cell QOS based charging. and they were gonna do it right. and it was gonna be great. would they have leveraged their monopoly on the underlying circuits to try to dominate layer 3? almost certainly.
- mattlondon 3y ago
  Yes but there is a world outside of America. GSM for example came from Finland, and I believe that ARPANET et al were military and wouldn't give a shit about what AT&T were doing, and even then the inventor of packet switching networks (Donald Davies) was from the UK. If AT&T had just carried on I am sure that the internet and mobile phones would have happened anyway. Sure things may have been different it happened at different times, but I don't think AT&T not being broken up would have stopped things that were already happening elsewhere from continuing to happen.
eitland 3y ago
The quality of telephone services took of and the prices plummeted here in Norway when the phone monopoly was broken around 1998. I was there and remember going from expensive landlines with complicated pricing structures all the way to cell phone plans so cheap every kid has one. IMO no way it would have happened with the monopoly we had in the nineties.

riku_iki 3y ago

So, what are the demands in this trial? Do they want to divide google? How?

advisedwang 3y ago
From the complaint [1]: > VIII. REQUEST FOR RELIEF > To remedy these illegal acts, Plaintiffs request that the Court: > a. Adjudge and decree that Google acted unlawfully to maintain general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising monopolies in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 2; > b. Enter structural relief as needed to cure any anticompetitive harm; > c. Enjoin Google from continuing to engage in the anticompetitive practices described herein and from engaging in any other practices with the same purpose and effect as the challenged practices; > d. Enter any other preliminary or permanent relief necessary and appropriate to restore competitive conditions in the markets affected by Google’s unlawful conduct; > e. Enter any additional relief the Court finds just and proper; and > f. Award each Plaintiff an amount equal to its costs incurred in bringing this action on behalf of its citizens. So basically just banning whatever anti-competative behaviour the court finds and fining Google a bunch. [1] https://www.justice.gov/d9/press-releases/attachments/2020/10/20/google_complaint_filed_0.pdf https://www.justice.gov/d9/press-releases/attachments/2020/1...
summerlight 3y ago
So-called "break-up" may not be effective as expected and it's easy to workaround that for tech companies as they're less tied to physical infrastructures unlike conventional monopolies. It's likely that they'll got billions of fine as well as be forced to implement corrective measures on their anti-competitive behaviors, of course if they lose.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  I think they very tied together because all google services run on the same internal infra and use shared collected data, and for example moving ads out of google and force them to pay market cloud prices, deal with all bugs and complexity other market players are facing and more importantly cut from data collected internally at google will produce significant damage on them.

hgs3 3y ago

Antitrust laws are too reactive. We need proactive laws that break up companies if they grow beyond a certain size criteria. Ideally, the criteria would be aggressive enough to kill large corporations leaving behind only small to medium-sized businesses. The result would be markets with increased competition, more innovation, lower prices, more options for employment and self-employment, and the elimination of Big Corp's big money political influence.

mikepurvis 3y ago
Is there a model anywhere for this having been tried, successfully or otherwise? The obvious hesitation I have is just that some companies really do benefit from a lot of vertical integration. Could Apple be Apple if they were forced to spin off the phone business, or the chip design house, or the OS? What would it mean for the startup ecosystem if getting bought by a conglomerate was a less plausible exit? How would regulators enforce that the split off entities were truly independent vs faking it and then having exclusivity deals that meant they were basically still the same singular entity?
- dmbche 3y ago
  Should Apple exist in it's current form? If it weren't, the things that are integrated become available for others - meaning better products for all, no? What's the societal benefit of integrating all these advances in single companies?
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    Not so much because then, for example, you become Qualcomm and have 50 different customers all asking for different things from your chips and you reach a local optimum where you solve everyone’s issue a little bit but don’t actually do a good job. There’s a reason that Apple’s chips are so much better in terms of performance and energy efficiency. Similarly, it’s why Apple did the W1 first and it took a very long time before any competitor figured out how to do the same thing. And you’ll see the same with VR where FB will struggle to make HW with comparable specs while Apple’s chip gives their SW a leg up. TLDR: it’s complex, but successful vertical businesses have fairly different products, efficiencies, and outcomes.

prakhar897 3y ago

The Indian govt imposed restrictions that a payment provider in India can fulfill max 30% of the total volume of transactions in an year [1]. After that, they have to restrict themselves. This completely avoids monopoly and concentration risks. This can be done for search as well which makes sure at least 4 players stay in the market at all times. Why isn't US govt doing this? 1. https://www.indiatimes.com/worth/news/upi-apps-may-soon-have-transaction-volume-limit-585440.html https://www.indiatimes.com/worth/news/upi-apps-may-soon-have...

paulryanrogers 3y ago
It makes perfect sense. Doesn't happen in the US because of regulatory capture
halflings 3y ago
> Why isn't US govt doing this? Why isn't the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, ... doing this? Because it's a pretty strong form of controlled economy that distorts the market. How would this work for search engines? Would you force people to use a different search engine than the one they want? (e.g. they type Google.com and end up redirected to Bing.com) ; or somehow just funnel revenue to other companies... then who gets to decide which companies this gets funneled to? Anti-trust is about preventing anti-competitive tactics, but the scheme you is ironically anti-competitive: it artificially inflates usage of other services even if they don't provide an equal/superior service, with consumers paying the price. [disclaimer: I work at Google, so likely biased]
- Forgeties79 3y ago
  What would you propose instead?
  - halflings 3y ago
    Banning anti-competitive behavior (which is what antitrust laws are for in the first place). For instance: a company actively blocking competition (e.g. coffee machine manufacturers that make it impossible for people to buy pods from another brand). Again, I am probably biased here, but I don't see much anti-competitive behaviour in the search engine space. If people have a clear superior alternative to Google, then by all means please share it here. Even during the brief period where I used duckduckgo, I was constantly finding myself typing "!g" to get results from Google as they were just consistently more relevant.

huitzitziltzin 3y ago

I appreciate the passion Matt Stoller brings to antitrust issues but his analyses are not good on the economics, to say the very least. I agree that some of google’s conduct is very questionable. It’s not obvious to me that paying to be the default search product is pro-competitive. On the other hand, the case that Google is going to make (and which I think is going to be really hard for the government to overcome) is this: we (google) give our product away for free and so do our competitors. What’s more, the cost of switching search engines is literally zero: just type Bing instead of Google. If customers are choosing our search product among two free options, then our product is better. It’s going to be very difficult to establish that there’s an abuse of dominant position in that case. (There is other behavior by google which is more questionable, but in search they are on firm ground.) Having a large market share is not an antitrust violation, nor should it be.

DannyBee 3y ago
In the legal realm, I actually like to read blogs, newsletters, podcasts of folks that are often on the other side of an issue or thing than I am. I find it useful to gain perspective/etc. When i have no opinion, i try to find folks on "both" sides. Like say insurance lawyers and injury lawyers takes on a thing or whatever. So I tried to read Matt on antitrust (though it turns out we share some of the same views), but once you get beyond the "forcefulness", everything only gets worse in my experience. It's a lot of bloviation, and when you get into the details, he often will, charitably, take interesting interpretations of the actual opinions and views of courts and others, especially when they disagree with his view. Once I read enough to have a sense of continuity (IE how did claims/views/predictions turn out), I ended up giving up my subscription because i just couldn't read it anymore. There are those who are much better at representing what's going on as a whole in a thing, even when they have a point of view and share it. Even when it's a point of view i think is totally wrongheaded. It's not as passionate, for sure, but I find it more useful and enjoyable in the end, whether i agree or not. In Matt's case, let's take this one: "Judge Mehta tossed these claims, saying that services like Yelp and Expedia aren’t general search engines and are therefore not in the same market as Google. It was a highly technical and annoying way to read certain legal questions, but bringing an antitrust case has become virtually impossible unless it’s done perfectly." You'll note that Matt does what he often does here - when he can't explain why he's right, things become more abstract - there aren't any examples of how it was "highly technical" or "annoying" or what "certain legal questions" are. Not a single example anywhere to be found. No example or data that backs up that it is "virtually impossible" to bring antitrust cases unless they are "done perfectly". Nope, just some abstract complaint and throwaway language about how, you know, whatever he said in the last newsletter about how this part was gonna be a slam dunk or whatever is really right, it's just, you know, "highly technical" things got in the way. Which ones? Oh, well, you wouldn't know them, they live in Canada, and only visit in the summer. Let's look at what actually happened here: No, the judge did not throw the claims out because they aren't general search engines. He threw it out because he felt the plaintiffs were way short on the evidence, because they rely entirely on an expert who cites no evidence himself, only makes up theories. This sounds like an exaggerated opinion of what happened, but it's not :) See page 46 of the opinion. "The court agrees with Google’s second argument. Plaintiffs’ theory of anticompetitive harm rests on a multi-linked causal sequence that relies not on evidence but almost entirely on the opinion and speculation of its expert, Professor Jonathan Baker. Plaintiffs cite Professor Baker’s report for the following propositions: < a page of propositions elided > Remarkably, not one of Professor Baker’s opinions, on which these fact assertions are based, cites to any record evidence. Indeed, a closer inspection of Professor Baker's reports shows he has largely theorized the anticompetitive effects in the relevant market of Google's conduct toward the SVP's ... Plaintiffs are required to show with proof "that the monopolist's conduct indeed has the requisite anticompetitive effect", and they have fallen well short of that burden". This isn't even the end. It goes on, where the Judge points out this state at oral argument and the states confirm they have no evidence, etc. It then explains why unsupported expert opinions aren't enough to get past summary judgement, etc. It is a clear step by step refutation of the claims, unrelated to the market question. It does then end with "Professor Baker's opinions do not rest on facts; only his ruminations about the market effects of Google's conduct" as one final jab. To read all that, and believe that this is about, you know, some highly technical legal questions being read in an annoying way and that it's the judge requiring them to "do it perfectly" is, uh, an interesting take for sure. It's one thing if Matt went into this and said "I think that random theorization should be enough, because facts are a lagging indicator" or "I think the court is wrong on the following legal standard", or whatever, but nope, this just gets painted as the nonsense we started with. This is very common in his writing, and at least for me, made it not worth reading.

nologic01 3y ago

Advertising is not intrinsically evil but mix an incompetent and captured political class with the surveillance and personal targeting possibilities opened by fast moving information technology (the advent of the web and mobile) and you get the closest approximation to dystopia that has ever existed: Surveillance Capitalism [1], as first defined and analyzed by Zuboff. People have normalized that an advertiser is the technology gatekeeper for the vast majority of web users and enjoying an unassailable duopoly in mobile. People have normalized being the product and not the client. Yet this is not normal. It is a farcical, grotesque parody of how a non-dystopic digital economy should be structured. Advertising intermediaries should not control general purpose information technologies that vast numbers of people rely on. This is a job for ring-fenced and properly regulated technology companies. It is incredible to have come that, but its now obvious that the much despised Microsoft monopoly of yesteryear was a far more benign condition, being actually a monopoly facing client users and within the tech sector proper. The world has paid a heavy price for this regulatory abnormality. Counterfactuals are hard to make concrete but there is at least a decade of stagnation, productivity loss and value destruction across the technology space from the lack of competition and innovation. Beyond economics, this will be a defining moment for the shape and nature of digital society. You can't resolve any of the brewing disruptions (digital finance, AI) when there is such commingling of conflicting interests, so much hypocrisy, such systemic, large scale breach of trust. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

zdragnar 3y ago
I will happily take this "dystopia" over many places in the world. Of course, it would be nice if we could change some things, but opening the argument with this level of hyperbole makes the rest difficult to follow.
- nologic01 3y ago
  You are entitled to a sanguine view of the status quo. You are in good numerical company. A lot of perceptive and incisive thinkers are actually horrified.

LatteLazy 3y ago

There are very solid reasons the average human / American does NOT want more competitive as markets. Until anyone is willing to address those, this is us communally shooting ourselves in the foot because Google fell from popularity. Not much else to see here sadly.

0xDEF 3y ago
As a European I would fully support the US shooting itself in the foot by breaking up its Big Tech companies if it meant that European alternatives would replace them. However we all know it's going to be Chinese alternatives.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

exabrial 3y ago

Every part of Google needs to be split: Youtube, Gmail, Adwords, Drive/Office, Play Store, etc. Then next carve up Apple, then Facebook, then we need to FTC to stop approving dumb shit like Microsoft buying Activision.