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I suspect if you're under investigation for abusing monopoly power and you tell your employees not to use phrases like "We'll crush the competition" and instea

I suspect if you're under investigation for abusing monopoly power and you tell your employees not to use phrases like "We'll crush the competition" and instead talk about how "You'll try to maintain a competitive environment while doing your best to excel" it's probably better than your legal opponents finding evidence that people in your company are constantly talking about abusing their power to "crush the competition". I guess we'll get an idea by the result of this lawsuit.

lazide 3y ago
That depends entirely on the details of how it is said. If it is said in a way clearly making it obvious that not just the words, but the intent is bad, and to instead do the other thing? Seems likely to not be an issue. If it is saying the intent is fine, just use the other words? Then yeah. If it gets to the press, chances are it’s being spun the opposite way that context would show it was being used, because that’s how it usually works to get clicks.
jrockway 3y ago
This is kind of what's sad at working at a big company. If the same team was doing the same work at a startup, every one of their meetings can be "this feature will kill the competition". Personally I think it's a great attitude; if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. And you're certainly entitled to try. (And, sometimes ideas do kill their industry. Called someone on your landline recently? Bought a DVD at the store? Listened to music on a Walkman? It happens.) The devil is always in the details. If you kill the US steel industry by being a government that pays people to buy steel from your country, that's problematic. If you just make shit and people like it, though, that should never be illegal.
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
  It is not problematic to put people out of business by having a superior product. It is problematic to abuse the fact that you have more money, connections, lawyers, political power, market control, customer interaction control, etc.
  - GauntletWizard 3y ago
    Absolutely, and the fact that our lawmakers cannot distinguish the two, and rely on fighting the last war with dumb heuristics based on phraseology is a real social problem.
    - spywaregorilla 3y ago
      Most of the cases in question are absolutely about abusing platform economics.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. The issue is that, once you reach Google scale, you have so many tools to put the competition out of business that are unrelated to product fit. And, in the case of Google, they've been known to do just that. So yeah, you can't really compare an incumbent with monopoly power to an underdog, just like some sentences from young kids are hilarious, that would be chilling if adults said them.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  > Personally I think it's a great attitude; if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. I think this "Others must lose so that I win" attitude is one of the more toxic attributes of this Thunderdome Capitalism so many industries have somehow ended up in. Wouldn't it be great if we could have dozens of businesses all successful, all doing "somewhat good" rather than having to always have a small number of winners that take everything? If I'm going to open a laundromat a block away from Paul's competing laundromat, I'm not doing it to try to put Paul out of business. I'm just trying to capture enough business so that we can coexist comfortably. Some entrepreneurs just don't know the meaning of the word "enough".
  - jrockway 3y ago
    I'm not sure how applicable this is to software. If you're making nails or something, then sure, your factory can only turn so many tons of coiled steel into nails per day. So other companies can exist that also make nails. In software, it's a little different; you moving a billion copies doesn't necessarily take any more work than selling one copy, so even if you "want to leave enough for everyone", you might not be able to. I doubt the Chrome team was saying things like "we shouldn't add tabs, that would be so bad for Internet Explorer".
    - lazide 3y ago
      Uh, Standard Oil? Antitrust has a long history and it has nothing to do with tech.
  - thegrimmest 3y ago
    But if your laundromat is better in some way (service, cost, marketing), why wouldn't you want to grow? And if the market is a fixed size, (which just about every market is) doesn't that inevitably result in Paul adapting to keep up or closing down? When did it become immoral to realize this and strive for it? In this scenario everyone besides Paul benefits. And so it will be when you become the incumbent and face a competitor with a similar edge. In Google's case, I suspect "search" will die to AI like Blackberries died to iPhones. Google is already proving that its size and bureaucratic unwieldiness are major obstacles to its competing in the AI space. Would we really hold back the vast social benefits of this progress because we object to some people becoming obscenely wealthy?
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  I think the “winner takes all” attitude is the problem. It’s perfectly fine to run a tech company with a limited market but it doesn’t generate the spectacular returns current investors are looking for.
roenxi 3y ago
I'm still suspicious of the idea that Google can have a monopoly anywhere except maybe in the Android ecosystem. It is too easy to move away from their products and go use something else. Nobody is under any pressure to use Google's search. Literally Google "alternatives to google search" and get a list of reasonable alternatives. If they have outstanding market share it is because they are just better, not because they have a monopoly [0]. But the problem I'm looking at here is the phrase "...you're under investigation for abusing monopoly power..." anticipates the result to some degree. This is a an exhaustive list of the guidance lawyers can provide. Both seem to anticipate that some wrongdoing has been done. It leads to shallow thinking: ... you're under investigation for abusing monopoly power and lawyers tell employees not to use phrases like "We'll crush the competition". ... you're under investigation for abusing monopoly power and lawyers provide no guidance, then employees use phrases like "We'll crush the competition". Most of the work is actually being done by the initial frame, not what the employees are told. [0] I wouldn't know, I don't use Google search.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Chrome defaults to Google Search. ChromeOS comes with a bundled browser, the big no-no that cost Microsoft.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Windows had about 90% consumer market share at that point. ChromeOS… doesn’t.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Are you suggesting that ChromeOS of all things has a monopoly position in the market? I'm happy to be proven wrong if the year of the Linux desktop has finally come!
    - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 3y ago
      > if the year of the Linux desktop has finally come No, I think that's next year. ;)

lazide 3y ago

That depends entirely on the details of how it is said. If it is said in a way clearly making it obvious that not just the words, but the intent is bad, and to instead do the other thing? Seems likely to not be an issue. If it is saying the intent is fine, just use the other words? Then yeah. If it gets to the press, chances are it’s being spun the opposite way that context would show it was being used, because that’s how it usually works to get clicks.

jrockway 3y ago

This is kind of what's sad at working at a big company. If the same team was doing the same work at a startup, every one of their meetings can be "this feature will kill the competition". Personally I think it's a great attitude; if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. And you're certainly entitled to try. (And, sometimes ideas do kill their industry. Called someone on your landline recently? Bought a DVD at the store? Listened to music on a Walkman? It happens.) The devil is always in the details. If you kill the US steel industry by being a government that pays people to buy steel from your country, that's problematic. If you just make shit and people like it, though, that should never be illegal.

spywaregorilla 3y ago
It is not problematic to put people out of business by having a superior product. It is problematic to abuse the fact that you have more money, connections, lawyers, political power, market control, customer interaction control, etc.
- GauntletWizard 3y ago
  Absolutely, and the fact that our lawmakers cannot distinguish the two, and rely on fighting the last war with dumb heuristics based on phraseology is a real social problem.
  - spywaregorilla 3y ago
    Most of the cases in question are absolutely about abusing platform economics.
pyrale 3y ago
> if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. The issue is that, once you reach Google scale, you have so many tools to put the competition out of business that are unrelated to product fit. And, in the case of Google, they've been known to do just that. So yeah, you can't really compare an incumbent with monopoly power to an underdog, just like some sentences from young kids are hilarious, that would be chilling if adults said them.
ryandrake 3y ago
> Personally I think it's a great attitude; if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. I think this "Others must lose so that I win" attitude is one of the more toxic attributes of this Thunderdome Capitalism so many industries have somehow ended up in. Wouldn't it be great if we could have dozens of businesses all successful, all doing "somewhat good" rather than having to always have a small number of winners that take everything? If I'm going to open a laundromat a block away from Paul's competing laundromat, I'm not doing it to try to put Paul out of business. I'm just trying to capture enough business so that we can coexist comfortably. Some entrepreneurs just don't know the meaning of the word "enough".
- jrockway 3y ago
  I'm not sure how applicable this is to software. If you're making nails or something, then sure, your factory can only turn so many tons of coiled steel into nails per day. So other companies can exist that also make nails. In software, it's a little different; you moving a billion copies doesn't necessarily take any more work than selling one copy, so even if you "want to leave enough for everyone", you might not be able to. I doubt the Chrome team was saying things like "we shouldn't add tabs, that would be so bad for Internet Explorer".
  - lazide 3y ago
    Uh, Standard Oil? Antitrust has a long history and it has nothing to do with tech.
- thegrimmest 3y ago
  But if your laundromat is better in some way (service, cost, marketing), why wouldn't you want to grow? And if the market is a fixed size, (which just about every market is) doesn't that inevitably result in Paul adapting to keep up or closing down? When did it become immoral to realize this and strive for it? In this scenario everyone besides Paul benefits. And so it will be when you become the incumbent and face a competitor with a similar edge. In Google's case, I suspect "search" will die to AI like Blackberries died to iPhones. Google is already proving that its size and bureaucratic unwieldiness are major obstacles to its competing in the AI space. Would we really hold back the vast social benefits of this progress because we object to some people becoming obscenely wealthy?
fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
I think the “winner takes all” attitude is the problem. It’s perfectly fine to run a tech company with a limited market but it doesn’t generate the spectacular returns current investors are looking for.

roenxi 3y ago

I'm still suspicious of the idea that Google can have a monopoly anywhere except maybe in the Android ecosystem. It is too easy to move away from their products and go use something else. Nobody is under any pressure to use Google's search. Literally Google "alternatives to google search" and get a list of reasonable alternatives. If they have outstanding market share it is because they are just better, not because they have a monopoly [0]. But the problem I'm looking at here is the phrase "...you're under investigation for abusing monopoly power..." anticipates the result to some degree. This is a an exhaustive list of the guidance lawyers can provide. Both seem to anticipate that some wrongdoing has been done. It leads to shallow thinking: ... you're under investigation for abusing monopoly power and lawyers tell employees not to use phrases like "We'll crush the competition". ... you're under investigation for abusing monopoly power and lawyers provide no guidance, then employees use phrases like "We'll crush the competition". Most of the work is actually being done by the initial frame, not what the employees are told. [0] I wouldn't know, I don't use Google search.

paulddraper 3y ago
Chrome defaults to Google Search. ChromeOS comes with a bundled browser, the big no-no that cost Microsoft.
- TylerE 3y ago
  Windows had about 90% consumer market share at that point. ChromeOS… doesn’t.
- roenxi 3y ago
  Are you suggesting that ChromeOS of all things has a monopoly position in the market? I'm happy to be proven wrong if the year of the Linux desktop has finally come!
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 3y ago
    > if the year of the Linux desktop has finally come No, I think that's next year. ;)