4 ms·

U.S. vs. Google: As landmark monopoly trial closes, here's what to look for

73 points by jc_811 2y ago

ai_what 2y ago
[flagged]
lantry 2y ago
PSA on npr.org, you can replace 'www' with 'text' to get a simpler page https://text.npr.org/2024/05/02/1248152695/google-doj-monopoly-trial-antitrust-closing-arguments https://text.npr.org/2024/05/02/1248152695/google-doj-monopo...
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Wow that is so much better. Thanks for sharing.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jc_811 2y ago
  Also, cnn has a similar service just replace www with lite. Such a better experience!
- noisypine 2y ago
  Firefox's Reader View can do this on most sites, regardless of them providing a text based view.
Spivak 2y ago
Doesn't the fact that Google has to pay so much to be the default mean that Google isn't wielding monopoly power? Apple can command such a high price point is because being the default on Safari is that valuable and folks will happily pay billions for the privilege bidding the price up. Of all the things to go after this seems like one of the weaker instances you could argue is anti-competitive. Like all this effort to get almost the same ruling as the EU Internet Explorer case which won't put a dent in anything.
- foolswisdom 2y ago
  By that logic, price fixing is okay, because you yourself don't have the power to price fix, you need to coordinate with others to do so! The fact that they spend money in order to abuse market power, rather than already having all of that market power (without paying another party) and misusing it shouldn't be relevant.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    It bears mentioning that a monopoly in and by itself is actually fine. If you provide a product or service so legitimately good that noone else can compete with you, that's fine. What's not fine is suppressing your competitors in some form or another to achieve that monopoly, that is to say not achieving that monopoly by the sheer quality and value of your product or service. If Apple is selling their "default search" slot to prospective buyers and Google outbids everyone else, what are you gonna do? Force Google to not bid so high? Tell Apple to not accept bids so high? That sounds worse than the supposed bad monopoly being supposedly prevented.
    - Spivak 2y ago
      I guess the argument is that they can maintain their dominance being able to buy all the defaults for that are for sale but this presumes that Google is the only one who can capitalize on being the default to the degree that they do. Either that or Google is taking a huge loss on them and making it up other ways that can only happen with market dominance but that's also pretty sus.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Paying other companies to achieve a monopoly is no less unlawful or anticompetitive than any other form of achieving a monopoly. Even monopolies achieved primarily on merit can, and have been, broken up. AT&T being the typical example there. There's a really great article on their rise and fall. [1] Ask basically anybody who was around during their heyday and most were quite happy with AT&T, but nonetheless their monopolistic level of control of telephony created poor market conditions, and so they were broken up. [1] - https://www.wired.com/2011/09/att-conquered-20th-century/ https://www.wired.com/2011/09/att-conquered-20th-century/
roenxi 2y ago
Punishing companies for producing a wildly successful product is a strategy that will result in competitive choice between multiple sub-par products. Strategically that seems kinda dumb. The question of Google negotiating for default search engine status is just not a big enough problem for regulators to be involved. If the legislators want to ban that as something corporations can do then I suppose that is there prerogative, but the "damage" here to anyone that matters is hard to spot and it remains a bad idea to pile-in on Google. And the legality of preferred search engine arrangements shouldn't hinge on if the product is popular or not. How could it help anyone to ban them only if the product is the best on the market?
- taormina 2y ago
  There are many search engines. There always have been. Google has long stopped producing the highest quality product. They are provably spending their money in a way which actively prevents competition from having a chance. Wildly successful products can develop natural monopolies, yes, but that is not what we are seeing here.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Switching from Google to someone else is extremely easy (I've done it, I don't use Google search). If Google didn't have the best index, we'd see more people doing that. We might even see people recommending others to change their default search engine to something else to get better results. That isn't what we're seeing. We're seeing people use Google because the results are better.
  - tomjen3 2y ago
    What is better at this point? Duck duck go? Bing? I pay for Kagi and it is better, but good luck getting Joe Random to pay for search. Bing is better iff you use their AI tools, but giving high quality AI tools has got to be wildly unsustainable and so is not going to last.
granzymes 2y ago
I wish more reporters had a law background. The article is full of things that are almost true but misleading, and a handful that are flat-out wrong. For example: > If Mehta sides with Google, the company's business practices will likely remain the same. If he rules in favor of the Justice Department, it's unclear how he'd sanction Google. It could be anything from fines to a restructuring of the company. Put aside that “sanction” is a term of art that is misused here and focus on the glaring inaccuracy: DOJ cannot request fines as a remedy for the Section 2 allegations they have brought! Add to that the fact that restructuring is vanishingly unlikely and you get a paragraph so misleading that it should be stricken from the article. DOJ, if they win the first part of the trial, is almost certainly going to request injunctive relief to prevent Google from entering into the exclusionary contracts that they challenged in this case. They could also ask for a court-ordered monitoring program to ensure ongoing compliance with the antitrust laws for a period of time. At the extreme, there could be some form of mandated data sharing to rivals to compensate for Google excluding them from search access points and depriving them of the scale DOJ says they need to compete. I'll do some free work for NPR and rewrite their paragraph: > If Judge Mehta sides with Google, the company's business practices can remain unchanged. The Justice Department has not yet revealed what remedies they would request if Judge Mehta rules in their favor, but they are likely to include an order preventing Google from entering into deals that give the company's search engine preferential treatment on iOS, Android, and the FireFox browser. A breakup of the company is unlikely.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- warkdarrior 2y ago
  > order preventing Google from entering into deals that give the company's search engine preferential treatment on iOS, Android, and the FireFox browser That would likely be the end of Firefox.
  - granzymes 2y ago
    Mozilla submitted a declaration to that effect, and Google mentioned it repeatedly. Google argued that once Microsoft set the precedent that Internet Explorer was free, browsers lost the ability to monetize except by selling default status in their search bar (or being subsidized by a larger platform). Courts are understandably wary of micromanaging companies' behavior, so this is not so much a legal argument as much as it is a "beware of unintended consequences" argument.
helf 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
xnx 2y ago
Would be crazy if there was a ruling against Google just as OpenAI releases a "Google killer" web search.

73 points by jc_811 2y ago

[flagged]

PSA on npr.org, you can replace 'www' with 'text' to get a simpler page https://text.npr.org/2024/05/02/1248152695/google-doj-monopoly-trial-antitrust-closing-arguments https://text.npr.org/2024/05/02/1248152695/google-doj-monopo...

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Wow that is so much better. Thanks for sharing.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jc_811 2y ago
Also, cnn has a similar service just replace www with lite. Such a better experience!
noisypine 2y ago
Firefox's Reader View can do this on most sites, regardless of them providing a text based view.

Spivak 2y ago

Doesn't the fact that Google has to pay so much to be the default mean that Google isn't wielding monopoly power? Apple can command such a high price point is because being the default on Safari is that valuable and folks will happily pay billions for the privilege bidding the price up. Of all the things to go after this seems like one of the weaker instances you could argue is anti-competitive. Like all this effort to get almost the same ruling as the EU Internet Explorer case which won't put a dent in anything.

foolswisdom 2y ago
By that logic, price fixing is okay, because you yourself don't have the power to price fix, you need to coordinate with others to do so! The fact that they spend money in order to abuse market power, rather than already having all of that market power (without paying another party) and misusing it shouldn't be relevant.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  It bears mentioning that a monopoly in and by itself is actually fine. If you provide a product or service so legitimately good that noone else can compete with you, that's fine. What's not fine is suppressing your competitors in some form or another to achieve that monopoly, that is to say not achieving that monopoly by the sheer quality and value of your product or service. If Apple is selling their "default search" slot to prospective buyers and Google outbids everyone else, what are you gonna do? Force Google to not bid so high? Tell Apple to not accept bids so high? That sounds worse than the supposed bad monopoly being supposedly prevented.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    I guess the argument is that they can maintain their dominance being able to buy all the defaults for that are for sale but this presumes that Google is the only one who can capitalize on being the default to the degree that they do. Either that or Google is taking a huge loss on them and making it up other ways that can only happen with market dominance but that's also pretty sus.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Paying other companies to achieve a monopoly is no less unlawful or anticompetitive than any other form of achieving a monopoly. Even monopolies achieved primarily on merit can, and have been, broken up. AT&T being the typical example there. There's a really great article on their rise and fall. [1] Ask basically anybody who was around during their heyday and most were quite happy with AT&T, but nonetheless their monopolistic level of control of telephony created poor market conditions, and so they were broken up. [1] - https://www.wired.com/2011/09/att-conquered-20th-century/ https://www.wired.com/2011/09/att-conquered-20th-century/

roenxi 2y ago

Punishing companies for producing a wildly successful product is a strategy that will result in competitive choice between multiple sub-par products. Strategically that seems kinda dumb. The question of Google negotiating for default search engine status is just not a big enough problem for regulators to be involved. If the legislators want to ban that as something corporations can do then I suppose that is there prerogative, but the "damage" here to anyone that matters is hard to spot and it remains a bad idea to pile-in on Google. And the legality of preferred search engine arrangements shouldn't hinge on if the product is popular or not. How could it help anyone to ban them only if the product is the best on the market?

taormina 2y ago
There are many search engines. There always have been. Google has long stopped producing the highest quality product. They are provably spending their money in a way which actively prevents competition from having a chance. Wildly successful products can develop natural monopolies, yes, but that is not what we are seeing here.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Switching from Google to someone else is extremely easy (I've done it, I don't use Google search). If Google didn't have the best index, we'd see more people doing that. We might even see people recommending others to change their default search engine to something else to get better results. That isn't what we're seeing. We're seeing people use Google because the results are better.
- tomjen3 2y ago
  What is better at this point? Duck duck go? Bing? I pay for Kagi and it is better, but good luck getting Joe Random to pay for search. Bing is better iff you use their AI tools, but giving high quality AI tools has got to be wildly unsustainable and so is not going to last.

granzymes 2y ago

I wish more reporters had a law background. The article is full of things that are almost true but misleading, and a handful that are flat-out wrong. For example: > If Mehta sides with Google, the company's business practices will likely remain the same. If he rules in favor of the Justice Department, it's unclear how he'd sanction Google. It could be anything from fines to a restructuring of the company. Put aside that “sanction” is a term of art that is misused here and focus on the glaring inaccuracy: DOJ cannot request fines as a remedy for the Section 2 allegations they have brought! Add to that the fact that restructuring is vanishingly unlikely and you get a paragraph so misleading that it should be stricken from the article. DOJ, if they win the first part of the trial, is almost certainly going to request injunctive relief to prevent Google from entering into the exclusionary contracts that they challenged in this case. They could also ask for a court-ordered monitoring program to ensure ongoing compliance with the antitrust laws for a period of time. At the extreme, there could be some form of mandated data sharing to rivals to compensate for Google excluding them from search access points and depriving them of the scale DOJ says they need to compete. I'll do some free work for NPR and rewrite their paragraph: > If Judge Mehta sides with Google, the company's business practices can remain unchanged. The Justice Department has not yet revealed what remedies they would request if Judge Mehta rules in their favor, but they are likely to include an order preventing Google from entering into deals that give the company's search engine preferential treatment on iOS, Android, and the FireFox browser. A breakup of the company is unlikely.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
warkdarrior 2y ago
> order preventing Google from entering into deals that give the company's search engine preferential treatment on iOS, Android, and the FireFox browser That would likely be the end of Firefox.
- granzymes 2y ago
  Mozilla submitted a declaration to that effect, and Google mentioned it repeatedly. Google argued that once Microsoft set the precedent that Internet Explorer was free, browsers lost the ability to monetize except by selling default status in their search bar (or being subsidized by a larger platform). Courts are understandably wary of micromanaging companies' behavior, so this is not so much a legal argument as much as it is a "beware of unintended consequences" argument.

helf 2y ago

[dead]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

xnx 2y ago

Would be crazy if there was a ruling against Google just as OpenAI releases a "Google killer" web search.