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The way this case is being handled all I see is the courts are trying to make other business people richer. They remain hostile to the consumer. Its a case of l

The way this case is being handled all I see is the courts are trying to make other business people richer. They remain hostile to the consumer. Its a case of legal protection for the rich. I feel the harms that traditional publishers cause are immense as well. They dont pay their employees properly, are controlled by sketchy media moguls. Quite frankly traditional publishing houses just failed to adapt with the times.

cornel_io 2y ago
Yes, Lina Khan has been very clear that she wants to abandon the previous guidelines that made consumer harm the focal point of anti-trust cases. I think that's pretty shady and in several of these cases she really just wants to spear any old Big Fucking Whale so it looks like she's been successful. That said, "consumer" really does mean other companies when it comes to Google ads, since they directly pay them a TON of money, so if they can prove that Google's monopoly is distorting the market I think this is fair game, 100%. And the ad market has been incredibly shitty for a very long time because if you don't have an audience in the billions you can't even try to compete, so anything that can open that up to some innovation would be positive, and price competition would allow a lot of products to exist and thrive that otherwise would have failed because cost of user acquisition was too high. That is very good for consumers. Or it could be really negative, depending how they implement it. The funny thing is, despite the company fighting against it strongly, it's uncertain how good or bad it would be for Google shareholders, oftentimes breakups are very good for their stock because as each piece of the company is unshackled from the others, things that would be profitable for the division but get blocked by other interests at the company all of a sudden become possible: IIRC the combined value of the Baby Bells ended up far greater a few years after the breakup, for one example. The only people it's guaranteed to be bad for are the people at the top at Google, who would have their kingdoms shredded up and taken away from them.
- crabmusket 2y ago
  What do you find shady about moving away from the consumer welfare standard, Khan herself aside? In my view, returning from a Borkian era back towards something more Brandeisian makes a lot of sense. "Consumer welfare" to me feels like it assumes a functioning free market system, but antitrust should deal with powerful entities that are already able to distort "free" market functioning by their size and power. But, I'm politically an anarchist so of course I would have a "big is bad" bias.

cornel_io 2y ago

Yes, Lina Khan has been very clear that she wants to abandon the previous guidelines that made consumer harm the focal point of anti-trust cases. I think that's pretty shady and in several of these cases she really just wants to spear any old Big Fucking Whale so it looks like she's been successful. That said, "consumer" really does mean other companies when it comes to Google ads, since they directly pay them a TON of money, so if they can prove that Google's monopoly is distorting the market I think this is fair game, 100%. And the ad market has been incredibly shitty for a very long time because if you don't have an audience in the billions you can't even try to compete, so anything that can open that up to some innovation would be positive, and price competition would allow a lot of products to exist and thrive that otherwise would have failed because cost of user acquisition was too high. That is very good for consumers. Or it could be really negative, depending how they implement it. The funny thing is, despite the company fighting against it strongly, it's uncertain how good or bad it would be for Google shareholders, oftentimes breakups are very good for their stock because as each piece of the company is unshackled from the others, things that would be profitable for the division but get blocked by other interests at the company all of a sudden become possible: IIRC the combined value of the Baby Bells ended up far greater a few years after the breakup, for one example. The only people it's guaranteed to be bad for are the people at the top at Google, who would have their kingdoms shredded up and taken away from them.

crabmusket 2y ago
What do you find shady about moving away from the consumer welfare standard, Khan herself aside? In my view, returning from a Borkian era back towards something more Brandeisian makes a lot of sense. "Consumer welfare" to me feels like it assumes a functioning free market system, but antitrust should deal with powerful entities that are already able to distort "free" market functioning by their size and power. But, I'm politically an anarchist so of course I would have a "big is bad" bias.