7 ms·

> If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the go

> If a large enough bank goes under, it takes out not just the bank, but huge sectors of the economy, affecting many more businesses and jobs. That's why the government bailed out the banks when they failed. That is why the banks should have been broken up into smaller banks long before we reached that point, and it is why Google should have been broken up long ago. The only way to prevent the situation you describe is to never allow any single entity to become so important to so many people. It's like planting a tree. The best time to break up a big company is twenty years ago (before it became so big). The second-best time is now.

itsoktocry 1y ago
Smaller banks aren't competitive with larger (global) banks.
- int_19h 1y ago
  Smaller anything isn't competitive with larger anything, because the larger guys can always price-dump and bundle their way to full market dominance. That's why we need anti-trust in the first place.
  - 1123581321 1y ago
    Customers frequently prefer cheap bundles. The right time for an antitrust decision is often when the company is large and stops behaving competitively.
    - int_19h 1y ago
      Customers acting individually have a short-term perspective which leads them to prefer low prices in general, which is why strategies like price dumping work - yet they are illegal for a reason. The problem is that once the monopolist is entrenched and all competition killed off, those cheap bundles stop being cheap. Hence why you need someone to take the long term view and nip these kinds of things in the bud. A democratically elected government is the best avenue for that.
      - 1123581321 1y ago
        A democratically elected government won’t force prices to be raised in a market if consumers benefit and the regulator or court finds marginal costs to also be driven down by scale.
  - hilbert42 1y ago
    "That's why we need anti-trust in the first place." Moreover, it seems to me these laws ought to strengthened to make executives/decision makers even more accountable. The people who made Google a monopoly aren't stupid and knew full well what they were doing. They should not be able to hide behind Google's corporate structure and also should be penalized for their bad behavior.
    - BrenBarn 1y ago
      Yes, this is one of the big changes that need to be made to really reform things. Companies act based on decisions made by individuals. Those individuals should be held accountable if the company's actions are found to be harmful. There should be lots of CEOs and board members of companies in oil, healthcare, housing, retail (as well as tech) who should be facing fines in the hundreds of millions (if not the billions) on their personal assets.
      - hilbert42 1y ago
        One thing I forgot. There's another good reason to hold CEOs and others personally responsible and punish them accordingly as it acts as a deterrent. Whenever we see Google, Facebook, etc. get levied with fines we rarely learn who the nameless gnomes are who perpetrated the act, or approved it, etc. Knowing that their names would be in the public domain would send shivers down their backs, even if acquitted it would likely not bode well for future employment. Moreover, CEOs, directors, boards etc. should also be held accountable even when they are not directly responsible (like captains of ships are). This would have the effect of ensuring that those in charge would mandate an ethics and behavior policy for the company and ensure that all employees were aware of it, and violation thereof would result in dismissal. Thst said, to be fair, you can't blame management for the unacceptable behavior of a wayward or stupid employee. Commonsense must prevail and laws must allow for such things.
like_any_other 1y ago
> That is why the banks should have been broken up into smaller banks long before we reached that point They still can be broken up. As for not being competitive on the global market - neither is regular labor compared to slave labor. And just like companies employing slave labor are (or should be) barred from the US market, so can companies that are too large. Solving such prisoner dilemmas is exactly what government is for.
jahsome 1y ago
I'm reading your comment as "someone should have done something a long time ago so it's not worth considering the consequences of doing it now." That fantasy doesn't seem to take into account the specific realities of current day.
- lolinder 1y ago
  No, the comment is saying that the situation is only going to get worse from here. There will never be a better time to solve Google's anticompetitive behavior. The consequences should be weighed and considered, but shrugging and letting Google keep on keeping on because it's too big to fail isn't a viable option.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    Which one of those services are a “monopoly”?
    - lolinder 1y ago
      I didn't use that word and no one in the chain above me did either. I specifically chose "anticompetitive behavior" to emphasize that a monopoly is not required to do damage to the free market or to trigger antitrust action.
      - JustExAWS 1y ago
        So out of the list, how has Google behaved “anti competitively” in any of these? - Google Maps - Google Mail - Google Drive - Google Docs - Google Groups - Google Forms - Google Cloud - Google OAuth - Google Analytics - Android - Android Auto - Fitbit - Google Fi - Google Fiber - Google Flights - Google Translate - Google Pay - Waymo
        lolinder 1y ago
        Maps/mail/drive/docs/flights/translate: provided for free using their dominance in ad tech to bankroll it and feeding the data back in to the ad platform. No one else can compete, and using dominance in one market to ensure dominance in others has historically been a clear trigger for antitrust. Android: they lost a court case over this one that has lots of details if you care to look. The rest are a weird mix of paid services that should be fine to stand up on their own or not even products at all (OAuth).
animal_spirits 1y ago
I strongly disagree. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. They are all FREE too, mind you. Everyone would still be paying for email. The enormous amount of free education on YouTube would not have been accessible to the world. The economy that we know today would be vastly different and in my opinion far worse off. So much of the economic growth came off the back of the free and ad-subsidized services Google provided for us. The reason Google is the size it is today is because it provided better services at better prices than all the competitors. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, the consumer would have paid the price.
- handoflixue 1y ago
  > Everyone would still be paying for email. Free email existed before Google - Hotmail and Yahoo come to mind immediately, but there were plenty of others. You also got a free email address from your ISP - even AOL users had email.
  - animal_spirits 1y ago
    Fair point. Maybe I'm too young and have bought into the narrative that Google was the first widely available and free email. Still I think though, the plethora of their other services widely available for free (maps, drive, sites, youtube) were extraordinary for the price, at least for me.
    - fergbrain 1y ago
      > “their other services widely available for free” None of their services are free. You just pay for them in other ways, even if you don’t realize it.
      - fiddlerwoaroof 1y ago
        I think this is sort of missing the point: I’m happy to trade a bit of attention here and there for services because I’m just going to go without a lot of things if I have to pay real money for them. If we go to a model where every site charges for usage, I will start using fewer services regularly and will use each service for more things which seems a bit counterproductive in terms of monopolies.

itsoktocry 1y ago

Smaller banks aren't competitive with larger (global) banks.

int_19h 1y ago
Smaller anything isn't competitive with larger anything, because the larger guys can always price-dump and bundle their way to full market dominance. That's why we need anti-trust in the first place.
- 1123581321 1y ago
  Customers frequently prefer cheap bundles. The right time for an antitrust decision is often when the company is large and stops behaving competitively.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    Customers acting individually have a short-term perspective which leads them to prefer low prices in general, which is why strategies like price dumping work - yet they are illegal for a reason. The problem is that once the monopolist is entrenched and all competition killed off, those cheap bundles stop being cheap. Hence why you need someone to take the long term view and nip these kinds of things in the bud. A democratically elected government is the best avenue for that.
    - 1123581321 1y ago
      A democratically elected government won’t force prices to be raised in a market if consumers benefit and the regulator or court finds marginal costs to also be driven down by scale.
- hilbert42 1y ago
  "That's why we need anti-trust in the first place." Moreover, it seems to me these laws ought to strengthened to make executives/decision makers even more accountable. The people who made Google a monopoly aren't stupid and knew full well what they were doing. They should not be able to hide behind Google's corporate structure and also should be penalized for their bad behavior.
  - BrenBarn 1y ago
    Yes, this is one of the big changes that need to be made to really reform things. Companies act based on decisions made by individuals. Those individuals should be held accountable if the company's actions are found to be harmful. There should be lots of CEOs and board members of companies in oil, healthcare, housing, retail (as well as tech) who should be facing fines in the hundreds of millions (if not the billions) on their personal assets.
    - hilbert42 1y ago
      One thing I forgot. There's another good reason to hold CEOs and others personally responsible and punish them accordingly as it acts as a deterrent. Whenever we see Google, Facebook, etc. get levied with fines we rarely learn who the nameless gnomes are who perpetrated the act, or approved it, etc. Knowing that their names would be in the public domain would send shivers down their backs, even if acquitted it would likely not bode well for future employment. Moreover, CEOs, directors, boards etc. should also be held accountable even when they are not directly responsible (like captains of ships are). This would have the effect of ensuring that those in charge would mandate an ethics and behavior policy for the company and ensure that all employees were aware of it, and violation thereof would result in dismissal. Thst said, to be fair, you can't blame management for the unacceptable behavior of a wayward or stupid employee. Commonsense must prevail and laws must allow for such things.

like_any_other 1y ago

> That is why the banks should have been broken up into smaller banks long before we reached that point They still can be broken up. As for not being competitive on the global market - neither is regular labor compared to slave labor. And just like companies employing slave labor are (or should be) barred from the US market, so can companies that are too large. Solving such prisoner dilemmas is exactly what government is for.

jahsome 1y ago

I'm reading your comment as "someone should have done something a long time ago so it's not worth considering the consequences of doing it now." That fantasy doesn't seem to take into account the specific realities of current day.

lolinder 1y ago
No, the comment is saying that the situation is only going to get worse from here. There will never be a better time to solve Google's anticompetitive behavior. The consequences should be weighed and considered, but shrugging and letting Google keep on keeping on because it's too big to fail isn't a viable option.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  Which one of those services are a “monopoly”?
  - lolinder 1y ago
    I didn't use that word and no one in the chain above me did either. I specifically chose "anticompetitive behavior" to emphasize that a monopoly is not required to do damage to the free market or to trigger antitrust action.
    - JustExAWS 1y ago
      So out of the list, how has Google behaved “anti competitively” in any of these? - Google Maps - Google Mail - Google Drive - Google Docs - Google Groups - Google Forms - Google Cloud - Google OAuth - Google Analytics - Android - Android Auto - Fitbit - Google Fi - Google Fiber - Google Flights - Google Translate - Google Pay - Waymo
      - lolinder 1y ago
        Maps/mail/drive/docs/flights/translate: provided for free using their dominance in ad tech to bankroll it and feeding the data back in to the ad platform. No one else can compete, and using dominance in one market to ensure dominance in others has historically been a clear trigger for antitrust. Android: they lost a court case over this one that has lots of details if you care to look. The rest are a weird mix of paid services that should be fine to stand up on their own or not even products at all (OAuth).

animal_spirits 1y ago

I strongly disagree. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, nearly ALL the services listed above would not have happened. They are all FREE too, mind you. Everyone would still be paying for email. The enormous amount of free education on YouTube would not have been accessible to the world. The economy that we know today would be vastly different and in my opinion far worse off. So much of the economic growth came off the back of the free and ad-subsidized services Google provided for us. The reason Google is the size it is today is because it provided better services at better prices than all the competitors. If Google was broken up 20 years ago, the consumer would have paid the price.

handoflixue 1y ago
> Everyone would still be paying for email. Free email existed before Google - Hotmail and Yahoo come to mind immediately, but there were plenty of others. You also got a free email address from your ISP - even AOL users had email.
- animal_spirits 1y ago
  Fair point. Maybe I'm too young and have bought into the narrative that Google was the first widely available and free email. Still I think though, the plethora of their other services widely available for free (maps, drive, sites, youtube) were extraordinary for the price, at least for me.
  - fergbrain 1y ago
    > “their other services widely available for free” None of their services are free. You just pay for them in other ways, even if you don’t realize it.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 1y ago
      I think this is sort of missing the point: I’m happy to trade a bit of attention here and there for services because I’m just going to go without a lot of things if I have to pay real money for them. If we go to a model where every site charges for usage, I will start using fewer services regularly and will use each service for more things which seems a bit counterproductive in terms of monopolies.