Live data from Hacker News

Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

wsj.com

331–340 of 440 posts

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they do with Amazon basics is ripe for antitrust. Using purchase data to find profitable products, and making a basic version of it which they then rank at the top.

Is Amazon Basics any different than any other store brand? It's not like national retailers before amazon were just throwing darts at a printout of their catalog.

That isn't a meaningful question for anti-trust cases. The rules are simply different for big companies.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#333

I was the biggest Google fan ever. I recommended all their products to everyone I know. Gone are those days. I now trust Microsoft (heh! M!cr0$0ft, anyone?) more than Google which is strange given I grew up rebelling against MS’s technical desktop hegemony. I wonder when Google decided “doing evil” was okay. I wonder how the SWE’s and other senior people in this thread feel about working for a company that many now c…

I wonder how the SWE’s and other senior people in this thread feel about working for a company that many now consider scum. All their excuses and retorts can honestly take a hike: It is my honest opinion that if you still work for Google you’re selling us all out. Googler here, I understand why you may think Google is evil now and I'm not going to say they are a perfect company. But I think you should consider that i…

Honest question: do you want to see Google broken up or heavily regulated? If I were lucky enough to work at Google, I think I'd be cheering for regulation so I could enjoy all the sweet comp and meaningful work without feeling conflicted about the truly dark parts of the company. Isn't that Google a much better Google to work for?

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who uses AWS essentially gives data signals to Amazon. As they're by far the biggest cloud provider, that's a lot of data. Add that to their physical goods store, their shipping, their payments, their music store, their player apps, their subscription data, their identity and payment data. Amazon's looking at getting into the consumer communications business too. If I were a bad person asking, "Who's more va…

The idea that data stored on AWS is equal to data collected by Amazon is ludicrous. There are contracts and laws to govern such relationships. Hundreds of people inside Amazon would know about it, and any one of them could expose them to existentially threatening lawsuits whenever they are even slightly upset with their employer.

That's not what I said though. I said as the biggest CSP they have signals no one else has access to. I didn't say they were reading your RDS boxes.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#336
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

Really? I mean, pick one of a hundred. They are deprecating APIs that would block the interception and are ignoring community pushback. But since you asked... https://bgr.com/2019/05/31/google-chrome-update-ad-blockers-... https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evy53j/google-struggles-t... https://9to5google.com/2019/05/29/chrome-ad-blocking-enterpr... But I mean, that was a 2 second search. Citations are indeed hard to…

Prediction: In a year, adblocking extensions on Chrome will still block the same percentage of ads from Google's networks as they do on Firefox. Care to make a bet?

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which raises deep suspicions about the political motivations of this "investigation". Anti-trust is about companies using their market power to exclude rivals, raise prices, and hurt consumers. It's not about consumers overwhelmingly choosing a product because they like it more. Can anyone really say that Google's practices are more anti-competitive than, say, the dominant players in broadband or health insurance or…

> Anti-trust is about companies using their market power to exclude rivals, raise prices, and hurt consumers. It's not about consumers overwhelmingly choosing a product because they like it more. Antitrust doesn’t care about how you got market dominance. It cares about what you do with it. To use the browser example I used elsewhere: maybe Google’s dominance in search is because it’s indisputably the best. But that d…

> I can’t get a discount on cellular because I’m a FiOS customer

https://www.verizonwireless.com/promos/verizon-fios-installa...

> nor can I buy car insurance from my health insurance company.

https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/health/individual-medica...

and bundling deals: https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/multiline

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#338
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shrug. Windows 10 keeps nudging me to use Edge.

Ha! Nudging is an understatement. * If you type Chrome into Bing you'll get a full page ad urging you not to switch. * If you try to switch to use Chrome as your default browser it will ask you if you're really sure and you have to click the tiny text to actually switch. * Edge and Windows 10 will send you notifications about Edge being the recommended browser and it's speed/security/whatever. * If you install Adobe…

You'd think they spend more time actually making Edge not shit..

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#339
post #27

For everyone here squealing with glee: This will be just another Tuesday for the legal team at Big G ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You can't seriously believe this. The US bringing a case a vastly more a BFD than Europe's prodding at companies for cash.

See USA's FTC etc - we take our fair share of drive by fines, and change nothing afterwards.

Doubt it'll happen in this case...people want blood from Google or FB, and they're going to get it.

Other commenters had it right, though - ISPs, and lobbyists should be hanging next to them.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anti-trust is about companies using their market power to exclude rivals, raise prices, and hurt consumers. It's not about consumers overwhelmingly choosing a product because they like it more. Antitrust doesn’t care about how you got market dominance. It cares about what you do with it. To use the browser example I used elsewhere: maybe Google’s dominance in search is because it’s indisputably the best. But that d…

> I can’t get a discount on cellular because I’m a FiOS customer https://www.verizonwireless.com/promos/verizon-fios-installa... > nor can I buy car insurance from my health insurance company. https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/health/individual-medica... and bundling deals: https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/multiline

Huh. The Verizon deal must be new. Not sure if that’s a good idea. The State Farm thing is a “marketing alliance” with Blue Cross. I don’t think State Farm sells health insurance.
Post reply on HN