Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#341

Post by acct1771 » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

ajdlinux wrote: post #100

bwb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pay a ton of taxes :), payroll, property, etc. Corporate taxes they pay on profits if you invest a ton you can deduct it from profits. Nothing nefarious going on here.

> Corporate taxes they pay on profits if you invest a ton you can deduct it from profits. Nothing nefarious going on here. One's definition of "deductions" and "profits" can, of course, depend on how much one spends on tax lawyers, one's appetite for testing the untested boundaries of the relevant tax laws, and one's willingness to do fun and interesting things with structuring international subsidiaries. The ultimat…

We need to care about governance beforehand.

Tax laws are what you're looking to change.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#342

Post by panarky » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #302

panarky wrote: post #197

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…

> consumers overwhelmingly choosing a product By "product", I take it you mean their advertising services? Most of the other products are not paid for. In fact, critics are often fond of pointing out that the consumer is the product in this case. Whether this action is right or not, parallels can be drawn with the Microsoft investigation: Microsoft allegedly used its position within the desktop to "push" their browse…

> "push" their browser

Windows didn't get to 90% market share because consumers chose it. Windows achieved overwhelming dominance because Microsoft punished computer manufacturers if they sold any competing operating system.

That's anti-competitive, and Google isn't doing anything like that.

Then Microsoft used their illegally-obtained dominant position in operating systems to bundle their shitty browser, essentially forcing every consumer to install it instead of any competitor. And you couldn't uninstall it if you wanted to.

Again, that's not at all similar to Google and Chrome. Windows, Mac, and iOS don't have Chrome pre-installed. Android manufacturers are free to pre-install Firefox or Opera or anything else they want.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#343

Post by panarky » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #322

panarky wrote: post #197

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…

Every content site implements AMP for fear of losing Google traffic, not because customers wanted or demanded it.

Gonna have to ask for a cite on this one.

Google search prefers sites that are fast. Amp makes sites fast.

Non-Amp sites that are equally fast and relevant get equal search ranking.

Is there any evidence whatsoever that Google ranks Amp sites higher because of Amp, instead of speed and relevance?

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#344

Post by panarky » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #313

panarky wrote: post #197

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…

Wait, what kind of argument is that? We should antitrust the other players you mention too.

Yet they don't.

Selective enforcement is arbitrary, politically motivated enforcement.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#345

Post by anticensor » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #142

darkpuma wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Google sell Youtube to Facebook?

What if Alphabet is forced to spin off YouTube in to a seperate entity?

Such a split will never happen. Rather, YouTube will be torn down.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#346

Post by panarky » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #291

panarky wrote: post #197

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…

> It's not about consumers overwhelmingly choosing a product because they like it more. And that's not what the charges are about either. You're making it way too simplistic. Google has been involved in actual anti-competitive actions, for which they've already been found guilty in Europe that had nothing to do with "users liking their service more" - Google actually downranked competition in the search engine, and o…

> Eric Schmidt started working for the Pentagon

I may not like it, but it's not an anti-trust concern.

> Google started working with the Pentagon on Project Maven

Google shut this down under pressure from employees. Also, not an anti-trust concern.

> Schmidt was one of Obama's besties

Executives at right-wing media are besties with the current president, but that shouldn't result in a future administration launching anti-trust actions against their firms.

> encrypted mail, Skyhook, etc.

Sounds pretty tenuous, but if there's something here roughly equivalent severity to other anti-trust issues then sure, investigate that.

But it looks to me like a piddling pretext to punish perceived political differences in media and infotech.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#347

Post by malvosenior » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

panarky wrote: post #342

hliyan wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consumers overwhelmingly choosing a product By "product", I take it you mean their advertising services? Most of the other products are not paid for. In fact, critics are often fond of pointing out that the consumer is the product in this case. Whether this action is right or not, parallels can be drawn with the Microsoft investigation: Microsoft allegedly used its position within the desktop to "push" their browse…

> "push" their browser Windows didn't get to 90% market share because consumers chose it. Windows achieved overwhelming dominance because Microsoft punished computer manufacturers if they sold any competing operating system. That's anti-competitive, and Google isn't doing anything like that. Then Microsoft used their illegally-obtained dominant position in operating systems to bundle their shitty browser, essentially…

> That's anti-competitive, and Google isn't doing anything like that.

Just this week it was announced that Google will disable important features required to implement ad blockers. Google absolutely abuses their monopolies (browser, search, streaming video, possibly maps) at least as aggressively as MS ever did.

Have you ever tried to watch YouTube on Firefox? That’s a deliberately hobbled experience if I’ve ever seen one.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#348

Post by burtonator » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

xkgt wrote: post #303

soup10 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lets not forget their latest and greatest of releasing chrome for free until it saturated the market and became a monopoly then maliciously making changes to reduce the effectiveness of adblockers like ublock origin

And they did all they could to kill Windows Phone (a viable alternative ecosystem at that time) by blocking access to Youtube[1] and providing sub-par experience for their other services. Now I fear Firefox has a similar sisyphean task at hand, trying to keep their browser usable on google services. And for many of the users, that is same as usability of the browser as a whole. [1] https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com…

It's going to be interesting if we have to lie about user agents. If you lie about the UA and it works then something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#349

Post by burtonator » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

nsomaru wrote: post #174

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…

Agreed... Google has lost its mind. The removal of ad-block was the final straw for me. There's no rational explanation why that would be needed.

Re: Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

#350

Post by burtonator » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

justinph wrote: post #44

Dear Justice Department: Take a look at google AMP and how they use it to strong-arm publishers by linking it to search placement. You'll find some stuff.

It would be interesting to start an Hacker News but for 'anti-trust' suggestions.

Basically you have a company and then people like us can upvote areas we think companies are breaking the law.