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Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

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Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

#11
post #3

Amazon and Facebook should be next. Break them all up with extreme prejudice and put strict new anti-trust laws around acquisitions in place for the future. We're going to do this and open technology back up to innovation and progress, or just watch the tech giants continue to grow in power and abusiveness year after year while new startups continue to decline.

Break them up into what?

Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

#13
post #11
post #3

Amazon and Facebook should be next. Break them all up with extreme prejudice and put strict new anti-trust laws around acquisitions in place for the future. We're going to do this and open technology back up to innovation and progress, or just watch the tech giants continue to grow in power and abusiveness year after year while new startups continue to decline.

Break them up into what?

Well conceivably you could separate out the Facebook ad network and the Facebook social media, and possibly also maybe the IM systems (FB Chat/Whatsapp).

I know virtually nothing about antitrust law, and I'm not a lawyer, so I'm speaking largely out of my behind, but those seem like logical-enough divisions.

Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

#15
post #7

This antitrust case is the most straightforward one for prosecutors to win. It's been a long time coming and the FTC would have brought one during the Obama administration if they weren't so captured by the tech industry and Google in particular [1][2]. I expect Google will lose their antitrust cases globally. Cases against other tech companies like Facebook and Amazon seem less certain, but I haven't really thought…

Isn't settlement far more likely than losing all the way through appeals? And in what way is it straightforward? Does it not require a new interpretation of antitrust law? Google isn't using monopoly power to increase prices for consumers.

Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

#17
post #11
post #3

Amazon and Facebook should be next. Break them all up with extreme prejudice and put strict new anti-trust laws around acquisitions in place for the future. We're going to do this and open technology back up to innovation and progress, or just watch the tech giants continue to grow in power and abusiveness year after year while new startups continue to decline.

Break them up into what?

Some units are already separate companies below a holding company.

Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

#18
post #11
post #3

Amazon and Facebook should be next. Break them all up with extreme prejudice and put strict new anti-trust laws around acquisitions in place for the future. We're going to do this and open technology back up to innovation and progress, or just watch the tech giants continue to grow in power and abusiveness year after year while new startups continue to decline.

Break them up into what?

Maybe just force all social apps to a standard data migration format, and an easy UI to move, so you can move you data freely

Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

#19

'Both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.’s Google—and are well into planning for litigation, according to people familiar with the matter. 'The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer, some of the people said. At least some state attorneys general—led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republ…

> 'Details about the Justice Department’s legal theories for a case against Google couldn’t be learned.'

That's what it seems like to me too.

I understand a popular opinion is that Google is too big, should be broken up, etc. But I really don't think there's a prevailing justification. Or examples of competition that they've supposedly stifled? This stinks of politics.

> The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers.

The same could be said about Apple - they have the dominant (actually, the only tool) at every link between iOS developers and iPhone users.

I think the case is weak. Google's a big company, sure. They're the most popular in many areas. But what about that requires anti-trust, compared to hundreds of other companies that check that same "most popular and big" box?

Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

#20
This is interesting because it seems like the DOJ's definition of monopoly is changing, which I think is a good thing. Since the late 80s (roughly), antitrust litigation has only been brought on the basis of a monopoly's negative impact on consumer prices (i.e. does the existence of a monopoly cause the consumer to have to pay higher prices?). That ignores monopolies that impair the ability of smaller companies to enter markets (which is one of the issues raised with respect to some of the current internet giants). Prior to the 1980s, this latter kind of monopoly would have been subject to scrutiny and possibly litigation by the DOJ, but since then it has been ignored.
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