Anyone know of any reasons DOJ might be going after Google for reasons unrelated to antitrust issues?
Globally, how does breaking up Google benefit the US?
Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
71–80 of 502 posts
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Consider that Facebook has 3 different messaging apps, and Google has an unknown number of messaging apps. Both companies have strong internal incentives to consolidate their own messaging apps and yet these efforts have never succeeded. I'm not sure if having a single universal protocol is the best idea.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Break them up into what?
If you were going to bother, you'd split Amazon and AWS. Amazon becomes mostly a retail company again. Without the AWS subsidy margins, they'll be down to retail margins and the ad business (with ads, it's plenty). They can perhaps keep the gadgets, splitting every major aspect apart might be going too far. AWS is a $400 to $600 billion market cap company right now if it were trading on its own, based on its operatin…
They could also spin off Amazon's patent portfolio into its own company that would license the patents back to Amazon and anyone else who wants to compete in the ecommerce market.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if it is, it could set a precedent that makes it easier for a future, less corrupt administration. I don't know if the good necessarily outweighs the bad, but maybe it does.
This. Precedent is tricky. Democrats removing the filibuster for judges came back to haunt them. There was a recent (last few weeks) SCOTUS decision that came out with numerous opinions by different coalitions. You could tell that they were all maneuvering around this idea of precedent. Liberal justices who ended up on either side (majority or minority) were couching their votes as upholding a prior precedent, even w…
I don't buy that. The Republicans would have killed the filibuster when they were next in power. This was simple acknowledgement by Democrats of the changing nature of the Republican party.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Consider that Facebook has 3 different messaging apps, and Google has an unknown number of messaging apps. Both companies have strong internal incentives to consolidate their own messaging apps and yet these efforts have never succeeded. I'm not sure if having a single universal protocol is the best idea.
I was with you until the last sentence which I didn't understand.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are any of those companies (except Amazon) even in the same league in terms of negative impact as big tech?
Boeing's 737 Max debacle killed two plane-fuls of people . It's pretty hard to argue that either Amazon or Google has had negative effects on that magnitude.
So do you believe Ford deserves to exist? Because they’ve killed a lot more people through faulty engineeeing than Boeing.
The Pinto fuel system alone killed over 900 people
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's dominant market position was achieved through market competition not through impairing the ability of smaller companies to enter markets. Even in Google Chrome you can pick DuckDuckGo and Ecosia as your default search engine. Most of Chrome users probably never heard of those two search engines. For example would YouTube be successful as it is today if it wasn't Google's resources and knowledge to skyrocket…
Does it matter how a monopoly came to be a monopoly?
Yea it matters. If monopoly was achieved through market competition then fine, if it was achieved through destroying other companies then it is illegal and unfair. But once dominant market position is achieved company still needs to behave properly and not stifle competition.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#78Amazon 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.
How so? Google is infinitely worse than Amazon and Facebook put together. They just so happen to be an advertising company so they internet doesn't know about it yet.
Amazon is pretty bad.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are any of those companies (except Amazon) even in the same league in terms of negative impact as big tech?
Boeing's 737 Max debacle killed two plane-fuls of people . It's pretty hard to argue that either Amazon or Google has had negative effects on that magnitude.
I don't think it's particularly useful to compare across industries like this, especially when invoking an "appeal to worse problems" to justify ignoring a problem under discussion.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#80I don't have a problem with this. But I wonder why there isn't similar willpower to pursue, say, telecoms, banks, Monsanto, Luxxotica, Disney, and the like. Why is it just big tech?
Telecom, etc. are far, far more harmful IMHO
Telecom is a horse of a slightly different color though because they are intentionally granted regional monopolies over utilities. There should be better regulatory enforcement of these utility deals, but between regulatory capture and nearly trust-like brokered deals to swap regions among each other to best minimize any particular region's regulatory control and collusion opportunities between neighboring regions, almost all of the regulatory enforcement that should prevent certain types of monopolist behaviors has nearly no teeth left in the US.