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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

#131

Post by shadowgovt »

c1b wrote: post #111
shadowgovt wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a major gap between the American understanding of monopoly protection and the European one. In the European space, protection of smaller business' ability to compete is factored in. But the US space, in general, has not cared if smaller businesses can compete and tends to take a laissez-faire attitude towards business-on-business market pressures. It's the effect of the market on consumers that's paramo…

Funny how making books cheap is considered a failing.

Right? That's the thing; it's not. Not by consumers, anyway.

Now, French book-sellers, on the other hand, appreciate the law that keeps them in business for aesthetic reasons, whether or not it makes economic sense or they can stay financially competitive when the price of data transmission has crashed past too-small-to-meter-per-word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law

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

#132

Post by Wowfunhappy »

subsubzero wrote: post #66
akersten wrote: post #23

I will continue to believe that this is another tentacle of William Barr's political harassment of Google and tech in general until he leads the same crusade against other 'monopolies' of the same degree like Comcast, Apple, Boeing, Amazon, United Airlines, etc.

Not saying google isn't a monopoly, it classically is, same with facebook. But I wonder if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them. The problem is there are so many oligarchy's controlling industries. Chips, well its a two or three company game(intel, amd, ARM). Lets look at airlines, well its united, delta, american etc. Communications(cell phones), ATT, Verizon, Sprint/Tmobile. Ame…

> But I wonder if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them.

"Majority blue" is in a majority of their employees vote Democrat? That's just what happens when you're headquartered in California, in a metro area, with a workforce that skews younger.

I don't think that Google is somehow pushing liberal objectives in a meaningful way.

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

#134

Post by TheArcane »

yowlingcat wrote: post #60
noad wrote: 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.

Ah yes, tech is the industry with the most insidious monopolies, not oil, telecom, or defense. And surely, the current government will enthusiastically move forward with the actual /legwork/ (rather than saber rattling) of killing its goose that lays the golden egg. Let's be real here. None of these megacorps are getting broken up any time soon. We haven't had a trustbuster in office for a very long time. The megacor…

[flagged]

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

#135

Post by akiselev »

tyre wrote: post #62
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #33

Earlier 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…

Democrats didn't remove the SCOTUS filibuster, the Republicans did that to get Gorsuch on the bench. The Democrats removed the filibuster for regular judicial appointments during Obama's tenure because Republicans blocked all of his nominations, using the judicial filibuster more in two years than all previous Congresses combined.

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

#136

Post by shadowgovt »

iateanapple wrote: post #125
shadowgovt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve never had my searches for coronavirus related content restricted in any way by my ISP for example. Your ISP isn't a search engine. It's also regulated more like a utility, unlike Google. If your ISP started black-holing IP addresses for reason of the content they carried, there would be Congressional action (if the FCC didn't get there first).

That’s exactly right - we have plenty of options for redress against an ISP abusing its power at the local, state, and federal levels.

And on the flip side of the coin, we can change our search engine if we don't like the results it vends.

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

#137

Post by triceratops »

tomohawk wrote: post #97
glenstein wrote: post #16

I 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?

The big tech co's have become politically active by infringing on people's freedom of speech, etc. You can argue they're private, but that doesn't really matter. The telcos are private, but they can't drop your connection if they don't like what you are talking about. They can't drop the account of an organization that agitates for things they disagree with. The big tech co's have made their bed, now they get to slee…

> The telcos are private, but they can't drop your connection if they don't like what you are talking about

With net neutrality gone, an ISP absolutely could do that.

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

#138

Post by buboard »

MattGaiser wrote: post #25

The big problem with this is the extreme mediocrity of every other industry. Amazon and Google are winning everything because none of their competitors have even attempted to do better than they did 10 years ago. Amazon should have won in very few of the markets it entered. Instead, its competitors just decided to lie down and die, with a couple of yelps on their way to their death.

google bought doubleclick. what other serious competitors did they have ?

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

#139

Post by tiborsaas »

I can't help but think that fighting big tech with anti trust approaches is like fighting the T-1000 with a katana. You can win a few fights, but it just reassembles itself because they will outsmart the challenge adapt to the new situation.

If you want real change then you got to be more radical than just separating Google search from Gmail or Instagram from Facebook.

I have no idea how, but the goal should be to change their incentives.

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

#140

Post by mrkramer »

xoxoy wrote: post #102
mrkramer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gotcha. I would be surprised if the gov couldn’t find some incriminating emails though of executives talking about how to kill Bing when MSFT looked like it was gunning to be a search competitor. We will see though.

Believe it or not Android was response to Microsoft's Windows Mobile(Windows Phone) and not to Apple's Iphone. Google was afraid at the time that Microsoft will release it's own "smartphone" and put Bing(Windows Live Search) as default search engine on it. But eventually Windows Phone killed itself and Google is good to go.
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