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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

#151

Post by renewiltord »

nitrogen wrote: post #79
nostrademons wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> > > 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.

Interesting sequence of comments. Perhaps you placed yours at the wrong level but it certainly doesn't look like good faith at the moment.

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

#152

Post by jeffbee »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #33
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.

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.

Imagine believing that American jurisprudence will survive Trump.

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

#153

Post by md_ »

TheArcane wrote: post #134
yowlingcat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

I’m not sure that’s inherently disqualifying. When it comes to questions of law and justice, it seems entirely reasonable to ask about similar cases, simply to investigate the equal and fair application of law, no?

“Whatsboutism”, as I understand it, is a technique where one brings up ill-proven allegations that are unrelated to the matter at hand merely to distract.

Here, the claim seems much more on point: it’s that this is a political case, as shown by the failure to pursue similar cases against other companies.

(Is it? I don’t personally know. But it seems like a fair point to make.)

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

#154

Post by tyingq »

a9entroy wrote: post #116
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.

What will breaking up Google accomplish? I think the individual orgs inside Google already act as separate businesses. So they are already split internally.

As one example, Chrome might act differently if it were separate from Google the advertising/search giant.

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

#155

Post by rayiner »

WorldMaker wrote: post #80
leoh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

Telecoms aren’t intentionally granted regional monopolies. It’s illegal under the Cable Act of 1992.

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

#156

Post by thephyber »

jbeam wrote: post #130
bgorman wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government intentionally created the Airline oligopoly by banning foreign airlines from operating domestic flights in the US, and further by allowing United, American and Delta to form joint-ventures with foreign airlines to control prices/schedules between continents. Is Google really a monopoly? Many people use Outlook, iPhones, Apple Maps, AWS, Bing, HERE maps etc...

The antitrust investigation is focused on online advertising. So Outlook, iPhones, maps, AWS doesn't really apply there. "Many people" might use Bing, but Google dwarfs it in market share. I'm not particularly familiar with the infrastructure of the ad business, but my layman's view is that alternatives are slim outside of Google for search engine and the more general web and Facebook for specifically social media.

> The antitrust investigation is focused on X so Y doesn't really apply there.

Antitrust prosecutions are heavily dependent upon shaping the "market" which supposedly is being monopolized.

There is no good argument for antitrust against the Apple App Store if the market is "all transactional marketplaces where software can be purchased", but there is a good argument if the market is narrowly defined as "all transactional marketplaces where software can be installed onto iOS mobile devices".

Look for similar shaping of the market by both sides (the prosecutor will attempt to narrow the market and the defendants will attempt to broaden the market).

Also worth noting that Amazon already chipping away at Google's market share dominance in online advertising[1]. By the time the DOJ's prosecution goes thru the courts, the market is likely to be significantly changed from where it was when AG Sessions (who started these investigations) started crafting an anti-tech-giants strategy.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/amazon-is-eating-into-google...

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

#157

Post by ericd »

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 is partly winning because many sites are now hostile to crawlers other than Google's.

If we want real competition in the search engine space, Google's crawl should be opened up as a "common crawl", accessible to any company that wants to pay a nominal sum to access it for building an index.

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

#158

Post by iateanapple »

shadowgovt wrote: post #136
iateanapple wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because of network effects that turns out to be a lot weaker protection against much more powerful companies.

Edit: Perhaps network effect is the wrong term - but it’s a bit like saying if you don’t like guns don’t buy a gun - that doesn’t really limit the negative impacts from guns...

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

#159

Post by tomohawk »

triceratops wrote: post #137
tomohawk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you cite even a single case where an ISP has cut off an organization's account because of the organization's politics?

Even if you could, does that make it right that big tech companies are censoring people and organizations for their views?

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

#160

Post by rayiner »

adventured wrote: post #150
subsubzero wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> America is increasingly becoming a land of large companies controlling industries where the consumer almost always loses Increasingly? When wasn't that true? You have to go back to pre Civil War, where the economy was heavily geographically split due to movement/transport limitations, which mostly voids the discussion (it was very much a local and regional, agriculture-heavy economy, with limited manufacturing and…

This is an excellent point. Markets consolidate because mega-corps enjoy massive economies of scale. Do people remember what e-commerce was like before Amazon? You waited a week to get products in the mail. It was Amazon’s massive scale that made next day free shipping possible.
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