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Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

wsj.com

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

#171

Post by [deleted] »

ericd wrote: post #157
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.

[deleted]

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

#172

Post by inapis »

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…

As a non-american, it baffles me that even justices are divided into conservative or liberals.

Just why? What’s the history here?

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

#173

Post by leoh »

CaveTech wrote: post #37
leoh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telecom, etc. are far, far more harmful IMHO

They're also currently much better regulated

What? The fact that they sell oodles of information about me to just about anyone?

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

#174

Post by olliej »

bgorman wrote: post #106
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…

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...

For advertising it is, especially since they were allowed to purchase their only real competitor years ago.

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

#175

Post by drusepth »

elliekelly wrote: post #87
mrkramer wrote: post #54

Earlier 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…

> Even in Google Chrome you can pick DuckDuckGo and Ecosia as your default search engine. And making this argument is exactly why they added search engine selection. They wanted to be able to point to this tiny insignificant detail that might cost them a negligible fraction of Chrome searches and hold it up as market competition when the inevitable antitrust suit came along. Have you ever heard of a for profit compan…

>Have you ever heard of a for profit company gifting traffic to their direct competitor?

The #3 browser (Firefox) is (was?) massively funded by a half-billion-per-year agreement from the #1 browser's maker (Google) to add Chrome as the default search engine.

Sure, they could pull that deal. Unless you think it's a perfectly balanced deal, though, that feels like one for-profit company gifting traffic to their competitor (either Google giving money to Firefox, or Firefox giving traffic to Google).

It's more niche, but a lot of companies in my market donate to or fund their competitors for the sake of innovation and growing the pie.

Contrary to popular belief, for-profit companies (even those with scary board members in a competitive market) don't inherently have to be cutthroat.

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

#176

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #70
tyre wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Precedent is tricky. Democrats removing the filibuster for SCOTUS judges came back to haunt them. Did it though? Legal precedent is different (for now) from political precedent, and I think the Republicans have proven they’re happy to steamroll through almost anything they can to seat a Justice. They would have instantly dropped the filibuster if it hadn’t already been done.

This is no excuse to be the aggressor. "Republicans might do this" allows you to steamroll over anything set up to force compromise and bipartisanship. Once they're already doing something you don't have to feel bad about doing the same thing when it's your turn, but whoever is the first to tear down a barrier to naked partisanship is the party doing wrong.

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

#177

Post by filoleg »

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]

no, it isn't. The parent comment isn't saying "but what about those other things we should break up just because?". It is saying "you make it sound like breaking up big tech will accomplish a lot, even though, I think, breaking up those other things is a way higher priority that will accomplish much more, and here is why".

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

#178

Post by ghastmaster »

bgorman wrote: post #106
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…

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...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920

Exactly. The Federal government speaks out of both sides of it's mouth. If monopolies fail to spur innovation as is suggested by many, then regulatory burdens such as the Jones Act do even more explicitly.

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

#179

Post by xoxoy »

pge wrote: post #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 en…

I’m wondering if the focus is going to be on the search business or how Google stifles competitors on their search results page? I know Yelp for example has long claimed Google downranks their results over Google’s own reviews etc.
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