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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

#201

Post by wayneftw »

vondur wrote: post #120
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.

I agree with Comcast, they need to be broken up, and Amazon could do with some scrutiny. But Apple, Boeing and United Airlines? The aren't monopolies by any definition.

The Apple iPhone has very close to 50% market in the US and you simply cannot have a successful mobile software business without releasing your app on the iPhone.

Apple already lost a preliminary suit that will allow them to be sued for their monopolistic practices - https://www.zdnet.com/article/goodbye-walled-garden-apple-ge...

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

#202

Post by MattGaiser »

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.

What do you mean by hostile? Do they ban non-Google crawlers?

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

#203

Post by xienze »

inapis wrote: post #172
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…

As a non-american, it baffles me that even justices are divided into conservative or liberals. Just why? What’s the history here?

It’s more like “how strictly do these judges interpret and apply the Constitution.” The more creative interpretations are what have allowed for progressive, or liberal rulings.

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

#204

Post by missedthecue »

onewhonknocks wrote: post #188

IMHO they're not a monopoly, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Traditional monopolies "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted." In this case, the supply of a good or service (social networking, webpage indexing and searching) are not controlled by Facebook and Google because they aren't finite resources. Anyone can index the web and…

"I think we need a new term for this situation"

Having the best product? Google and Facebook are just flat out better than Bing, Myspace, or duckduckgo for most applications. (Notice I said most, I get it, your super specific need does in fact fetch better results using ddg rather than google)

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

#205

Post by adrianmonk »

akersten wrote: post #19
aspenmayer wrote: post #2

'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 li…

> This stinks of politics.

Yes, and Trump has threatened Google explicitly before.

For example:

> Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!

(https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/10344562811202068...)

And on the same day he said this:

> Q Do you think that Google should be investigated?

> PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, I think Google has really taken advantage of a lot of people. And I think that’s a very serious thing, and it’s a very serious charge. I think what Google and what others are doing — if you look at what’s going on at Twitter, if you look at what’s going on in Facebook, they better be careful, because you can’t do that to people. You can’t do it.

> We have tremendous — we have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. And you just can’t do that. And so I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they’re really treading on very, very troubled territory. And they have to be careful. It’s not fair to large portions of the population.

(https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...)

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

#206

Post by papeda »

oneiftwo wrote: post #186

Interesting, I wonder if it has anything to do with this [0]. Google wanted to play politics by choosing winners and curating results...now they get to face the consequences for abusing such an enormous power 0. https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/google-diversity-i...

How is your link related to antitrust?

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

#207

Post by aesh2Xa1 »

onewhonknocks wrote: post #188

IMHO they're not a monopoly, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Traditional monopolies "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted." In this case, the supply of a good or service (social networking, webpage indexing and searching) are not controlled by Facebook and Google because they aren't finite resources. Anyone can index the web and…

Gateway is one such term.

To fit your perspective, though, you could say that Google controls supply and service of user clicks, user attention, or even user interface.

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

#208

Post by karmakaze »

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 to get far off topic, but in what way is Apple a monopoly? What do they have a majority market share of, internet-connected watches?

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

#209

Post by throwaway4715 »

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 is Facebook a monopoly in?

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

#210

Post by mthoms »

tyingq wrote: post #154
a9entroy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

According to wiki, Google Shopping is now run entirely separate after a case in the EU (though it's not clear if that's just in Europe or not).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google#Goog...

I think it's a good start. All ancillary Google businesses outside of search/ads should be required to run at arms length IMHO.

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