Why not Apple????
I don't understand. Apples has more than 50% of the phone marketplace AND locks everything down. They also have twice the revenue of Google.
Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
291–300 of 502 posts
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#292Why not Apple???? I don't understand. Apples has more than 50% of the phone marketplace AND locks everything down. They also have twice the revenue of Google.
Apple has 10% of the market, depending on where you look. The high penetration in NYC and SF is an aberration.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#293Earlier 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…
> Not saying google isn't a monopoly, it classically is Most people I've seen equate monopoly with "95% of people use", which really isn't a monopoly. As far as I'm aware, dominating a market is not the sole criteria of a monopoly (although I am aware it is a sign of successful one, correlation/causation). For someone who doesn't follow this kind of thing, can anyone point to concrete examples of "no other company do…
It's a monopoly (or monopsony) if it's prohibitively difficult to function in the market if you refuse to do business with them (or, more commonly unless a regulator is currently assessing monopoly status, they refuse to do business with you).
For example, Google doesn't have a monopoly on search; I can use DuckDuckGo just fine (although patent trolling complicates this a bit). Google does, however, have a monopoly on search traffic; if Google delists your site, it has effectively disappeared from 90+% of peoples' (mis-)conception of the internet[1]. A government the purports to support a free market must[0] regulate the latter case.
0: in the sense that not doing so directly communicates that they do not in fact support a free market
1: and this could be true to a lesser degree even if it had only, say, 45% market share
Edit: there might also be regulations that should apply to de-facto infrastructure like search engines regardless of monopoly status, but those are, by specification, not based on monopoly status.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are? Recent history suggests it's way easier for a random person to build a successful search engine (e.g. DuckDuckGo) than a successful telecom, and I have way more choice of search engine than telecom.
I definitely won't argue that telecoms play fair, but there are high barriers to entry for starting a telecom. If you start a new telecom only to compete for customers with an existing telecom in a certain area, you have to pay a huge expense to build out your network and your upside will be limited by the ensuing price war. Not arguing that starting a telecom is easier than a search engine, but I think a large part…
You’re describing point by point exactly why they’re dangerous monopolies. It’s hard, incumbents have advantage, and even if you do it, incumbents will undercut you because they are already well situated. Consumers have no choice; incumbents frequently at the receiving end of the worst consumer satisfaction. Oh, and taxpayers also paid $400B to lay that infrastructure that apparently newcomers aren’t allowed to have. And yet here we are, going after a search engine that has a dozen alternatives that are just as capable of suiting your needs and new ones able to spring up overnight. It just makes no sense. This is pure manipulation by the government.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
You're saying that both "adding search engine choice" and "removing search engine choice" are monopolistic tools for Google?
I'm saying Google added search engine choice to Chrome in order to create the illusion of competition in a monopolized market. If Google didn't have monopoly power in the search engine market they never would have added search engine choice to Chrome in the first place for the same reason Starbucks stores don't sell bags of Dunkin' Donuts coffee beans. A rational enterprise in a competitive market doesn't benevolently give market share to a competitor.
Kind of like the cellophane paradox[1] I suppose. From Wikipedia:
> As Richard Posner wrote, "Reasonable interchangeability at the current price but not at a competitive price level, far from demonstrating the absence of monopoly power, might well be a symptom of that power; this elementary point was completely overlooked by the court"
But instead of a price denominated in dollars it's in consumer data I suppose.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#296Why not Apple???? I don't understand. Apples has more than 50% of the phone marketplace AND locks everything down. They also have twice the revenue of Google.
They really should be.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#297I 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?
What, you mean go after their friends? Are you crazy? It’s complete nonsense. Telecoms have been fucking people over for decades and yet we still see mergers resulting in 3 providers going to 2 despite it being downright impossible to start a new one (see: Google Fiber), that is if you’re even lucky enough to have more than one in your region.
This is the biggest fear I have about antitrust. The reason Google is likely being targeted is because they have not stuffed enough pockets for most politicians to turn a blind eye.
Sure, some well meaning officials may enact useful policy to carve out a competitive space for smaller players. What everyone else, however, will learn is to stuff congress with more and more lobbyists.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#298Why not Apple???? I don't understand. Apples has more than 50% of the phone marketplace AND locks everything down. They also have twice the revenue of Google.
Apple has 10% of the market, depending on where you look. The high penetration in NYC and SF is an aberration.
They have 45% in the US. The fact that only approved apps can be installed should be taken to court.
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
How though? It's trivially simple to change the default search engine. Just because a product is dominant doesn't mean it got that way nefariously. I'm sure if you added up all the R&D over the years in search, especially considering the lead time in market, Google's numbers dwarf others (I don't have a citation on that, but it stands to reason). Parallels could be drawn with Amazon and AWS's dominance.
Why is nefarious intent necessary? The rules for monopoly and abuse of market power don’t presuppose such negative motivations, just negative market outcomes.
Why is Microsoft not fined and/or broken up for failing to maintain an appropriate search market share with Bing?
Re: Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google
#300We need to replace the Google platforms with distributed public ones.