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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

#331

Post by Ericson2314 »

mrkramer wrote: post #54
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…

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…

It doesn't matter how it was achieved.

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

#332

Post by jlbnjmn »

ascotan wrote: post #235
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.

Maybe I'm lost here but why is this a good thing? and what this is providing for the consumer. I am not harmed by Google price fixing (as far as I know) because I pay them exactly $0, nor do I want to see the days of the 90's again, when you needed a 'metacrawler' to search a bunch of search engines. Now if we were talking about my ISP, for which I have exactly 2 choices and both of them collude to increase my bill,…

> I am not harmed by Google price fixing (as far as I know) because I pay them exactly $0

You're not a Google customer. Advertisers are the customers. Your attention is the product.

Again, anyone who does not get an invoice from Google every month is not a customer.

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

#333

Post by jlbnjmn »

pb7 wrote: post #304
tombert wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well conceivably you could separate out the Facebook ad network and the Facebook social media, and possibly also maybe the IM systems (FB Chat/Whatsapp). I know virtually nothing about antitrust law, and I'm not a lawyer, so I'm speaking largely out of my behind, but those seem like logical-enough divisions.

How would Facebook social media exist on its own with the ad network paying for it?

The ad network is for ads on partner sites, not on Facebook itself.

It's Facebook's version of Google's DoubleClick.

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

#334

Post by aspenmayer »

nemothekid wrote: post #305
aspenmayer wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is nefarious intent necessary? The rules for monopoly and abuse of market power don’t presuppose such negative motivations, just negative market outcomes.

> The rules for monopoly and abuse of market power don’t presuppose such negative motivations, just negative market outcomes. Yes they do. The reason MS got put on the chopping block was because they began telling vendors that they would charge them more if they bundled Netscape or Java. Intel got slapped with a similar suite when they began telling vendors that they would charge more for their chips if they sold any…

I agree that negative intent from a monopoly power is actionable. I merely point out that negative intent is not necessary prior to regulatory action against or upon a monopoly power. I refer to another comment on this post for further info.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23198343

"Market Power"

‘Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.’

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

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

#335

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

I think it‘s kind of funny that there was an article today about Google‘s Pixel division being disjointed and not integrated enough with the Android division.

Maybe part of the reason for the publics perception of Google‘s teams and divisions seemingly operating in an independent and chaotic manner is a way of minimizing the attack surface for antitrust accusations.

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

#336

Post by cameronbrown »

dvduval wrote: post #307

I think to myself how I would probably be just fine if the Google search engine became a public service tomorrow and all advertisements were removed, or perhaps only a small area of the page were allowed to be used to make enough money to pay the costs of upkeep. I'm reminded of how I was so enamored by the internet during the age of the directory. Humans assembled information to share with each other, and there were…

Right. Just like how publicly funded broadcasters have never promoted any kind of propaganda, a publicly funded search engine will be politically neutral in every way. Who funds this public service? The US? Everyone? Well I don't live in the US, why should I have to fund your public service? What if I don't want to use Google, but DuckDuckGo instead?

(You see, the arguments go on and on...)

Private sector companies done right (aka incentives align correctly) are inherently more trustworthy than public sector.

Disclosure: I do work for Google, but I've held these opinions for a long time.

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

#337

Post by riazrizvi »

shadowgovt wrote: post #91
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…

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…

No, no, no. Amazon disrupted the grip that publishing houses had on publishing, they have democratized writing. Publishers and bookstores had restricted markets that were dictated by a few big publishing houses. Amazon disrupted that, which has lead to far more books being written. Books that have been self-published. How on earth is that considered a failing?

Bookstores are no longer viable, because Amazon has obviated the need for a brick and mortars store, and it passes the benefit on to both consumer and author alike, in reduced prices and thus increased sales.

Since Amazon is not in the authorship business itself, since it gets an equal profit on all books, its book business is a lovely example of markets working to further society.

Amazon's problem is in the use of data metrics on its giant store to create products that compete with its partners. The Amazon Essentials line is anticompetitive IMO, because as the operator of such a large platform, Amazon has a responsibility to the US economy.

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

#338

Post by dodobirdlord »

v7p1Qbt1im wrote: post #335

I think it‘s kind of funny that there was an article today about Google‘s Pixel division being disjointed and not integrated enough with the Android division. Maybe part of the reason for the publics perception of Google‘s teams and divisions seemingly operating in an independent and chaotic manner is a way of minimizing the attack surface for antitrust accusations.

Integration is hard. The amount of work to keep good integration between all services in a business grows as the square of the number of services. Missing “obvious” integrations is just a natural consequence of being large.

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

#339

Post by FpUser »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #247
c1b wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how making books cheap is considered a failing.

You could have made the same argument about Standard Oil - until the competition were crushed and prices went up. Which is why lower consumer prices aren't a valid defence against anti=trust. Nor is the argument that markets "naturally" lead to monopolies or (at best) oligopolies and cartels - even though empirically they do. So much so that setting out to create a monopoly is a bullet point on many unicorn-wannabe b…

YouTube can screw over content creators with its insane system of copyright strikes. PayPal and Amazon can keep legitimately earned money on the pretext of non-existent ToC violations. Apple can decide to bar you from the App Store on a whim and clean-room your best green shoots ideas into its own products. Google can decide that you earned too much in ad revenue and shut you down just because it can.

The problem is abuse of power without oversight

This is exactly how I feel about me dealing as a business with the big corps. But I did not actually had this experience myself. Reason is simple: I just do not engage. As a business I do not uses any cloudy stuff at all. Everything I do I host either myself or on rented servers that I could change on a moment's notice. No Youtube, no Apple app store, no hosting my software using Azure/Amazon/etc, no Github (I host my own), no Gmail etc.etc.

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

#340

Post by zenhack »

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.

Indeed, Amazon's behavior isn't the same shape as a typical monopolist. Krugman wrote an article a while back about this that I think cuts to the heart of the matter:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/paul-krugman-amaz...

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