Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by bawolff » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #122

riazrizvi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Below is a link to a list of mergers and acquisitions by Google over the last twenty years, many of them were search engines and online portals. This is the type of thing that the Antitrust Laws were meant to prevent. However laws are only as good as the government's willingness to exercise them. Hopefully this signals the end of the second Gilded Age, and a return to the creative destruction that has made the USA's…

Not a fan of creative destruction in the software sphere, personally. In a lot of sectors, sure. I'm all for someone building a better car. What benefit does mass competition in the software service space give me? How many bespoke APIs am I expected to integrate against to build something useful? Different for difference's sake is the curse of our industry.

Everyone making a bespoke api is not the same as someone making a better car. Key word is "better"

The issue is that a lot of people talk up "innovation" in the tech industry, that isn't. For every person who makes a better car, lots of people make the same or worse cars.

As a random example, which format would you rather have your api serialization format be in: ASN, XML or Json? I for one am glad that innovation made ASN and XML go away.

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

#352

Post by papeda » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #316

marmada wrote: post #302

A take: monopoly in tech is good. Because Google/Amazon/FB have so much money they can do things that push tech forward as a whole. Think about the revolutionary improvements Google has made towards data centers, AWS, and all the research/open source contributions these companies have done. Unlike other monopolies (telecom, defense contracting) etc. where the monopoly is used to stagnate innovation (see Comcast being…

> here the monopoly leads to more innovation More innovation in what? And as compared to what? The innovations you mention are all addressing issues that only huge tech giants like Google have anyway. And they are all funded by the ad-supported business model, which IMO is a negative that outweighs those positive contributions. Plus, the ad supported business model means users only get the benefit of any innovations…

> If this hypothesis were correct, we would have expected to see lawsuits against those other monopolies during, say, the Obama administration. But we didn't.

This presupposes that the DoJ has always been a political weapon.

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

#353

Post by riku_iki » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

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.

If you split all datacenter operations into separate company (Alphabet Cloud), Search and Ads will not receive access to cheap resources on significant discount, but will pay fair market price, which is a big burden for other companies trying to enter the market.

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

#354

Post by 0x262d » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

Tech is an area where the contradictions inherent in the liberal approach to regulating companies are most clear. Liberal theories of nice capitalism require multiple competing companies on "fair" grounds. But it is obviously annoying and inefficient to have market competition in software most of the time - once a tool is developed, it's nearly free for 100% of people to use it rather than 50%, and it's crucial that all such tools interoperate nicely. Hence why various walled-off social media platforms are annoying and people are squeezed into at most only a couple for a given purpose. When right wingers point out that anti-trust stuff is inefficient, to an extent they're right.

The rational thing is to have a "monopoly" that isn't evil. But that means that democratic control shouldn't be after-the-fact, external regulation (shown time and time again to be insufficient and generally bought off) but fundamental to the operating of these companies. In essence, Google makes the case for democratic management of production - socialism - very clear.

But the other important part of this theory is it's not just about "what would be nice to have" in some utopian sense. Larger companies have competitive advantages that cause them to grow even faster - some real economies of scale, more political heft, greater bargaining power. This leads to the system being inherently unstable and tending towards concentration, which is apparent in pretty much every sector of tech. Trying to permanently reverse this trend through anti-trust is as nonsensical as suggesting people go back to living in the woods; it is in opposition to the fundamental trends inherent in market economies. The only way we can move is forward, to the resolution of these contradictions by working class ownership of all by all.

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

#355

Post by 0x262d » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

0x262d wrote: post #354

Tech is an area where the contradictions inherent in the liberal approach to regulating companies are most clear. Liberal theories of nice capitalism require multiple competing companies on "fair" grounds. But it is obviously annoying and inefficient to have market competition in software most of the time - once a tool is developed, it's nearly free for 100% of people to use it rather than 50%, and it's crucial that…

To try to preempt one counterargument: such a system doesn't mean we can no longer have "competing" software projects that do similar things if it is beneficial to compare different approaches. We can easily do that if it's better overall. But in such a case, each approach to a given software problem would be fully open, and developed in coordination with the others and with an understanding of their successes and pitfalls, to maximize productivity. This wouldn't be siloed-off, hostile competition but a scientific, coordinated approach.

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

#356

Post by shadowgovt » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:22 AM UTC

riazrizvi wrote: post #257

shadowgovt wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a fan of creative destruction in the software sphere, personally. In a lot of sectors, sure. I'm all for someone building a better car. What benefit does mass competition in the software service space give me? How many bespoke APIs am I expected to integrate against to build something useful? Different for difference's sake is the curse of our industry.

Without creative destruction in software, there is no Linux, there is no GCC. So no Apple macOS, all PC's run Windows, and likely there is no iOS/iPhone. Microsoft would also [1] own the internet. Their browser IE would be the only significant consumer share, there would be no Mozilla, no open source browser. So no incentive to open the browser up to plugins. Microsoft would hold all the information on consumer brows…

I was pulling a salary from one of those companies when that lawsuit went through about wage suppression, and I can tell you, my wage sure didn't feel suppressed.

Always felt a little gross to me that people who make six figures would claim their wages were being held down. It's not like anyone who felt they were underpaid or underappreciated didn't know where the other companies were. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it and cashed my check for being apparently a part of an oppressed class, but at the end of the day very little changed and the biggest beneficiaries of the entire exercise were the lawyers who got the lion's share of the suit money.

On the topic of monarchies, there was plenty of creative destruction during the monarchy era. Territories and kingdoms were constantly being built, defended, fought over, carved up, destroyed, and rebuilt. Not all churn is good churn.

I'm certainly not against new companies innovating and creating new things. But I'm not sure in the specific space of software engineering, we need the heavy hand of government cracking up a successful company to enable creation of good things. I don't think the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit was a good idea, and it looks like history has borne that out; Apple got themselves out of their own hole by finding another operating system route separate from Windows and rearchitecting themselves on top of it, and Mozilla would always have had a home on Linux that Windows couldn't touch one way or the other. In the long run, all the lawsuit really seems to have done is force Microsoft into a back seat in they have arbitrary restrictions on the way they are allowed to combine their browser and operating system resources, and who benefits from that? Chrome has written an OS and a browser combined, why isn't Microsoft allowed to?

Better software tends to speak for itself. Do we trust government to make these decisions for the people who understand the technology and the people who use it?

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

#357

Post by dodobirdlord » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:22 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #132

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…

> But I wonder if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them. "Majority blue" is in a majority of their employees vote Democrat? That's just what happens when you're headquartered in California, in a metro area, with a workforce that skews younger. I don't think that Google is somehow pushing liberal objectives in a meaningful way.

Google checks all of the boxes to be an enemy of conservatives in America’s current culture war, even if they have no particular interest in fighting a culture war. Previously they could have relied on protection from the faction of the conservative movement that defaulted to respecting large successful American businesses, but that faction has been seriously weakened. Ever since Google fired James Damore for writing an anti-diversity memo conservatives have been out for blood.

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

#358

Post by dodobirdlord » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

jb775 wrote: post #192

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…

> if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them Certainly can't help them. However, I think that's a moot point if everyone can agree they are the most troublesome company in the "land of large companies". It seems like every few months I see outrage on HN over "Google increased pricing for $X service, but there aren't really any other options" situations.

You spend a lot of time in an echo chamber that specifically like to talk about niche topics and specifically likes to complain about Google. Do you remember the “Google Cloud is getting shut down” hysteria? HN is a bubble.

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

#359

Post by int_19h » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

mrkramer wrote: post #77

xoxoy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter how a monopoly came to be a monopoly?

Yea it matters. If monopoly was achieved through market competition then fine, if it was achieved through destroying other companies then it is illegal and unfair. But once dominant market position is achieved company still needs to behave properly and not stifle competition.

Antitrust legislation is about keeping the markets competitive, because it also keeps them healthy. In that context, it doesn't matter if the monopoly position was achieved "fairly" or "unfairly", but only what effect on the market it has.

Coincidentally, this is also how legislation was implemented in this country until 1980s. Which is to say - this is what we did back when our economy was both prosperous and stable.

For a good example of just how much teeth anti-trust used to have before it got Borked, read this court opinion in one case from 1962: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/#tab-opi...

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

#360

Post by shadowgovt » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:32 AM UTC

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #282

c1b wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how making books cheap is considered a failing.

I think you misunderstood shadowgovt’s comment.

No, c1b got it. The comment was open-ended, but I've definitely seen pushback on the way Amazon has floored the price on books. France sued the hell out of them for undercutting prices so deep that individual corner store retailers couldn't compete.