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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

#371

Post by kortilla »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #126
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…

The case against Google is "whatever we can throw together to pressure them to stop pushing end-to-end encryption we can't break". Google is by far the biggest proponent of this, and they have both the most popular browser and some of the most popular sites on the Internet, so they can very easily do so. Whether you think Google is a monopoly or not, and whether you think they've done harm with that monopoly or not,…

Google doesn’t even use end-to-end encryption for its consumer facing stuff. It’s against their whole model of scanning content for keywords to eliminate spam, improve advertising, etc.

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

#372

Post by thayne »

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…

Neither of those interpretations really takes into account non-price effects of monopoly on consumers. Such as, say, crippling free ad-blocker plugins on the browser with the most market share.

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

#373

Post by pb7 »

kortilla wrote: post #330
pb7 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google fiber was fine. Google just stopped caring once they realized how little ROI is in the field. Turns out being a last mile ISP is a pretty low margin business.

Google Fiber was never about ROI. Fiber stopped expanding after encountering legal resistance in market after market from the preexisting telecom (take note the singular, because there’s usually just one). Every market they successfully pushed through, the existing telecom dropped prices and improved service to stay competitive. These competition-stifling monopolies are costing taxpayers tons of money when the taxpayers were the ones that funded the infrastructure the incumbents are holding out on now.

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

#374

Post by JamalW »

riazrizvi wrote: post #337
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…

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 obvia…

I was with you until paragraph 4. What is this responsibility to the US economy you speak of? The Amazon Essentials line generally provides a better product for a lower price to the average consumer. Does this put its partners out of business? Not forcefully. If the consumer chooses Amazon Essentials over their partner this is an optimal outcome right?

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

#375

Post by alexmingoia »

Google has achieved its market position through providing a service its customers want to use. They have not restricted any competitor. Anyone can easily use another search engine, and Google does nothing to stop them.

The US government’s increasing hostility towards peaceful trade is alarming. Google is one of America’s greatest business successes of this century.

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

#376

Post by jonas21 »

akersten wrote: post #365
riazrizvi wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obvia…

> 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. Curious on your thoughts about Kroger/Great Value/Archer Farms (Target) brand items? At least Amazon marks them clearly as house-brand, Archer Farms is p…

I agree that all major retailers have store brands that are not easily distinguishable -- but Amazon kind of takes it to a whole new level:

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/7/17208804/amazon-private-label-b...

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

#378

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#379

Post by thayne »

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…

I think there is an argument about wealth inequality there. Wealth that previously was distributed among local bookstores is now concentrated in a single company and it's shareholders. That's a pretty naive analysis, but I suspect Amazon's monopoly power has contributed to America's increasing wealth inequality.

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

#380

Post by JoshTriplett »

aspenmayer wrote: post #287
JoshTriplett wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The case against Google is "whatever we can throw together to pressure them to stop pushing end-to-end encryption we can't break". Google is by far the biggest proponent of this, and they have both the most popular browser and some of the most popular sites on the Internet, so they can very easily do so. Whether you think Google is a monopoly or not, and whether you think they've done harm with that monopoly or not,…

What are you referring to when you say: ‘Google is by far the biggest proponent of this [end-to-end encryption]’? In what way do you mean?

Google has done a great deal of work to push and early-adopt new web security standards, including QUIC (which inspired HTTP/2 and became HTTP/3), by changing the Chrome browser, Android, Google services, etc. They've also heavily pushed Certificate Transparency. And they've pushed for device encryption, as well, on both Android and Chrome OS. Those and many others are technologies that better support a web without backdoors and devices without backdoors.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that they've done the most work in all those areas, and many others are doing critical work, some of which should get a lot more attention than it does. But Google is literally the biggest proponent, insofar as they can push it the most quickly because they control the most endpoints.

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