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

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

#441

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #279

dontreact wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one can build a search engine as good as Google without the data flowing through it every day. That have so many click logs to train their models and see what works, there is just no way to compete. If all Google engineers left at the same time, Google would still probably end up dominant by hiring new folks to get things back up and running. No amount of human labor will be able to close that data gap.

That seems extremely short-sighted. There’s nothing stopping people from coming up with a better way to find what you’re looking for than Google’s search engine.

What mechanism do you propose for keeping any one alternative frommsimply becomming the new abusive monopoly?

Railroads begat AT&T begat IBM begat Microsoft begat Google begat Facebook begat Amazon.

What some of us who've seen this rodeo a few times are beginning, slowly and dimly, to realise is that what we'd prefer is a healthy competitive marketplace within, sa, telecoms, chips, operating systems, publishing, search, retail, and the like. Simply crowning an endless succession of new storks as king of the frogs is losing its lustre.

https://fablesofaesop.com/the-frogs-pick-a-king.html

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

#442

Post by dntbnmpls » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

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…

> Because Google/Amazon/FB have so much money they can do things that push tech forward as a whole.

You mean they have enough money to buy other companies to stifle competition and innovation.

> yet they aren't "liberal"/"blue" companies, so there are no lawsuits.

The distrust of google is bipartisan. Both the democrats and republicans have called for this. Actually, the democrats have been far more vocal.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18256032/elizabeth-warren-...

> Disclosure: I'm interning at Google. I don't think this matters at all, but someone called me out on this in the comments.

It matters because it shows you have financial interests which may bias your opinion. Not to mention if you are interning at google, you have very little experience in and knowledge of the tech industry.

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

#443

Post by throwawayy1001 » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

gordon_freeman wrote: post #108

one thing I always have a hard time understanding. What if a tech giant is considered a Monopoly but it makes my - as a consumer - life easier? I mean having flights tool readily available near Google Search which helps me quickly find a cheap flight without upselling me with hotels and car rentals etc on aggregators like Expedia is something I love and makes my experience better.

You’re not a consumer though, you’re the product.

Google needs to sell eyeballs, so it creates products for free (subsidized by ads) and along the way destroys competition.

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

#444

Post by mrep » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

lucio wrote: post #18

pb7 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Break them up into what?

Maybe just force all social apps to a standard data migration format, and an easy UI to move, so you can move you data freely

FYI, there is a project for that [0] of which Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter are a part of. It's not forced and is still in development but it's something.

[0]: https://datatransferproject.dev/

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

#445

Post by papeda » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

cwhiz wrote: post #438

papeda wrote: post #187

As some variant of millenial, I'm continually bemused by how many of my peers are on board with breaking up "big tech" and use "big tech" products multiple times every single day. If I bring up federal contracting, which is an industry of comparable size, and which is dominated by companies founded well over 50 years ago [1], and which is way more politically opaque, and whose funding they cannot as tax-paying US cit…

This is classic Whatabout-ism. Good is not the enemy of perfect. Google and Facebook should be shattered into a thousand little pieces. And we can also look into other monopolies.

I don't see this as "good is the enemy of perfect". I see federal contracting as a worse force for waste and bad outcomes than tech companies, so I suggest that targeting that industry would better improve people's lives.

Not every suggestion that we've misidentified a big problem is whataboutism. Especially when elected officials (in theory) look to their constituents to determine which problems to address/industries to threaten.

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

#446

Post by nnvvhh » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

papeda wrote: post #445

cwhiz wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is classic Whatabout-ism. Good is not the enemy of perfect. Google and Facebook should be shattered into a thousand little pieces. And we can also look into other monopolies.

I don't see this as "good is the enemy of perfect". I see federal contracting as a worse force for waste and bad outcomes than tech companies, so I suggest that targeting that industry would better improve people's lives. Not every suggestion that we've misidentified a big problem is whataboutism. Especially when elected officials (in theory) look to their constituents to determine which problems to address/industrie…

But it literally is whataboutism. If a friend of yours expresses concern about big tech firms, and then you say, "But what about this other industry?" you have not engaged at all with the original statement and attempted to shift the conversation to something else entirely.

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

#447

Post by papeda » Sat, May 16, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

nnvvhh wrote: post #446

papeda wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see this as "good is the enemy of perfect". I see federal contracting as a worse force for waste and bad outcomes than tech companies, so I suggest that targeting that industry would better improve people's lives. Not every suggestion that we've misidentified a big problem is whataboutism. Especially when elected officials (in theory) look to their constituents to determine which problems to address/industrie…

But it literally is whataboutism. If a friend of yours expresses concern about big tech firms, and then you say, "But what about this other industry?" you have not engaged at all with the original statement and attempted to shift the conversation to something else entirely.

We seem to disagree on what the original statement is.

When I talk to my peers, the original statement is some version of: "big tech is the most harmful monopoly in the USA today". Saying "what about monopolistic industry x?" is directly engaging with that statement.

It's possible that I'm conflating people's decisions to prioritize talking about tech companies with their actual priorities for which industries require government intervention.

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

#448

Post by jedimastert » Sat, May 16, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #293

jedimastert wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

> 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.

As much people talk about Google's monopoly, I've not seen anyone bring up this point, which is what I was talking about in my previous comment. And I would absolutely agree with you that this could represent an issue of abuse of your position in the market. Would the next step be to prove this abuse occurs? For instance, if I google "maps" I'll get google's maps first, for sure. But I'll also get apple's maps, bing's maps, open map, and mapquest on the first page.

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

#449

Post by Craighead » Sat, May 16, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

greggman3 wrote: post #421

dredmorbius wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Monopolization Defined" The antitrust laws prohibit conduct by a single firm that unreasonably restrains competition by creating or maintaining monopoly power. Most Section 2 claims involve the conduct of a firm with a leading market position, although Section 2 of the Sherman Act also bans attempts to monopolize and conspiracies to monopolize. As a first step, courts ask if the firm has "monopoly power" in any mark…

I must be dumb but I didn't see how the stuff you quoted fit the Google situation.

In a rush to prove intellectual superiority often times people forget the things actually being spoken about.

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

#450

Post by cwhiz » Sat, May 16, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

papeda wrote: post #447

nnvvhh wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it literally is whataboutism. If a friend of yours expresses concern about big tech firms, and then you say, "But what about this other industry?" you have not engaged at all with the original statement and attempted to shift the conversation to something else entirely.

We seem to disagree on what the original statement is. When I talk to my peers, the original statement is some version of: "big tech is the most harmful monopoly in the USA today". Saying "what about monopolistic industry x?" is directly engaging with that statement. It's possible that I'm conflating people's decisions to prioritize talking about tech companies with their actual priorities for which industries requir…

You’re moving the goalposts. This article doesn’t say big tech is the most harmful monopoly in the USA. You made a top level comment so you weren’t responding to anyone, either.

This is an article about the justice department potentially bringing antitrust charges against Google and you made a top level comment saying “what about this other industry?”

This is whataboutism. As clear as the day is long.