Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 502 posts

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

#491

Post by subsubzero »

adventured wrote: post #150
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…

> America is increasingly becoming a land of large companies controlling industries where the consumer almost always loses Increasingly? When wasn't that true? You have to go back to pre Civil War, where the economy was heavily geographically split due to movement/transport limitations, which mostly voids the discussion (it was very much a local and regional, agriculture-heavy economy, with limited manufacturing and…

> America is increasingly becoming a land of large companies controlling industries where the consumer almost always loses I stand by this statement, here is a more detailed argument, its from 2018 but still has lots of information about consolidation and how it has become alot worse recently, say the past 30 years: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16432

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

#492

Post by WorldMaker »

rayiner wrote: post #367
WorldMaker wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction is on which meaning of "monopoly" and "monopoly with respect to what". Yes, no telecom should be the only telecom in a region, but each telecom is granted an exclusivity (monopoly) on a particular utility line: cable companies are given (in most regions) exclusive rights to a region's originally TV focused fiber and coax cables and phone companies are given (in most regions) exclusive rights to a regi…

> Yes, no telecom should be the only telecom in a region, but each telecom is granted an exclusivity (monopoly) on a particular utility line: cable companies are given (in most regions) exclusive rights to a region's originally TV focused fiber and coax cables and phone companies are given (in most regions) exclusive rights to a region's originally phone-focused fiber and coax cables. That's a weird way of phrasing i…

It's a high cost investment to build any such lines. There's only so much space in most area's utility corridors (poles, trenches, what have you).

This has always been called a "natural monopoly": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Most regions are aware that cable and/or phone lines form a natural monopoly, and thus intentionally granted that monopoly, placing regulatory bodies just as they did power, water, etc.

Just look at how badly Google Fiber is failing some cities to see how hard it is for "another provider could come in and build lines and provide service". It may be "slightly" easier to have competing cable providers than competing power companies (though keep in mind early America did have more competing power companies in some regions), but it's not that much easier, it's still a natural monopoly.

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

#493

Post by subsubzero »

bgorman wrote: post #106
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…

The government intentionally created the Airline oligopoly by banning foreign airlines from operating domestic flights in the US, and further by allowing United, American and Delta to form joint-ventures with foreign airlines to control prices/schedules between continents. Is Google really a monopoly? Many people use Outlook, iPhones, Apple Maps, AWS, Bing, HERE maps etc...

Actually its worse that I thought! Google controls 91.89% of the search market [1] G controls 68% of the browser market [2] G's android is on 84% of phones operating systems [3] G has 73% of the search advertising market [4]

These numbers are really scary, if you care about fair competition and a just, balanced society.

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-i... [3] https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 [4] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-a...

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

#494

Post by nojito »

snazz wrote: post #49
nojito wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Google is infinitely worse than Amazon and Facebook put together. They just so happen to be an advertising company so they internet doesn't know about it yet.

> Google is infinitely worse than Amazon and Facebook put together. > They just so happen to be an advertising company so they internet doesn't know about it yet. Could you share your reasoning for coming to that conclusion?

Sharing and collecting data to share between business entities with no firewall between the two unlike Amazon and Facebook.

Clandestine support of privacy researchers to publish favorable content.

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

#495

Post by nojito »

ianmobbs wrote: post #50
nojito wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Google is infinitely worse than Amazon and Facebook put together. They just so happen to be an advertising company so they internet doesn't know about it yet.

Why do you say Google is worse than Amazon and Facebook put together?

The amount of data that Google has on you is immeasurable. The fact that there is no firewall between Google business entities in terms of data sharing is absolutely insane.

They have normalized the concept of sharing your data to the internet and monetizing it. At least Facebook and Amazon are accountable for their actions.

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

#496

Post by CamperBob2 »

Armic wrote: post #488
CamperBob2 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The victims are the third-party sellers. Store brands are a completely different subject. They are purchased and licensed from the manufacturers. Do you think Costco has a factory making paper towels someplace, next door to their factory making alkaline batteries?

So you're saying it's okay for Amazon/Costco to put up Amazon Basics/Kirkland, so long as they're paying someone else to make it for them?

I don't see why not, but admittedly I haven't thought it through any further than that.

The comparison with store brands doesn't really work because Costco and Sam's and Target don't invite third-party sellers to build their businesses on what amounts to sharecropped shelf space. Procter & Gamble and Berkshire Hathaway can hold their own in any negotiations with Costco and Amazon. For small businesses, the situation is more like the complaints we always hear about Apple's app store, where the company buys or builds their own first-party competitors in categories that prove unexpectedly successful.

Dirty pool, but legal enough... at least as long as you (a) don't hold a monopoly on distribution, or aspire to do so; and (b) didn't just get back from Washington, DC where you told Congress that you didn't do this. Both of these factors are problematic with Amazon, IMO. It's true that they don't hold a monopoly on distribution, technically speaking, but where else are third-party sellers supposed to turn?

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

#497

Post by triceratops »

tomohawk wrote: post #159
triceratops wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The telcos are private, but they can't drop your connection if they don't like what you are talking about With net neutrality gone, an ISP absolutely could do that.

Can you cite even a single case where an ISP has cut off an organization's account because of the organization's politics? Even if you could, does that make it right that big tech companies are censoring people and organizations for their views?

Is it wrong if I'm kicked out a private club for saying something that offended the other members? Is the club's management obligated to allow me to continue expressing myself on their property, to their members?

Social media platforms and telcos operate at different layers of the stack. Even if something's acceptable at one layer, doesn't mean it's OK at another, because the consequences are different.

If an ISP allows someone to express something offensive (i.e. legal, but strongly disagreeable to the majority) on their network, it doesn't affect their other customers directly - they won't know or care which ISP this person was using. If a social media platform allows posting something that most other users would find offensive, those other users will leave. And yet people are arguing for deregulating the first (anti-net-neutrality) and regulating the second. It seems backward to me.

What you call "censoring" someone else might call "curation and removal of BS". The free market can decide whether it's too much or too little.

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

#498

Post by jb775 »

thoraway1010 wrote: post #243
jb775 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is such a ridiculous statement. Cable companies have taken billion in federal subsidies, lied about universal deployment and speeds, and unless there is local competition have taken customers to the cleaners, forced the purchase of bundled channel packages, charged rentals for modems they were not renting (I should know - I called in every month to have charge removed) etc. I can think of a long list of other la…

How are the followings stats at all "ridiculous":

Google controls 91.89% of the search market [1]

G controls 68% of the browser market [2]

G's android is on 84% of phones operating systems [3]

G has 73% of the search advertising market [4]

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-i.... [3] https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 [4] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-a....

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

#499

Post by tristan957 »

blululu wrote: post #98
chrischattin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo has a better search engine than Google right now, imo.

I'm curious why you say this. I spent the past two weeks using Bing (which is the source of DDG results, but a little faster and more accurate). For most queries it was fine (finding things on Wikipedia), but last weekend I got into a project that required a lot of css and html (not my day job). There were a lot of cases where the search results were not even close to the thing I wanted. The experience led me to swit…

Oh is this the case? I thought their results came from Yandex. I don't really want to have a Yandex account to get my site indexed, so if this is my out I am all about it.

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

#500

Post by born_a_skeptic »

mullingitover wrote: post #240
rayiner wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dan-gainor-yes-google-censor... A study showed that Google News returned links to CNN vastly more often than links to Fox News, even though Fox News has triple the market share of CNN. See also censoring of YouTube videos: https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-google-get-away-with-c... > How else to explain why Google has restricted more than half of our 15 videos that are…

Might be based on user preference influencing weighting for search results. I've know I've personally done all I can to block Fox News and other low quality sources from Google News.

Or, it just the people doing the algorithm decided to rank Fox News lower than others. I have noticed that Fox news is showing up more on Google Top News RSS feed after commotion started to be made.

And, come on man. Seriously, every news network except Fox News for the past almost 3 years pushed the Russian collusion narrative and it's turning out to be almost the exact opposite. So, you really need to rethink what you view as quality news. I'm not saying that I think Fox News is the best quality, prefer Bloomberg to be honest.

Just because you don't agree with political ideology of a news network doesn't mean it's low quality.

Post reply on HN