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EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

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Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#341

Post by boycott-israel »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #310
sangnoir wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes down to it - it's the same thing with the EU - they can decree that Google be broken apart or stop doing business in the union. Or pay a massive fine based on global profit or exit the union.

The goal of antitrust is to make markets more competitive. If Google left the EU entirely there’d be even fewer competitors in the digital ads space. Depending on the segment Google’s market share would likely go to Bing, Facebook or TikTok. The EU wants to increase the market competition, but frustratingly antitrust enforcement may not be effective and might even go in the opposite direction.

holy shit are you 12 or just slow?

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#342

Post by tremon »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #287
Mashimo wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is it about Europe that puts it so far behind the US and Asia in innovation? How far behind is Europe?

None of the top tech companies are European, so quite far.

That's true only for a very narrow definition of "tech". If I were to redefine "tech" to only include Formula-1 racing teams and constructors, then suddenly none of the top tech companies are from the US.

Am I right to assume you have never heard of companies like ASML, Spotify, Booking.com, Just Eat (takeaway.com), or Adyen?

And finally, large US companies use their capital to buy out European firms to keep pretending that all "tech" is home-grown. Skype, Nokia, ARM, NXP, SkyScanner, Shazam and Minecraft all started out in Europe.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#343

Post by hnbad »

pb7 wrote: post #135
hnbad wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is it about Europe that puts it so far behind the US and Asia in innovation? The US barely produces enough illegal drugs for its own market. If all illegal drug manufacturers cut off the supply lines to the US, the illegal drug trade in the US would tank overnight. What is it about the US that puts it so far behind South American countries in innovation?

You're comparing your populace to drug addicts? Ok then. Producing (recreational) drugs isn't innovation. Drugs don't improve your daily life. Absence of them doesn't make life resemble that of the 1900s. They don't increase productivity allowing you to achieve more with your life. And most importantly, the number of people consuming recreational drugs from SA is a rounding error. Every single person in Europe consum…

Cocaine and other illegal stimulants certainly increase productivity to some extent.

The point I'm making isn't that US software is inherently harmful (nor would I make that argument for every drug that is illegal in the US, though) but that the situation is comparable in that US software and business conduct found to be in violation in the EU is harder to prosecute than the same software and conduct from EU companies. The "innovation" US companies take advantage of is getting to grow their products and companies and a less regulated market before taking advantage of the slow reaction time of the legal systems of foreign markets they enter fully-formed (whereas companies local to those market would get nipped in the bud if they tried to build the same kind of business there).

This should be self-evident when the reason we're even talking about this is that the EU is taking actions against US companies that it would have already taken against any EU company trying the same (e.g. consider the Ireland tax loophole used by non-EU companies in the EU or the circus around trying to game the GDPR and privacy laws).

In short: the innovative advantage of Silicon Valley is that it allowed tech startups to build products that would have been blatantly illegal in Europe and then enter the European market with sufficient political and financial capital to squash any existing competition and bite the legal fines until legislation was able to catch up with what they were doing. This is consistent with recent "disruptions" like Airbnb innovating zoning law violations, Uber innovating taxi service regulation violations, Crypto innovating financial product regulation violations and AI innovating copyright violations.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#344

Post by simondotau »

cageface wrote: post #264
prox wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Google is bad but don’t take away my counterbalance against Apple/MS?” , bit of an odd conclusion. Breaking up a monopoly is always good, it will give us consumers more choice. Gives them less power of politicians. Plus Android is open source so I think you got nothing to worry about.

Their competitors are also engaged in a lot of market abuse for which they’ve mostly emerged unscathed.

Unless we punish all burglars, we shouldn't catch any burglars.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#345

Post by shadowgovt »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #333
shadowgovt wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does modern MS stifle competition and prevent effective capitalism? I don't think I've heard anyone beat that drum and get a band marching behind it in years. This is the same Microsoft that's seen its desktop market share slowly erode since 2013, right? The one holding 1.9% of smartphone marketshare? The one so impossible to regulate that the FTC is regulating it right now ( https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/pres…

> Does modern MS stifle competition and prevent effective capitalism? Of course they do, and anyone who is confused by their marketing into thinking otherwise is just plain blind. The last someone "beat that drum" was none other than the british competition regulator aka CMA not _two months ago_, which among maaany other things literally complained Microsoft was still using their monopoly power to prevent gaming on d…

The European Commission respectfully disagrees.

https://gamerant.com/cma-overstated-microsoft-cloud-gaming-s...

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#346

Post by AshamedCaptain »

shadowgovt wrote: post #345
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does modern MS stifle competition and prevent effective capitalism? Of course they do, and anyone who is confused by their marketing into thinking otherwise is just plain blind. The last someone "beat that drum" was none other than the british competition regulator aka CMA not _two months ago_, which among maaany other things literally complained Microsoft was still using their monopoly power to prevent gaming on d…

The European Commission respectfully disagrees. https://gamerant.com/cma-overstated-microsoft-cloud-gaming-s...

Ironically, I already predicted that the EC would likely bend over and accept MS's ridiculous proposal, but we would never know since the CMA rejecting it first would leave the EC in a untenable position. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35772912

I guess it is not as untenable as I thought, and the EC believes it can just throw shit towards the CMA until they get away with it. I also have my confirmation on whether the EC would be stupid enough to accept the deal.

Anyway, you cannot disagree with the fact that MS still _tried_ to stifle Linux, which is the point (and the part that I'm quoting). And arguably both as server and as a desktop OS.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#347

Post by dang »

piva00 wrote: post #213
aurareturn wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. So there are plenty of choices, both paid and free. Why did you say there's no competition?

[flagged]

Please don't cross into personal attack and please avoid tit-for-tat spats on HN, regardless of how bad someone's comments are or you feel they are. We're trying for just the opposite here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#348

Post by dang »

aurareturn wrote: post #227
piva00 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Please don't cross into personal attack and please avoid tit-for-tat spats on HN, regardless of how bad someone's comments are or you feel they are. We're trying for just the opposite here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#349

Post by shadowgovt »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #346
shadowgovt wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European Commission respectfully disagrees. https://gamerant.com/cma-overstated-microsoft-cloud-gaming-s...

Ironically, I already predicted that the EC would likely bend over and accept MS's ridiculous proposal, but we would never know since the CMA rejecting it first would leave the EC in a untenable position. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35772912 I guess it is not as untenable as I thought, and the EC believes it can just throw shit towards the CMA until they get away with it. I also have my confirmation on wheth…

Sure, back in the day. And they don't go out of their way to support it in the modern era.

...but this goes back to the US interpretation of "monopoly practice" vs. the European interpretation. Where was the consumer harm? How does MS "stifle" an OS that you can just pick up from a CD, floppy disk, or the Internet and drop on a machine you own?

History seems to have shown "You can't." In general, the biggest hindrance to Linux desktop adoption is the Linux UX (and for games, the experience of building one with the libraries available on Linux [https://utopixel.games/en/blog/building-outer-wonders-for-li...]), not anything Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter) have done to it.

Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling

#350

Post by angmarsbane »

prox wrote: post #218
cageface wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google deserves a lot of recent criticism but at the same time I think they provide an important counterbalance to Apple and Microsoft. I especially don’t want to see Android go away as the only competitor to iOS.

“Google is bad but don’t take away my counterbalance against Apple/MS?” , bit of an odd conclusion. Breaking up a monopoly is always good, it will give us consumers more choice. Gives them less power of politicians. Plus Android is open source so I think you got nothing to worry about.

Breaking up monopolies creates more jobs too.
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