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The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

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Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#181

Post by lordnacho »

halflings wrote: post #163
Forgeties79 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you propose instead?

Banning anti-competitive behavior (which is what antitrust laws are for in the first place). For instance: a company actively blocking competition (e.g. coffee machine manufacturers that make it impossible for people to buy pods from another brand). Again, I am probably biased here, but I don't see much anti-competitive behaviour in the search engine space. If people have a clear superior alternative to Google, then…

What about buying the default search from Apple? Maybe I'm remembering it wrong but I seem to recall they pay a lot of money for that.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#182

Post by drdaeman »

halflings wrote: post #140
prakhar897 wrote: post #130

The Indian govt imposed restrictions that a payment provider in India can fulfill max 30% of the total volume of transactions in an year [1]. After that, they have to restrict themselves. This completely avoids monopoly and concentration risks. This can be done for search as well which makes sure at least 4 players stay in the market at all times. Why isn't US govt doing this? 1. https://www.indiatimes.com/worth/news…

> Why isn't US govt doing this? Why isn't the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, ... doing this? Because it's a pretty strong form of controlled economy that distorts the market. How would this work for search engines? Would you force people to use a different search engine than the one they want? (e.g. they type Google.com and end up redirected to Bing.com) ; or somehow just funnel revenue to other companies... then wh…

> How would this work for search engines?

There is a way. If we start treating Internet search as commodity/public utility, we can use shared municipal fiber analogy. One public website can route requests to multiple participating search providers, ensuring that the searches are evenly distributed.

Of course, it's not a good idea for a lot of reasons. Starting as extending government surveillance, through leaving consumers with limited choices (if different providers' result quality is significantly different, which it probably is), and all the way down to having to decide what qualifies as a search engine.

It's best to look at the root of the issue. I don't think most people are upset that Google is the most popular search engine out there. It's the other practices that make people wary or outright unhappy. Google is very multi-faceted, so government forcing company split (e.g. make Google Search, Gmail, Chrome, Android etc. entirely separate entities), or disallowing of some business practices (such as making Chrome cater to Google Analytics needs) might be beneficial.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#183

Post by mordae »

siliconc0w wrote: post #54

It's hard to tell if it's Google's dominance causing search to suck or just the web ecosystem naturally optimizing for clicks. I will say most queries with even vaguely commercial intent do seem to get the max or nearly a full page of sponsored links. I don't recall what it was like years ago but I'm pretty sure it is worse. I also think it's pretty clear the platform take-rate needs to be generally lowered across th…

Try Kagi. They are weeding out the bad results waaaay more aggressively than Google. It helps a lot. They even allow me to immediately boost or block whole websites! Something absolutely trivial Google just refused to do.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#184

Post by lordnacho »

hgs3 wrote: post #96

Antitrust laws are too reactive. We need proactive laws that break up companies if they grow beyond a certain size criteria. Ideally, the criteria would be aggressive enough to kill large corporations leaving behind only small to medium-sized businesses. The result would be markets with increased competition, more innovation, lower prices, more options for employment and self-employment, and the elimination of Big Co…

Bigger fines and liquidation on misbehaviour.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#185

Post by GeekyBear »

stale2002 wrote: post #176
GeekyBear wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By iMessage blocking, you surely knew that I didn't mean just interoperability via SMS It's not blocking at all, when you explicitly support interoperation. The only example that can obviously be called "blocking" is when Google used it's internet video monopoly as a weapon against Microsoft's competing smart phone platform. Refusing to allow anyone to produce a Youtube app for Windows Phone isn't even in the same…

Since it seems like you are not aware, you should know that the functionality available for iMessage is different on other platforms. That may be causing your confusing here. You weren't aware of the functionality difference that Apple prevents other platforms from using with their design choices. I'd recommend that you research which functionality is prevented on other platforms, since you didn't seem to know about…

Are we both talking about a text messaging app that can send text messages to any device that supports the universal SMS standard?

That's not blocking.

A good example of blocking is not allowing any developers on a competing smart phone platform to write an app that allows users to access your monopoly internet video platform.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#186

Post by eitland »

mattlondon wrote: post #56

Hmm we got the internet and cellular phones because AT&T were broken up? Citation needed I think. That sounds pretty far-fetched and over-reaching to me.

The quality of telephone services took of and the prices plummeted here in Norway when the phone monopoly was broken around 1998.

I was there and remember going from expensive landlines with complicated pricing structures all the way to cell phone plans so cheap every kid has one.

IMO no way it would have happened with the monopoly we had in the nineties.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#187

Post by huitzitziltzin »

I appreciate the passion Matt Stoller brings to antitrust issues but his analyses are not good on the economics, to say the very least.

I agree that some of google’s conduct is very questionable. It’s not obvious to me that paying to be the default search product is pro-competitive.

On the other hand, the case that Google is going to make (and which I think is going to be really hard for the government to overcome) is this: we (google) give our product away for free and so do our competitors. What’s more, the cost of switching search engines is literally zero: just type Bing instead of Google.

If customers are choosing our search product among two free options, then our product is better. It’s going to be very difficult to establish that there’s an abuse of dominant position in that case. (There is other behavior by google which is more questionable, but in search they are on firm ground.)

Having a large market share is not an antitrust violation, nor should it be.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#188

Post by mordae »

constantcrying wrote: post #42
p_j_w wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has over 90% of the desktop OS and Office software markets. It’s impossible to come up with a reasonable definition of monopoly that doesn’t include them in those markets.

It isn't about market share, but about anti-competitive practices. Is Microsoft abusing their market position to keep competitors out of the market?

They are literally writing the fucking laws in many EU countries to make themselves the only public sector cloud provider. They are making sure that it's their OS and their products being taught at schools. They are beyond simple anti-competitive practices, they are a fucking force of nature nowadays.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#189

Post by stale2002 »

GeekyBear wrote: post #185
stale2002 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it seems like you are not aware, you should know that the functionality available for iMessage is different on other platforms. That may be causing your confusing here. You weren't aware of the functionality difference that Apple prevents other platforms from using with their design choices. I'd recommend that you research which functionality is prevented on other platforms, since you didn't seem to know about…

Are we both talking about a text messaging app that can send text messages to any device that supports the universal SMS standard? That's not blocking. A good example of blocking is not allowing any developers on a competing smart phone platform to write an app that allows users to access your monopoly internet video platform.

> Are we both talking about a text messaging app

We are talking about iMessage.

Were you not aware of the functionality differences, cross platform?

I can totally understand if you weren't aware of them, because you had only used one type of phone, for example.

It can be hard to know about things like this, depending on ones personal experience.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#190

Post by huitzitziltzin »

prakhar897 wrote: post #130

The Indian govt imposed restrictions that a payment provider in India can fulfill max 30% of the total volume of transactions in an year [1]. After that, they have to restrict themselves. This completely avoids monopoly and concentration risks. This can be done for search as well which makes sure at least 4 players stay in the market at all times. Why isn't US govt doing this? 1. https://www.indiatimes.com/worth/news…

Because it’s a bad idea?

You shouldn’t ensure that three potentially inferior products stay on the market. That makes no sense.

It also reduces the incentives those firms have to invest in quality - at some point there is a hard limit on how much competition they face. That would be a terrible, terrible law.

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