241–250 of 351 posts
Won't this kill Firefox if Google gets told it cant pay browsers to put it as default? That would suck.
It would kill Mitchell Baker's salary. The browser would survive - as Firefox or forks.
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It's not free, but you aren't paying money for it.
In other words… it’s free. Google search is free. All of this “… then you are the product” stuff is totally meaningless legally and economically.
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“Bundling” can be anticompetitive but is not at issue in the actual case the government has filed. Nor can I personally identify a meaningful bundle from google in the right sense. You may be using the word informally.
I wasn’t referring to the case specifically, but Google is absolutely bundling products in the formal, illegal sense as well. Would drive, docs and gmail be free if you divorced them from the ad revenue products?
If they are all free then it’s not a bundle in the antitrust relevant sense. Microsoft Teams is a great example of an anticompetitive bundle if you want one.
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…
> We need proactive laws that break up companies if they grow beyond a certain size criteria. Even assuming that this is a good idea, this have an unnecessary risk of being unconstitutional and getting scrapped by the justices. If you want to limit property rights in this fundamental way, that has to be based on a very strong judicial basis. That's why almost all reasonable antitrust regulation happens in a reactive…
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“Bundling” can be anticompetitive but is not at issue in the actual case the government has filed. Nor can I personally identify a meaningful bundle from google in the right sense. You may be using the word informally.
I wasn’t referring to the case specifically, but Google is absolutely bundling products in the formal, illegal sense as well. Would drive, docs and gmail be free if you divorced them from the ad revenue products?
Yes, probably. They all count against your 15 GB quota of free storage, after which you have to pay Google for more. It's basically the same model as Dropbox.
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> Blocking iMessage on non Apple devices iMessage has always worked with any device that supports SMS. Google, on the other hand, actively blocked Windows Phone from having access to Youtube. Even when Microsoft paid to write a Youtube app themselves, Google blocked it. Google did the same thing and blocked Youtube on Amazon's Echo Show.
> iMessage has always worked with any device that supports SMS youtube has always worked in a web browser. Meanwhile I'm laughing about how fast Apple would come down on Google if they made their own Android chat that tapped into iMessage and internet commentators tried to justify it by "even when Google paid to write an iMessage app themselves, Apple blocked it"
Apple doesn't have a monopoly position to abuse in when it comes to texting.
Google, on the other hand, does nave a monopoly position on internet video, and a history of using that monopoly as a weapon against competing platforms.
So, what are the demands in this trial? Do they want to divide google? How?
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Look, I’m not informed or an expert here, but if it’s being given away for free, then the search itself is not the “product”. The way I understand it, Google’s monopoly is over the ad market. Stoller wrote a book on the subject which I never properly got through in its entirety, but it included a deep dive on what a monopoly is. You are correct - market share is not an anti-trust violation in it’s own. My assumption…
> You are correct - market share is not an anti-trust violation in it’s own. I think that entire line of jurisprudence is a tragic mistake. The wording of the law is crystal clear: "shall not monopolize", not "shall not monopolize unless it's just a really good product". A 95% market share should not be allowed under any circumstances.
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Look, I’m not informed or an expert here, but if it’s being given away for free, then the search itself is not the “product”. The way I understand it, Google’s monopoly is over the ad market. Stoller wrote a book on the subject which I never properly got through in its entirety, but it included a deep dive on what a monopoly is. You are correct - market share is not an anti-trust violation in it’s own. My assumption…
> You are correct - market share is not an anti-trust violation in it’s own. I think that entire line of jurisprudence is a tragic mistake. The wording of the law is crystal clear: "shall not monopolize", not "shall not monopolize unless it's just a really good product". A 95% market share should not be allowed under any circumstances.
And I agree that it shouldn’t have been “allowed” but here we are.
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In other words… it’s free. Google search is free. All of this “… then you are the product” stuff is totally meaningless legally and economically.
Wikipedia is free, Google search is not. You are paying for Google Search. People need to realize their privacy has value, a lot of value actually, otherwise Google Search and every other privacy invasive platform would cost money.
I mean… maybe? (How much is your data worth to google in dollars? Probably not that much.) But I think consumers understand how google makes their money. If your argument in court is “consumers are misunderstanding in dollar terms how much this is harming them,” then you are going to lose.