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

The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

thebignewsletter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 351 posts

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#321

Post by GeekyBear »

ewoodrich wrote: post #320
GeekyBear wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple doesn't support interoperability with iMessage or a modern standard like RCS. Sorry, but Google's proprietary closed source fork of RCS is not any kind of "standard". > Google's version of RCS—the one promoted on the website with Google-exclusive features like optional encryption—is definitely proprietary, by the way. If this is supposed to be a standard, there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS A…

Then Apple should allow interoperability with the iMessage protocol. They maintain control without the anti-competitive side effects. They are also free to use any variant of RCS that isn't controlled by Google.

> Apple should allow interoperability

This is very amusing given that Google wants to charge people to have RCS that can interoperate with their proprietary closed source implementation of RCS.

> If you want to implement RCS, you'll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google. Google bought Jibe, the leading RCS server provider, in 2015. Today it has a whole sales pitch about how Google Jibe can "help carriers quickly scale RCS services, iterate in short cycles, and benefit from improvements immediately." So the pitch for Apple to adopt RCS isn't just this public-good nonsense about making texts with Android users better; it's also about running Apple's messages through Google servers. Google profits in both server fees and data acquisition.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#322

Post by ewoodrich »

GeekyBear wrote: post #321
ewoodrich wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Apple should allow interoperability with the iMessage protocol. They maintain control without the anti-competitive side effects. They are also free to use any variant of RCS that isn't controlled by Google.

> Apple should allow interoperability This is very amusing given that Google wants to charge people to have RCS that can interoperate with their proprietary closed source implementation of RCS. > If you want to implement RCS, you'll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google. Google bought Jibe, the leading RCS server provider, in 2015. Today it has…

Then allow iMessage to interoperate freely, problem solved. Very interested in the implementation of the new EU rules about this.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#323

Post by GeekyBear »

ewoodrich wrote: post #322
GeekyBear wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple should allow interoperability This is very amusing given that Google wants to charge people to have RCS that can interoperate with their proprietary closed source implementation of RCS. > If you want to implement RCS, you'll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google. Google bought Jibe, the leading RCS server provider, in 2015. Today it has…

Then allow iMessage to interoperate freely, problem solved. Very interested in the implementation of the new EU rules about this.

iMessage already does interoperate freely through the open standards SMS and MMS.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#324

Post by ewoodrich »

GeekyBear wrote: post #323
ewoodrich wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then allow iMessage to interoperate freely, problem solved. Very interested in the implementation of the new EU rules about this.

iMessage already does interoperate freely through the open standards SMS and MMS.

EU clearly disagrees

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#325

Post by mistercheph »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #267
flangola7 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficult but absolutely not impossible. There's whole domains of law dedicated to identifying and defining these kinds of fuzzy edge cases. Anyone that tells you it is impossible has malign motivations.

Wouldn't fixing all those edge cases defeat the point of something simple like a 95% rule? You'd be at the point where 95% is neither necessary nor sufficient and all of those laws covering the edge cases are the real law.

You have rediscovered the American legal system, the laws that cover the ‘edge’ cases are aptly named ‘case law’

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#326

Post by GeekyBear »

ewoodrich wrote: post #324
GeekyBear wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage already does interoperate freely through the open standards SMS and MMS.

EU clearly disagrees

Well, EU courts have recently ruled against Google's entire surveillance capitalism business model unless they convince users to opt in to ad tracking explicitly.

We'll see how it works out for both companies.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#327

Post by pclmulqdq »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #313
pclmulqdq wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but in any other market for goods, being the main supplier, the biggest supply-side brokerage, the biggest exchange, and the biggest demand-side brokerage would be considered a blatant antitrust violation. Somehow, Google thinks they can get away with it in ads.

Not true. Look at the market for meat. There are lots of farmers, a small number (really three or four) processors (who appear to carve up the national market into non overlapping regions) and then a large number of retail customers. To me that looks like an actual antitrust violation but the DoJ and FTC aren’t investigating bc they are obsessing about “big tech” uselessly and bringing bad cases they are going to los…

So the meat market is generally pretty healthy with an oligopoly at one stage of the supply chain? That actually sounds a lot better than I thought the meat market was. "Carving up" like that is also not a big problem unless they collude to do it, and it's a natural thing for an oligopoly market to do: each of the companies focuses on the niche they are best-equipped to serve, keeping in mind that their competition can come in if they get too greedy.

It's also a lot better than the ads market is, with literally one dominant player that monopolizes all stages of the supply chain. This is literally what Standard Oil did, controlling the wells, the refineries, and the distribution railroads to shut out competitors.

If you look at financial exchanges, there's a very good reason for the brokers and exchange to all be different companies.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#328

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

vharuck wrote: post #273
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…

It would also have the benefit of making supply chains more robust. Baby formula prices shot up during the pandemic because one factory had a contamination problem. My sister-in-law was asking friends on Facebook to look in their local stores for a specific type of formula her baby needed, because her store has empty shelves of it for a month. The free market wasn't solving that problem. A new baby formula factory ca…

> The free market wasn't solving that problem.

By the definition I learned in school, that's not a free market, precisely because it can't scale on both supply and demand sides. If it can't be (if factory startup costs will always be too high) then that's an argument for regulation to offset the problem, but it's not a free market problem.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#329

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

dudus wrote: post #148
Aurornis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why isn't US govt doing this? Because it would be incredibly unpopular, for one. Can you imagine being in the middle of some work, Googling a term, only to be hit with "Sorry, we're over the government limit and can't fulfill your search" Hacker News and Stack Overflow would be full of people trading tips about using VPNs to evade the limits. People don't actually like having the government restrict them from using…

Sorry you also spent your allotted time on Hacker News and Stack Overflow. Please ask about VPNs on Quora until the end of the month.

HN doesn't have 30% of the market for social media. SO might have >30% of whatever vertical they are, but that's not obvious to me.

Re: The antitrust trial against Google is starting in September

#330

Post by sam0x17 »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #187

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) i…

> we (google) give our product away for free and so do our competitors.

This is hogwash though. They take an 80% cut of the advertising profits (could be more now, this is just my dated figure that I know from a decade ago). Are the courts really incapable of dealing with an ad-supported monopoly in 2023?

Post reply on HN