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An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

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Re: An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

#101

Post by choppaface »

hotstickyballs wrote: post #53
kumarvvr wrote: post #45

This is the most important news on the internet today. Google has completely transformed itself into this uber-corp, that is hell bent on absolute dominance. Wow. I am an avid internet user, very much interested in technology / business / social media, and I was not aware of this. Sure, there is an anti-trust court case here and there, and I almost always seem to see EU has fined FAANG companies some millions of doll…

Which part of the tech industry would want to do so? Every VC/tech exec wants a monopoly like Google.

They want to build a monopoly and then sell it and collect rent from it. They don’t want to deal with consequences.

Re: An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

#102

Post by btilly »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #98
btilly wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that had a great effect, why did they continue violating antitrust law in the ways documented in the EU? It wasn't like their antitrust history started with browsers. Their business practices were on display before - for instance look at the 1994 consent decree that they signed. Or did you think that Netscape was their first antitrust case?

I think it had a huge effect on changing the practices of their potential consumers. I'm aware that Microsoft and Google still have massive marketshare, but there's no way of knowing what the world would look like if that lawsuit hadn't happened. They technically lost in the legal court, but internally may have been congratulating themselves because the penalty was so small. But they lost in the court of public opini…

In what court of public opinion did they lose? Among people who were interested in open source 20 years ago? Sure! But who else doesn't like them?

The general public of people our age thinks good things about Microsoft. Even my siblings find my dislike of Microsoft bizarre. The only thing about Microsoft that most people my age ever hated was Clippy. And even Clippy is now generally liked.

And developers under 35 seem to find it bizarre that if I call Microsoft the Evil Empire. Just as I once found it strange that developers from the 1980s thought of IBM that way.

Re: An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

#103

Post by dangus »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #98
btilly wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that had a great effect, why did they continue violating antitrust law in the ways documented in the EU? It wasn't like their antitrust history started with browsers. Their business practices were on display before - for instance look at the 1994 consent decree that they signed. Or did you think that Netscape was their first antitrust case?

I think it had a huge effect on changing the practices of their potential consumers. I'm aware that Microsoft and Google still have massive marketshare, but there's no way of knowing what the world would look like if that lawsuit hadn't happened. They technically lost in the legal court, but internally may have been congratulating themselves because the penalty was so small. But they lost in the court of public opini…

I would put forth an alternative theory with two parts: the smaller factor is that Linux was a better for web servers than Windows Server and the explosion of the business impact of the web sent developers toward workflows that played nicely with Linux.

The bigger factor is that smartphones allowed competitors to get a reset on the playing field for the consumer market.

Mac marketshare was in single digits until the iPhone took hold (yes, even after the success of the iPod), and we still had Microsoft dominating the market with over 80% marketshare as of 2018 (macOS has only hit double digit marketshare percentage as of about 2016, roughly doubling to over 20% from that time until today).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha...

As an edit, maybe I’d add factor number 3: web-based business applications. I would say that Google’s business productivity suite set businesses free to be much more platform agnostic, along with other tools that moved from installed desktop applications to web.

Re: An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

#104

Post by chung8123 »

btilly wrote: post #21

The article massively overstates the impact of the 1998 Microsift trial. What Microsoft got was a slap on the wrist that they considered just a cost of doing business. Netscape died, and Microsoft's behavior remained the same. Microsoft didn't blink until acround 2008 when the EU cases finally fined them enough that they blinked. See, for example, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-eu/eu-fines-mic... .

That is hard to predict and would be a rewrite of history. Microsoft operated their business with handcuffs for years and it definitely allowed Apple to make a lot of advances in bundling things that Microsoft was too scared to do.

Re: An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

#105

Post by psd1 »

hubco wrote: post #74
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, what happens is that these values are slowly made more acceptable. "Think of the children" to make privacy violation more acceptable; "They are terrorists" to make human rights violations more acceptable; "Drain the swamp" or "The election was stolen" to make insurrection more acceptable; "Protect our women" to make transphobia more acceptable. That kinda thing. It's happening everywhere.

> In practice, what happens is that these values are slowly made more acceptable. > "Protect our women" to make transphobia more acceptable. This is itself a reaction to unacceptable values being imposed, namely that a subset of men should be allowed to disregard women's boundaries and consent with impunity. The pushback is because so many women are standing up and saying no, we don't accept this incursion on our rig…

I can help! Stop insisting that trans women are men, then there is no problem.

Re: An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

#106

Post by thfuran »

hubco wrote: post #74
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, what happens is that these values are slowly made more acceptable. "Think of the children" to make privacy violation more acceptable; "They are terrorists" to make human rights violations more acceptable; "Drain the swamp" or "The election was stolen" to make insurrection more acceptable; "Protect our women" to make transphobia more acceptable. That kinda thing. It's happening everywhere.

> In practice, what happens is that these values are slowly made more acceptable. > "Protect our women" to make transphobia more acceptable. This is itself a reaction to unacceptable values being imposed, namely that a subset of men should be allowed to disregard women's boundaries and consent with impunity. The pushback is because so many women are standing up and saying no, we don't accept this incursion on our rig…

>namely that a subset of men should be allowed to disregard women's boundaries and consent with impunity.

What?

Re: An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

#107

Post by Jensson »

saynay wrote: post #31
dav_Oz wrote: post #24

> I am not anyone that understands the industry and the markets in the way that you do. And so I take seriously when companies are telling me that if this gets disclosed, it’s going to cause competitive harm. Wait. What? An "anti-trust" trial against one of the five trillion dollar company in the world abusing its monopoly power is taken seriously on its claim it could cause "competitive harm"? Catch 22. I guess the…

Strictly speaking, it is over the companies monopoly in search. Google also lives in other markets where there is competition, so this may be about those markets not search.

But Google probably have a lot of data about their competitors that they would like to present to the judges. Making that data public would make it look like Google is smearing the competition, I can see why a judge would agree to keep that secret.

For example, Apple maybe had an auction to bid for default search spot on their platforms. Google bid the highest as we know, but we don't know what the competition bid and Google probably want to present that as evidence that this was just a normal auction similar to bidding for advertisement spots. For example, if Bing bid 90% of the current Google bid, then it is pretty clear that Google wasn't paying Apple to keep competition out but rather paying Apple for a premium spot in a fair market.

Nobody argues that Apple is anti competitive when they pay Google to put ads on top of certain search results, so why would Google be anti competitive when they pay Apple for a premium spot? They don't pay Apple to keep others out, just for the premium spot, you can still use other search engines.

Re: An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

#108

Post by TheCoelacanth »

shadowgovt wrote: post #64
NickC25 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a company feels the need to reveal their trade secrets in court to make their case, but ultimately wants to maintain protection over the trade secret itself, what option would you provide them? I wouldn't give them any options, as they are on trial for a reason. Corporate America can't have its cake and eat it too. Google is a multi-trillion dollar publicly traded corporation, they have significant cultural, pol…

> I wouldn't give them any options, as they are on trial for a reason > They are in court due to abuse of one (or more?) of those powers. "If he weren't a drug dealer, why did the cops arrest him?" Even the corporations have a right to a fair trial. Innocent-until-proven-guilty applies to them too.

Innocent until proven guilty does not apply in civil trials.

Re: An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

#110

Post by sangnoir »

taeric wrote: post #81
sangnoir wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that doesn't give the DOJ a free ride to use an antitrust trial in one area to punish a company in other more competitive areas by revealing trade secrets. That is extrajudicial, and not far off from a dirty cop harassing an innocent party "You may beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride" . The trial itself should not be a punishment under a half-decent justice system.

But companies also shouldn't get a free ride with "trade secret." At some level, they are free to pick their defense. And, charity to the actual ruling, I'm assuming that better arguments were made behind closed doors to get to this point? I don't think it should be a problem to have parts of the process closed, at all. I do find it odd to have such a large blockout, though.

> But companies also shouldn't get a free ride with "trade secret"

They don't - the judge determines what should be sealed by weighing public interest against potential harm. In this instance, the article author disagrees with the judge's decisions.

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