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Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

theregister.com

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Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#31

Post by fny »

I'm very curious to see what a breakup looks like. Past breakups involved "uniform" businesses:

- American Tobacco: Commodity

- Standard Oil: Commodity

- AT&T: Utility

- Northern Securities: Railroads

- Swift & Co: Meatpacking

- Kodak: Film

- Paramount: Movie Theaters

Google is more of a synergistic conglomerate. How would spinning off an individual business like Chrome, Android, or AdWords reduce their respective dominance?

I support this ruling and more across all industries, but I'm trying to square how a breakup should work that actually drives competition.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#32

Post by dceddia »

Yeah I don’t know how this will go, but I’m not too optimistic.

It feels like one of those situations where we “get exactly what we asked for”. Like those movies with an Evil Genie who delivers on their wishes in the sneakiest way possible. “You wished for $1M, so I burned your house down - but look at all the insurance money you got!”

Or maybe a bit like how everyone wanted their cable bills to be cheaper (“just let me pay for the few channels I watch!”) and what we got was 15 different streaming services at $12/month.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#33

Post by bearjaws »

matthewfelgate wrote: post #7

How is Google more of a Monopoly than Microsoft?

DOJ/FTC cannot possibly sue every company at the same time, and probably shouldn't.

Depending on how this goes, companies will need to change how they act in fear of the hammer coming down on them next.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#34

Post by newsclues »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #26
is_true wrote: post #6

I think Google can win this easily by using the public opinion against the regulators. They just need to say that they are gonna start charging for all their services because without the level of integration they have it doesn't make sense to keep running businesses that otherwise would lose money.

The public would have been against breaking up Standard Oil because they kept oil cheap.

Standard oil lacks the ability to shape the narrative that google has.

If standard oil had control of the information space history would be very different. Not even Ma Bell had the power that google has

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#35

Post by accurrent »

The best way to tackle this is enforce right for repair and require opensourcing of various components. Breaking up google will be an impossible job.

If we mandate that our electronics and software must be repairable then these companies will automatically no longer be able to hold monopolies on their platforms.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#38

Post by Gormo »

dosinga wrote: post #11

Part of the problem is that tech products tend to be natural monopolies. If you split android off Google, it will probably just lose out against iOS in the West and some Chinese Android version elsewhere. As the article says, that's not necessarily better.

> Part of the problem is that tech products tend to be natural monopolies.

Middleman platforms often become natural monopolies due to network effects, but how does this expand to tech products in general?

I don't see any structural incentives that lead to natural monopolies in search, email, or a wide variety of other products that Google is dominant in.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#39

Post by uptownJimmy »

Google's "search results" are the textbook definition of a monopolized good/service. The whole thing is almost a casino, rigged to the point of absurdity.

There has been nothing in my life so disillusioning as working on a Web app for a company that is more or less required to play Google's game.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#40

Post by safety1st »

dosinga wrote: post #11

Part of the problem is that tech products tend to be natural monopolies. If you split android off Google, it will probably just lose out against iOS in the West and some Chinese Android version elsewhere. As the article says, that's not necessarily better.

People say this but there's nothing "natural" about Google's monopoly, to get to where they are today, they had to make a dozen major acquisitions, and if the last few administrations hadn't been bought and paid for, the FTC could have said no to any of them. In particular they should have looked very very hard at Doubleclick. I mean who are we kidding, they should have said no to Doubleclick.

So we are in a world today where things like Android, Chrome, and the default search experience on an iPhone are all what they are because of Google's need to build moats around the GooDubClick cash cow. More importantly it's really hard to compete with these things unless you have a GooDubClick cash cow of your own, which guess what basically nobody does. Decouple them and that will start to change, there will be many businesses that will take all sorts of novel approaches, and that is what we refer to as "innovation" when we are being pragmatic and un-cynical about what innovation is, it's a dozen or a thousand companies throwing new stuff out there and sooner or later some of it sticks and the world changes.

NOTHING is natural about what Google is today unless you consider the FTC not doing its job for 15-20 years "natural."

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