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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 do…
How is Google more of a Monopoly than Microsoft?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Meanwhile just about every product Google has I can use someone else.
Isn't it time to think about either (a) just accepting that you give them a much wider birth or (b) be much faster and tactical in your enforcement. Not every monopoly case needs to result in a break up. If you could point at one bad thing Google did - maybe the Apple deal for example, get that in court quickly with fast penalties that don't require massive corporate interference maybe we would be better off.
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.
Maybe even demanded that certain too effective components were separated like adds. Or with Amazon retail from AWS.
Japan tried to curb the Yakuza by enacting laws to specifically punish them. Not only it didn't work as well as they thought, but other criminals also flourished in the underworld by virtue of not being Yakuza. Whatever they do to go after Google must be really well thought and coordinated otherwise they will just be passing the crown to someone else a little bit smarter.
If you are specifically referring to Apple becoming an even bigger monopoly, that would be a bad thing but I think in the US they've already effectively won.
1. Forbid Google from paying Apple and Android OEM’s to be the default search engine. Also, detach Google search from Android and forbid Google from forcing it to be included on every Android phone. 2. Give Google search competitors access to Google’s search data so these new AI search engine companies can compete. Without these huge amounts of data, they have no chance. Done!
If what comes after is not better, then we waited too long to break this monopoly up. We either start ripping this band-aids off or we will just continually have a worse and worse internet.
If what comes after is not better, then we waited too long to break this monopoly up. We either start ripping this band-aids off or we will just continually have a worse and worse internet.
Or do I misunderstand your point?
The whole point of breaking up monopolies is not moral principle. It's so that things get better for customers. If they don't, then what's the justification for breaking them up?
I agree that Google has an inordinate amount of power in the market and that it has to be restrained. That said, I do not like the 'better' qualifier here. It depends too much on who is reading it. Hell, it is not impossible average user will dislike the change ( but they always do).