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U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#121

Post by basch »

scarface74 wrote: post #77
shadowgovt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for an antitrust lawsuit. The remedy for antitrust is divestiture; if found guilty and the judge assigns that penalty, Google can't just pay their way out of it; they'd have to shut down / slice off into an independent company (probably) DoubleClick and some other acquisitions. Think less "EU fair practices violations" and more "Ma Bell breakup." The difference is that the EU lacks criminal authority (or jurisdic…

What does a divestiture of Google’s ad business when their entire business is selling ads?

All of their businesses that display ads could display ads from AdWords/DoubleClick, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon, just like any other website that hosts third party ads.

Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#122

Post by debacle »

xxpor wrote: post #99
debacle wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a liberal/conservative issue. This is a corporatism issue.

Agreed on the general point, but it's undeniable that corporatism has used conservative politics as the means to the end they desire. See also: every culture war, the fact that the only thing Republicans can agree on are court appointees and tax cuts.

I don't think you understand the US political system in a nuanced or realistic fashion.

Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#123

Post by danaris »

scarface74 wrote: post #81
pfarrell wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's anti-trust case was around just this kind of behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor... .

And absolutely nothing came of browser bundling in the US. The major case was more about MS forcing OEMs to buy licenses for Windows whether the computers shipped with Windows or not.

> And absolutely nothing came of browser bundling in the US.

But that has much less to do with the merits of the case, and much more to do with the fact that just before any action could be taken, George W Bush was elected president and began our current trajectory toward unbridled corporate governance of America.

Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#124

Post by scarface74 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #110
scarface74 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a divestiture of Google’s ad business when their entire business is selling ads?

Google has several separable ad verticals. To name only two: AdWords / AdSense is the "auction model" that made Google famous as an online ad brand and is the one they developed (mostly) in-house: advertisers bid on ad impressions, publishers get paid for offering slots on their pages to do the impressions. It's a very hands-off model in that advertisers don't need to control what sites their ads run on and site owne…

So now they are going to have to separate into three businesses - an infrastructure business and two other business that buy services from their infrastructure since it really can’t be separated at this point.

And you really think that the government is going to go that far or that it’s a good idea?

Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#125

Post by postalrat »

dahfizz wrote: post #88
thehappypm wrote: post #75

Google 2021 revenue: $258B Meta 2021 revenue: $118B Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league?

Anti-trust lawsuits don't require an absolute monopoly. It requires proving that a company behaved anti-competitively. > The lawsuit said Google had “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising.”

Then their first target should be Apple.

Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#126

Post by emodendroket »

booleandilemma wrote: post #106
emodendroket wrote: post #97

I'm kind of sour on antitrust as much of a solution for today's issues. If we had five smaller Googles doing the same thing what would that make better?

They wouldn't be smaller Googles, they'd be different companies altogether, with their own practices and work cultures. They'd have less bureaucracy, which might help them to innovate and move faster, and in different directions from each other.

In absolute terms more bureaucracy is required now because they must all duplicate administration that they can currently share.

Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#127

Post by starwind »

xxpor wrote: post #78

One of the conservative's legal project over the past 50 years main goals has been to maintain a Borkian consumer harm standard for anti-trust. With the current SCOTUS, I don't see much of a realistic path for this.

Bork argued that antitrust law shouldn't inherently challenge bigness. He felt that the antitrust should seek to maximize consumer welfare. That's been interpreted by the courts to mean lower prices, but any economist worth their salt will say consumer choice is an aspect of consumer welfare.

It doesn't matter if Little Caesars pizza is the cheapest option, if there aren't any other pizza options, consumer welfare is severely negatively impacted because some consumers won't like Little Caesars.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg—despite being lionized by liberals—was an extremely pro-business justice who played a strong role in the Supreme Court siding with businesses in all but one antitrust case from 1995ish on. With her gone, I think this case may actually have a chance

Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#128

Post by scarface74 »

basch wrote: post #121
scarface74 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a divestiture of Google’s ad business when their entire business is selling ads?

All of their businesses that display ads could display ads from AdWords/DoubleClick, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon, just like any other website that hosts third party ads.

So now the government is going to force a separation into multiple companies and by doing so increase user tracking and sharing information across companies…

Win???

Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#129

Post by olivermarks »

danaris wrote: post #111
debacle wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a liberal/conservative issue. This is a corporatism issue.

[flagged]

Google is a global company with huge EU antitrust issues as well as the advertising monopoly dispute in the US which is more of a rival corporations issue than a political one. They are now looking too big to succeed...

Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology

#130

Post by dekhn »

shadowgovt wrote: post #110
scarface74 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a divestiture of Google’s ad business when their entire business is selling ads?

Google has several separable ad verticals. To name only two: AdWords / AdSense is the "auction model" that made Google famous as an online ad brand and is the one they developed (mostly) in-house: advertisers bid on ad impressions, publishers get paid for offering slots on their pages to do the impressions. It's a very hands-off model in that advertisers don't need to control what sites their ads run on and site owne…

I am not sure Google could survive splitting prod. The enormous value of internal vertical integration that enabled them to grow ads & search traffic would be hard to replicate if there wasn't one signal source of truth that you could contact directly when there is an infrastructure problem.

I think "colossal pain in the ass" underestimates the order of magnitude of pain it would involve (borne by the hapless engineers, no doubt). Divesting the Cloud part of Google (IE moving Cloud into its own independent "prod2") is also somethinig interesting to think about.

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