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The worst possible antitrust outcome

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Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#131

Post by pas »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #74

The worst thing about Google is that they discovered the ad-model and created an entire generation that is entitled to free tools and services on the internet. People who think Gmail, drive, sheets, translate, Gemini, YouTube, search, android, etc., etc. are all inherently free services that Google is greedily slapping ads on. Google is a monster because people so heavily favor the ad-model over paying for things. Ka…

commercial TV and radio stations were a very well established thing already by the 90s, the audience paid for their receiver and in exchange for the ads got to see movies and serialized shows.

similarly there were free magazines which were basically ad booklets with some minimal original content in between a ton of ads

... there were ISPs experimenting with the model, both for users and for hosting

free email boxes were the norm, with 5-10MB storage

...

and just as now there was also HBO and fancy cable stations and encrypted stations, and many people did pay for magazine subscriptions

...

the real problem is that a hypergiant is cross-financing the development of a browser

these cross-financing setups ought to be firewalled, the browser should be in a foundation

(of course we know that in practice these are not super useful, see eg. OpenAI, but ... in the end California regulations seem to have helped to keep OpenAI as a "non-profit")

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#132

Post by AnthonyMouse »

nielsbot wrote: post #128
bpt3 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying that the marginal rates you're salivating over produced effective rates on the highest earners that weren't much different from today.

But does that mean we shouldn't raise taxes? "Effective Income Tax Rates Have Fallen for The Top One Percent Since World War II" https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/effective-income-tax-rate...

> "Effective Income Tax Rates Have Fallen for The Top One Percent Since World War II"

That link has an agenda. Choosing the height of WWII as the baseline is cherry picking. Effective rates were higher during WWII than they were before or since, but that was eight decades ago, not for very long, and for an obvious reason.

They're also achieving even that much difference by applying speculative math to capital gains, which is meaningless because doing that in real life would result in major behavioral changes.

And it's still not clear how any of that is supposed to solve it. Suppose the founder of MegaCorp has to sell more of their shares to pay the money in tax. They sell them to BlackRock or China or whatever. Is that going to cause MegaCorp's lobbyists to stop trying to capture the government? How? You need there to be more, smaller companies, not change who owns the shares of the predatory megacorps.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#133

Post by fsflover »

like_any_other wrote: post #27
idle_zealot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what distinction you're drawing between ideological opposition to rich people existing and opposition to disproportionately powerful people existing. In what hypothetical world are these not the exact same thing? Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action. That's the point of it, and is just another way of saying "power over others". A world where being rich doesn't grant power…

> In what hypothetical world are these not the exact same thing? A world with laws against monopolies, anti-competitive practices, and media ownership concentration. Not all uses of power are equivalent. Standard Oil wasn't tamed by taking money from its owner. In fact, even if ownership over the company was dispersed among 10x as many shareholders as before, so long as the company can continue to act as a single ent…

Enforcing such laws becomes practically impossible when the monopoly becomes wealthier than many countries. Case in point: this court decision. Why do you think it happened? Probably because Google is too wealthy.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#134

Post by actionfromafar »

ameister14 wrote: post #117
rayiner wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t think of a single legitimate reason why Google should be allowed to pay Apple to use its search engine. Google is using the proceeds of its monopoly to exclude competition to maintain its monopoly. How is that norm per se antitrust violation? (That said, I’m not an antitrust lawyer and find it quite unintuitive, lol.)

Basically it should be illegal per se but since the 70's the Court has really limited how they apply that and so courts generally prefer to do a competitive analysis/quick look first. In this case, the argument might be that since the cost to consumer doesn't increase, it isn't a naked price fix so it's not per se illegal. As I learned it, since BMI & ASCAP v. CBS, in 1979, it's essentially been that the per se rule…

Is that why call things getting "borked"?

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#135

Post by xyzzyz »

rayiner wrote: post #97
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #54

> One of the facts established in the verdict was that Google had been slipping Apple more than $20b/year in exchange for which, Apple forbore from making a competing search engine. Didn't Apple say that 1) they weren't interested in being in the Search Engine business 2) (in testimony) Google was by far the best search engine that they were going to use anyway ? Certainly, $20B/Y weighs on the scale, but knowing App…

I can’t think of a single legitimate reason why Google should be allowed to pay Apple to use its search engine. Google is using the proceeds of its monopoly to exclude competition to maintain its monopoly. How is that norm per se antitrust violation? (That said, I’m not an antitrust lawyer and find it quite unintuitive, lol.)

All the while they keep blocking the most mundane acquisitions.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#136

Post by TFYS »

pdonis wrote: post #23
idle_zealot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what distinction you're drawing between ideological opposition to rich people existing and opposition to disproportionately powerful people existing. In what hypothetical world are these not the exact same thing? Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action. That's the point of it, and is just another way of saying "power over others". A world where being rich doesn't grant power…

> Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action Not in a free market. In a free market, people have the option to refuse to accept your money if they don't want to give you what you want to buy from them with it.

There are probably very few things people wouldn't do if the price is high enough. How many people would refuse to lick a boot for ten million dollars? The bigger the wealth differences become, the harder it is to resist the people with wealth. Wealth is the same thing as power, denying that is silly.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#137

Post by Yizahi »

pdonis wrote: post #100
Yizahi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is theoretically and practically impossible that free market could exist. Every unregulated market will be quickly monopolized by a biggest player and it will stop being free by definition. It's like saying that humans can fly unassisted. Sure, we can jump in the air and for a few milliseconds remain completely in the air. But we can hardly call that process a flight, if it can last for extremely short period of t…

> unregulated market A free market is not unregulated. It's regulated by the voluntary choices of all market participants. The alternative is to have the market regulated by those who aren't participants--i.e., who have no skin in the game and who suffer no consequences if the regulations are bad. That's basically the situation we have now. Anyone who thinks that's a good thing isn't living on the same planet as I am…

> It's regulated by the voluntary choices of all market participants.

So, what do you think would happen when the biggest market participant makes a choice incompatible with choices of the smaller participants? I can tell you - the biggest player would win. Or it would slowly destroy competitors (slowly mean just a few years), and then start imposing it's rules. Basically any free market would turn to feudalism, which would then turn into a bloody and crude proto-government. Basically the same we have today minus any pro-human and pro-free market policies we have managed to carve for ourselves over centuries. It is impossible that free market would be anything different.

So yeah, because humans are shit at governing, the only viable way (until someone invents something new) is external control.

> Virtually all monopolies, historically, have been due to government intervention in markets to give special privileges to certain players.

Correct. And do you know why that happened? Because there was no control and biggest market players could simply buy the poor politician they wish. And in the free market you describe these two step would be simply combined into one - the biggest market player would also perform as a pseudo politician, ultra monopoly with zero oversight.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#138

Post by frognumber »

tomComb wrote: post #82
Workaccount2 wrote: post #74

The worst thing about Google is that they discovered the ad-model and created an entire generation that is entitled to free tools and services on the internet. People who think Gmail, drive, sheets, translate, Gemini, YouTube, search, android, etc., etc. are all inherently free services that Google is greedily slapping ads on. Google is a monster because people so heavily favor the ad-model over paying for things. Ka…

I think the ad model as the document model of the internet consumer was discovered long before Google, but otherwise agree with you.

I think you're wrong, and you're underestimating the transformational impact of Ad-Words.

Free internet existed before paid internet, true, but mostly because people did things for other motives (like fun). Altavista was a tech demo for DEC. Good information was found on personal web pages, most often on .edu sites.

Banner ads existed, but they were confined to the sketchy corners of the Internet. Thing today's spam selling viagra. Anyone credible didn't want to be associated with them.

What Google figured out was:

1) Design. Discrete ad-words didn't make them look sketchy. This discovery came up by accident, but that's a longer story.

2) Targeting. Search terms let them know what to ads to show.

I can't overstate the impact of #2. Profits went up many-fold over prior ad models. This was Google's great -- and ultra-secret -- discovery. For many years, they were making $$$, while cultivating a public image of (probably) bleeding $$$ or (at best) making $. People were doing math on how much revenue Google was getting based on traditional web advertising models, while Google knew precisely what you were shopping for.

By the time people found out how much money Google's ad model was making, they had market lock-in.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#140

Post by fsflover »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #54

> One of the facts established in the verdict was that Google had been slipping Apple more than $20b/year in exchange for which, Apple forbore from making a competing search engine. Didn't Apple say that 1) they weren't interested in being in the Search Engine business 2) (in testimony) Google was by far the best search engine that they were going to use anyway ? Certainly, $20B/Y weighs on the scale, but knowing App…

> Didn't Apple say that 1) they weren't interested in being in the Search Engine business 2) (in testimony) Google was by far the best search engine that they were going to use anyway ?

Aren't Apple getting 20 bln annually to say that? Google search quality has deteriorated drastically in the last decade, as evidenced by the court and numerous HN threads.

> but knowing Apple's negotiation tactics they could also have used their weigh

These two megacorps are parts of the duopoly and have no incentive to change that.

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