Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

zyppy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 309 posts

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#151

Post by washadjeffmad »

roenxi wrote: post #146
kens wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly I think some historical background is necessary here. Nowadays IBM isn't a monopoly but during the 20th century, IBM was more or less a monopoly. IBM's antitrust problems go back to their 1936 consent decree and 1956 consent decree. IBM was subject to a huge antitrust case that went on from 1969 to 1982 as well as many other antitrust lawsuits. The first point is that…

> antitrust law is pretty much incoherent and illogical Most things antitrust are incoherent and illogical. The unofficial plan seems to be literally to find market leaders who are offering substantially better products than the competition and then attack them for unspecified and likely immeasurable gains. Whether or not we've seen benefits from past antitrust actions, I don't believe measurements and observations o…

Google recently removed use of its sync API (and others) from Chromium. What you call a "search engine" is really a vast network of integrated services that Google can pull the plug on at any moment for any reason.

If you want to make money from your site/channel, you pony up to Google's ad services to get ads from Google's ad networks to show up higher in Google's search engines so your customers with Google accounts can easily sign into your site running Google's authentication and feed metrics back into Google's web browser that's optimized for Google content. That's some kind of vertical integration, baby.

I'm deliriously sleepy, but I'm sure I got like, 70% of that right. I don't want to just de-Google, I want to be able to extricate and cordon off it and everything related to it on the web like I do with Facebook. But how?

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#153

Post by srswtf123 »

kens wrote: post #116
tytso wrote: post #25

When I was at IBM 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly, since there were plenty of competitors in the hardware space (HP, Sun, Dell, etc) and in the software space (Oracle, SAP, etc.) and in the Services space (Accenture, PwC, KPMG, etc.) employees still had to complete annual legal training that was very similar to what was described in the post. Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is…

> 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly I think some historical background is necessary here. Nowadays IBM isn't a monopoly but during the 20th century, IBM was more or less a monopoly. IBM's antitrust problems go back to their 1936 consent decree and 1956 consent decree. IBM was subject to a huge antitrust case that went on from 1969 to 1982 as well as many other antitrust lawsuits. The first point is that…

Okay, but we can agree that IBM powered the holocaust, and that those tattoos on survivor’s arms represented the punch cards for IBM systems, right?

Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#154

Post by lugged »

gugagore wrote: post #147
pc86 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when Google is distributing documentation saying to use the word "Area" explicitly instead of "Market."

IANAL but it seems that it would succeed in requiring an additional layer of argumentation that “area” is code for “market”. My rough sense is that nothing is trivial in cases like this, but how difficult would it be to argue this?

Las I checked judges don't love it when you try to be clever or cute.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#155

Post by eawoifjaiowepfj »

skybrian wrote: post #8

This is about being careful what you put in writing, because the discovery process for lawsuits will find your carelessly written email and opposing lawyers will take it out of context, and do you want to end up in court years later explaining what you meant? Google has so many employees that they need training to limit the damage from random chatter and speculation. It’s more cumbersome to have to talk about some th…

> discovery process for lawsuits will find your carelessly written email and opposing lawyers will take it out of context

I don't work for Google or have much of an opinion on "Googlespeak".

However, that the practice of law is allowed to exist in its current state is an indictment on our society. The legal profession is one that polices itself, has no proper oversight (judges are just lawyers with a more refined superiority complex), raises barriers to entry with a level of zeal only matched by medicine (to which it is not actually comparable), and is also allowed to maliciously and limitlessly wield this power over the people who do real work is a foundational problem with governmental design.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#156

Post by wombatmobile »

snarf21 wrote: post #3

It is far more widespread than an interaction with a Google employee. The phenomenon is everywhere. It was distilled perfectly by Upton Sinclair quite a while ago: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

> It is far more widespread than an interaction with a Google employee.

Yes, it's systemic, not just in capitalism, through all of nature.

In cell biology, it's the Krebs cycle.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28219702/

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#157

Post by coinomega »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #19
ryankupyn wrote: post #11

I think that a lot of this makes sense from Google's legal perspective, where antitrust litigation is a constant consideration and any internal document mentioning market share or competitors could be used against them. I'm sure that there is a great deal of discussion about potential anticompetitive issues within Google and with their outside counsel, but in a context where legal privilege protects against disclosur…

One could argue that they position themselves as an accomplished monopoly already, because their internal correspondence pretends competition doesn't even exist, or is of no consequence whatsoever.

Being a monopoly (or to be precise: to be in a dominant position), is not problematic in EU competition law. It is the abuse of said position that is illegal!

https://ec.europa.eu/competition/publications/factsheets/ant...

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#158

Post by fennecfoxen »

grecy wrote: post #83
tytso wrote: post #25

When I was at IBM 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly, since there were plenty of competitors in the hardware space (HP, Sun, Dell, etc) and in the software space (Oracle, SAP, etc.) and in the Services space (Accenture, PwC, KPMG, etc.) employees still had to complete annual legal training that was very similar to what was described in the post. Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is…

Which is hilarious, because I remember very clearly when McDonald's was crushing Burger King and the head of McDonald's said, on the record, "You know what you do when your competitors are drowning. ... step on their head". I guess burger joints can't be monopolies.

Burger joints compete in the "fast food" market which also includes fried chicken joints, taco joints, and the like. They also have more broad competition from the "fast casual" market, "restaurant dining" market, and the "food" market.

The question antitrust has historically asked here is the concentration, and the extent to which have they have pricing power.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#159

Post by cmrdporcupine »

greatgib wrote: post #52

I was a direct witness of such a brain washing case a few years ago. Google was about to release a new version of Android or of Nexus phones. (I don't remember the exact details) And there was an insider leak, so the details of the innovation were published on internet a few days before the official announcement. Leaks are now very common and often organized by companies, but a few years ago it was not yet the case.…

The reason Googlers get really ticked off about leaks is that they ruined the very candid and open internal culture we used to have. In the 10 years I've been there I've seen us go from TGIF sessions where Larry and Sergey and Eric openly discussed things that every other employer I'd had before would have kept quiet ... to the situation now which is a lot less like that. And it has a lot to do with leaks from those very TGIFs.

Now I certainly wouldn't be talking about "punching people" or "wanting them dead"... But I am not happy when my coworkers violate trust by leaking. Unless we're talking about gross ethics violations, harassment, etc. leaking internal stuff doesn't improve anything for anybody except maybe the ego of the leaker.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#160

Post by kortilla »

srswtf123 wrote: post #153
kens wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly I think some historical background is necessary here. Nowadays IBM isn't a monopoly but during the 20th century, IBM was more or less a monopoly. IBM's antitrust problems go back to their 1936 consent decree and 1956 consent decree. IBM was subject to a huge antitrust case that went on from 1969 to 1982 as well as many other antitrust lawsuits. The first point is that…

Okay, but we can agree that IBM powered the holocaust, and that those tattoos on survivor’s arms represented the punch cards for IBM systems, right? Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?

What point are you trying to make?
Post reply on HN