'Abusing', huh? As though we can expect to see benign monopolies as a norm. Bizarre turn of phrase.
U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
151–160 of 266 posts
Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league? Being a monopoly doesn’t mean you have no competitors - it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something (ie that there was not enough competition for efficient pricing).
> it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something Does it? Then why isn't every App Store's 30% developer fee a much more obvious monopoly?
I think in the case of Apple it's more difficult to challenge due to the existence of Android. iOS doesn't even have 50% of the market mobile OS market share globally. You can argue Apple has a monopoly on their own products, but then we'd need to also discuss the same for Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, and any other device that has its own marketplace.
Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Merits of the case decided by who? A bunch of not-lawyers on HN? Do you think the government should step in and not allow any device to bundled with a browser? Why stop at browsers? Why don’t we just force all manufactures to ship every device without an OS?
Windows and Mac scare the user when switching to a non-first party browser. That, at minimum, should be highly illegal. It's wildly anti-competitive when the platform already has home field advantage.
System dialogues and prompts continue opening in the platform browser, which further continues to nag the user to switch back. Again, totally unfair. These nags and scares should not be allowed.
Competition is what makes our economy, our industry, and the pace of innovation great. Apple, Microsoft, and Google should have to work harder to maintain their insurmountable leads, not fall back on the almost sovereign militaristic advantages they hold. They have gluttonous cash flows that are impossible to attack, and they use that money to force themselves into new markets where innovators are working night and day with every fiber of their being. I don't mind these companies being the biggest in the world. What I hate is that they can so easily put their thumb on anyone trying to do better, and that they can easily extinguish the hard work of others.
Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/lina-khans-bat... For more context. A long but good read on the current FTC chairman.
Lina Khan may have written great papers but she isn't fit for the job. She harbors a hate for big tech and cannot be impartial in her dealings. See her recent attempt to prevent Meta from acquiring Within. There is no sane, level-headed case that could possibly paint this acquisition as an antitrust violation. Even most legal experts will agree that Lina Khan's case is a stretch at best. It's clear that this case is…
From Wikipedia:
>Within was named[13] the #1 VR app for iOS by Apple Insider, featured[13] as "Best New App" on iTunes and is the most downloaded and highest rated[14] cinematic VR app for Google Cardboard.
This appears to be a clear-cut case of consolidation of key companies operating in a sector. Care to share why you think this isn't "sane"?
Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
#155Google 2021 revenue: $258B Meta 2021 revenue: $118B Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league?
Google owns 90%+ of search, Android, and the Ad side. The three together allow it to crush competitors from both ends all while taking a 35% cut. The most lucrative part of the ad business is paid downloads. how many of those searches start in Google with e.g. "Download Spotify". Google makes money selling that to Spotify and they can do it at a much higher rate because no other ad seller has access to search inventory for "download Spotify" or similar searches.
Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
#156I'm less concerned about Google Ad market share and more concerned with their placement of Google properties above competitors on the search results page (IE, Google Reviews over Yelp, or airline prices, etc).
For the vast majority of google searches there are no relevant ads. All these searches are subsidized by someone googling "flights to new york" and booking a flight right there. Google provides an immense public good with free (and mostly ad-free) results to all kinds of questions, which other flight search engines do not. Imagine: A flight search engine as a marketing gimick starts a web search engine, and shows fli…
> For the vast majority of google searches there are no relevant ads
Do you have a citation for this? All I could find was that about 5% of searches end up with an ad click, but surely that means they need to show ads on way more than 5% of searches.
I stopped using Google search quite a long time ago. I'm pretty sure it was heavy on ads for most search queries.
Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league? Being a monopoly doesn’t mean you have no competitors - it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something (ie that there was not enough competition for efficient pricing).
> it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something Does it? Then why isn't every App Store's 30% developer fee a much more obvious monopoly?
And Spotify too! They hold on to 30% of every dollar they handle as well.
AFAIK, the app stores on gaming consoles want a similar cut.
Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
#158I'm guessing the worst case is they are forced to sell off the exchange side of the Ads business, which isn't that much revenue compared to the revenue they make selling ad space.
This is probably going to have a lot less effect than what people are assuming it will have.
Google and Facebook have never had more competition in the Ad space. Apple and Amazon are building big Ad businesses fast. That's not the problem. The problem is they play both sides of the market and they dominate both sides of the market. Therefore they have a lot of pricing power.
This isn't the reason they are making 100s of billions a year. The reason they are making that amount is because they are the best at what they do and you can't find the service they provide any where else except Facebook and Google.
Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
#159One 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…
You identify an important point about Ginsburg, but the current court is mostly a creation of "the Federalist Society". Although these jokers claimed to be concerned about abortion when weaseling their way up the judiciary system, they are all far more concerned with Borkism. Compare the number of abortion cases that reach the Supreme Court with the number of cases focused on business, IP, monopoly, consumer rights, liability, etc.
Re: U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
#160I think it’s worth saying for people not too familiar with the space that this is specifically about Display and Video ads on third party websites. The lawsuit is about how Google managed to get in the entire stack (publisher, exchange and (less importantly for the lawsuit) buy side) and (according to the plaintiffs) abused their positions.
I’d really encourage people read the lawsuit. It’s long, but most of the reporting on it seems to be way too superficial and leads to people saying things like “they should split YouTube and Google search”, which really has nothing to do with the complaint…