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

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 266 posts

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

#251

Post by treeman79 »

preommr wrote: post #214
starwind wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 I googled this because it seemed interesting. The first two articles I looked up emphasize how little influence she had on anti-trust cases. At her hearing she said "Antitrust … is not my strong suit." It seems like she went a…

Google screws with political results they don’t like. A google search is going to show what the higher ups at google believe.

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

#253

Post by basch »

okamiueru wrote: post #250
basch wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this new paradigm of antitrust isn’t about if there’s one two or three of something. It’s a more complex form of antitrust. The Amazon antitrust paradox is about how they aren’t a market leader in tons of their product categories but that they can cross leverage advantages between product categories and verticals to create anticompetitiveness. It’s an analysis of the internal structure of the business, not if the…

Aren't we arguing the same point? Or am I missing something?

I am saying the word monopoly IS being misused, but I am not arguing that it is because its actually a duopoly, but it is being used as a substitute word in places better words belong.

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

#254

Post by basch »

nr2x wrote: post #235
basch wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They work in tandem. The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. In some consumer protection matters, the FTC appears with, or supports, the U.S. Department of Justice. Biden's FTC appointments are redefining FTC perspective on anti-trust, and DOJ is following suit.

Not on this case, this is from Trump Era. Lina was still a professor.

How so? Youre saying they started writing the case under Trump? It was still this administrations decision to file it.

The lead plaintiff attorney is Jonathan Kanter, his bio has his collaboration and alignment with Khan mentioned twice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Kanter

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

#255

Post by okamiueru »

basch wrote: post #253
okamiueru wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't we arguing the same point? Or am I missing something?

I am saying the word monopoly IS being misused, but I am not arguing that it is because its actually a duopoly, but it is being used as a substitute word in places better words belong.

I do not disagree at all with that. In fact, I also think I said, or implied at the least, that it was used incorrectly. However, for the sake of discussing the articles, every time this comes up, it would be more productive if people still understood that it isn't the monopoly part that is important, but the antitrust. Similar to what you were saying.

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

#256

Post by brookst »

midoridensha wrote: post #244
dmitriid wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because if they take down the #2 worst offender, that leaves #1 as the default option for consumers, and strengthens #1's position at #2's expense. And yet immediately: > ake down Apple and create more competition, and then I'll have more options and I'll be able to maybe choose some things other than Google. But Apple is #2. In everything except AppStore revenue. Google's Android is #1 Google's Chrome is #1 Google…

According to a quick google search, iOS has almost 60% marketshare in the US. Many other top-GDP nations are similar. A bunch of people in India using Android isn't much help when you're in a country where most people use Apple. By your logic, most monopolies shouldn't be investigated or regulated at all, because most people on the entire planet don't use their products. One airline is fine, because most humans don't…

Coke has 60% market share for colas in the US. Do your same complaints apply?

It all depends on how you define the market. If you’re motivated to desire a certain outcome, it’s easy to define the market in a way to get what you want.

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

#257

Post by dredmorbius »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #217
strongpigeon wrote: post #160

I 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 repo…

Text-only, no PDF needed: curl https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66753787/1/united-states-v-google-llc/ \ |sed '1,/div id=\"opinion-content\">/d;/ /s// &/;/ /,$d' > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66753787/1/united-state...

You can cut out the middleman and pipe directly to less(1) (or your preferred pager).

Or feed the courtlistener.com URL directly to w3m or another text-mode browser.

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

#258

Post by emodendroket »

arrosenberg wrote: post #245
emodendroket wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose what I'm saying is I don't think antitrust is necessarily beneficial for consumers or client businesses. It could be. But generally speaking, large companies pay their employees better, are more likely to comply with regulations, and so on. Having businesses be small for the sake of being small is not necessarily good.

They are more likely to comply with regulations because they effectively get to write them. Smaller is better because a small company doesn't have the resources to corrupt the regulators.

Regulatory capture is a real concern but no, small companies just flagrantly violate the law and get away with it all the time. The stakes are higher for established ones. Many regulations also specifically exempt small companies.

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

#259

Post by tzs »

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.”

> Anti-trust lawsuits don't require an absolute monopoly. It requires proving that a company behaved anti-competitively

Also, having a monopoly (even an absolution monopoly) does not automatically mean you are violating antitrust law. You had to do something anti-competitive to get that monopoly or be doing something anti-competitive to maintain it.

The easiest way to think about it is that US antitrust law is about preventing monopolization, not about preventing monopolies.

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

#260

Post by rodgerd »

whatshisface wrote: post #177
rodgerd wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cynic in me says that Thomas is open to the discussion to the extent that it hurts companies that he percieves as his enemies, and will shut it down as soon as it covers companies that he considers on his side.

That would stand out among SC justices as abnormal, they're usually only biased when it can be consistent, which covers most cases but doesn't go so far as applying different law to different companies.

> That would stand out among SC justices as abnormal

Well that was certainly Scalia's opinion of Thomas.

Post reply on HN