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The worst possible antitrust outcome

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Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#51

Post by davmre »

protocolture wrote: post #29
davmre wrote: post #15

> The government doesn't have to win an antitrust trial in order to create competition. As the saying goes, "the process is the punishment." Regardless of what you think of Google or this case specifically, this is an argument for authoritarianism: that it is legitimate for the government to "punish" any company at will, based only on them falling into political disfavor. > ... the only punishment Google would have t…

>This is an argument for authoritarianism, that the government should be able to "punish" any company at will based only on them falling into political disfavor. No its more like, the process of transparency harms the company enough that they will shift their own mentality to ensure they never have to participate in a transparent process.

If there's a general standard of transparency applied to all companies, fine. There are costs to increasing transparency, but certainly you could argue for that policy.

The argument that we should cheer on the use of government power to target a specific company, to selectively expose their dirty laundry as punishment for a crime they have not been convicted of, is what I found noxious in the original post.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#52

Post by drivebyhooting »

vkou wrote: post #20
drivebyhooting wrote: post #3

Can I opt out from having my data shared with other companies? Or will some kind of privacy framework like ATT be applied to it?

> Can I opt out from having my data shared with other companies? Sure, the easiest way you can do that is to move to Europe and petition its regulators to further tighten the screws. They might actually listen.

How is moving to Europe the easiest solution? What about my family and life?

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#53

Post by idopmstuff »

nielsbot wrote: post #40
bigbadfeline wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A world where being rich doesn't grant power over others is one where money isn't money. First off, my money doesn't grant me power over anybody and it's still money. That leaves only one logically possible version of your statement and the correction looks like this: "A world where being rich doesn't grant power over others is one where big money isn't big money" In that form, your statement is perfectly logical,…

> First off, my money doesn't grant me power over anybody and it's still money That's not true. Depends on your wealth bracket of course, but money certainly is the power to compel. Let's say you have a neighbor whose dog is a nuisance barker. With money you can hire an attorney to go after them. If you don't have money, you have to suffer. There are millions of examples... this is just one not-particularly-good one.

I don't think you even have to go to the extreme of compelling someone to do something through the legal system. I can use money to get someone to clean my house or walk my dog - they don't have to do it, but the fact that I have money does give me the power to get them to do what I want.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#54

Post by AceJohnny2 »

> 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 Apple's negotiation tactics they could also have used their weight to do what they wanted anyhow and get paid handsomely for it ( "if you don't pay us we might start using other defaults and you'll lose that lucrative iOS market")

My point is, while Google is clearly at fault in this whole situation, it's not quite as moustache-twirling evil as Doctorow paints it.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#55

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#56

Post by davmre »

ratherbefuddled wrote: post #28
davmre wrote: post #15

> The government doesn't have to win an antitrust trial in order to create competition. As the saying goes, "the process is the punishment." Regardless of what you think of Google or this case specifically, this is an argument for authoritarianism: that it is legitimate for the government to "punish" any company at will, based only on them falling into political disfavor. > ... the only punishment Google would have t…

There's very little reason that Google should have been protected from the evidence of its wrongdoing being made public. That's not extrajudicial punishment, that is public record. Justice should be seen to be done as well as done. Who can know how appropriate or not the remedy was when the evidence is hidden? For full disclosure: I'm neither a google employee nor a US citizen.

Sure, there's a strong public interest in having proceedings on record. US civil cases are supposed to have a presumption of openness, which the judge weighs against other interests, like protecting trade secrets, confidential business information, privacy of third parties, etc.

The public record argument is fine; it's just a different argument than the extrajudicial punishment advocated by the original post.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#57

Post by protocolture »

davmre wrote: post #51
protocolture wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is an argument for authoritarianism, that the government should be able to "punish" any company at will based only on them falling into political disfavor. No its more like, the process of transparency harms the company enough that they will shift their own mentality to ensure they never have to participate in a transparent process.

If there's a general standard of transparency applied to all companies, fine. There are costs to increasing transparency, but certainly you could argue for that policy. The argument that we should cheer on the use of government power to target a specific company, to selectively expose their dirty laundry as punishment for a crime they have not been convicted of, is what I found noxious in the original post.

The direct reference was Bill Gates being forced to testify about internet explorer. Its hard to argue with that particular case. There are very few people who argue that the results of that intervention were unwarranted.

I do find it a bit curious however, where later in the article theres a discussion about explicit collusion between corporates and the government. I vastly prefer the state and corps to be at odds with each other, than in bed with each other. Do any of the allegations towards the end register on your authoritarianismometer?

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#58

Post by dumbledoren »

guyzero wrote: post #35

I generally like Doctorow's writing and agree with a lot of what he says here, but: "Google has stolen every fact about our lives, in service to propping up a monopoly that lets it steal our money, too." I still have all the facts about my life and I don't think any money has been stolen. I get that this is rhetorical, but he's gone over the edge here.

Google became a monopoly in search, advertising and various other things. It uses all of those to extract money from everyone, especially the advertisers with absolutely no accountability. All the large and small businesses have to jack up prices to make up for the money that Google extracts from them through those monopolies, and then reflect that expense on the consumer. Just go to reddits like r/ppc or r/googleads. Google became a company that single handedly amplifies inflation during its endless extraction of profit.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#59

Post by bilbo0s »

tart-lemonade wrote: post #11
frogperson wrote: post #2

Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy.

It also doesn't work when the media is either striving to uphold the status quo that got us here or actively going out of its way to try and make things worse.

Isn't "the media" really just, the rich?

From WSJ and The Economist, to CNN, BBC and FOX, right on through to Youtube podcasts.

Re: The worst possible antitrust outcome

#60

Post by actionfromafar »

culopatin wrote: post #33
JKCalhoun wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need strong laws that reduce the voice of money and increase the voice of individuals. Seeing the how flaccid "strong" laws have become, I prefer we go back to reducing the voice of money by taxing it away. Maybe our country could then finally have nice things.

What do you do when all the money goes away to countries that don’t tax them that hard?

It used to be that the US had unique ways of dealing with that, by virtue of its sheer size and dominance. But nowadays the ballon is leaking power from both ends, soft and hard.
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