This is interesting because it seems like the DOJ's definition of monopoly is changing, which I think is a good thing. Since the late 80s (roughly), antitrust litigation has only been brought on the basis of a monopoly's negative impact on consumer prices (i.e. does the existence of a monopoly cause the consumer to have to pay higher prices?). That ignores monopolies that impair the ability of smaller companies to enter markets (which is one of the issues raised with respect to some of the current internet giants). Prior to the 1980s, this latter kind of monopoly would have been subject to scrutiny and possibly litigation by the DOJ, but since then it has been ignored.
IMHO they're not a monopoly, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.<p>Traditional monopolies "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted."<p>In this case, the supply of a good or service (social networking, webpage indexing and searching) are not controlled by Facebook and Google because they aren't finite resources. Anyone can index the web and anyone can build a social network and Google/Facebook aren't going to crush you with lawsuits or some other nefarious tactic to maintain their position (AFAIK).<p>Entry of new producers of these services is not prevented or highly restricted. New social networks and search engines pop up all the time.<p>What Facebook and Google have is massive, large scale user loyalty. Despite alternatives existing (Bing, Mastadon, DuckDuckGo, Myspace, etc.), users are voluntarily choosing to use Google and Facebook. This is not a monopoly.<p>I think we need a new term for this situation.
I don't have a problem with this. But I wonder why there isn't similar willpower to pursue, say, telecoms, banks, Monsanto, Luxxotica, Disney, and the like. Why is it just big tech?
As some variant of millenial, I'm continually bemused by how many of my peers are on board with breaking up "big tech" and use "big tech" products multiple times every single day.<p>If I bring up federal contracting, which is an industry of comparable size, and which is dominated by companies founded well over 50 years ago [1], and which is way more politically opaque, and whose funding they cannot as tax-paying US citizens opt out of, the response is never anything more than "meh".<p>I understand that one is more relevant to daily in-their-face life. These aren't dumb people. They read, argue, write, vote. But the choice of what to agitate for is so odd to me.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S._federal_government" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S...</a>
A take: monopoly in tech is good. Because Google/Amazon/FB have so much money they can do things that push tech forward as a whole. Think about the revolutionary improvements Google has made towards data centers, AWS, and all the research/open source contributions these companies have done.<p>Unlike other monopolies (telecom, defense contracting) etc. where the monopoly is used to stagnate innovation (see Comcast being terrible), here the monopoly leads to more innovation. Smaller companies can't embark on Google-sized projects.<p>Sidenote: I'm pretty sure this lawsuit is just a political attack. It seems reasonable that other monopolies in healthcare/defense/etc. are much much worse, yet they aren't "liberal"/"blue" companies, so there are no lawsuits.<p>Disclosure: I'm interning at Google. I don't think this matters at all, but someone called me out on this in the comments.
The big problem with this is the extreme mediocrity of every other industry. Amazon and Google are winning everything because none of their competitors have even attempted to do better than they did 10 years ago.<p>Amazon should have won in very few of the markets it entered. Instead, its competitors just decided to lie down and die, with a couple of yelps on their way to their death.
'Both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.’s Google—and are well into planning for litigation, according to people familiar with the matter.<p>'The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer, some of the people said. At least some state attorneys general—led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican—are likely to file a case, probably in the fall, people familiar with the matter said.<p>'Much of the states’ investigation has focused on Google’s online advertising business. The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers. The Justice Department likewise is making Google’s ad technology one of its points of emphasis. But it is also focusing more broadly on concerns that Google uses its dominant search business to stifle competition, people familiar with the matter said.<p>'Details about the Justice Department’s legal theories for a case against Google couldn’t be learned.'
I will continue to believe that this is another tentacle of William Barr's political harassment of Google and tech in general until he leads the same crusade against other 'monopolies' of the same degree like Comcast, Apple, Boeing, Amazon, United Airlines, etc.
This antitrust case is the most straightforward one for prosecutors to win. It's been a long time coming and the FTC would have brought one during the Obama administration if they weren't so captured by the tech industry and Google in particular [1][2]. I expect Google will lose their antitrust cases globally. Cases against other tech companies like Facebook and Amazon seem less certain, but I haven't really thought about antitrust theories too deeply for them.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-of-google-1426793274" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323689604578221971197494496" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323689604578221...</a>
Amazon and Facebook should be next. Break them all up with extreme prejudice and put strict new anti-trust laws around acquisitions in place for the future.<p>We're going to do this and open technology back up to innovation and progress, or just watch the tech giants continue to grow in power and abusiveness year after year while new startups continue to decline.
Do DOJ rules only apply to Google's operations in the US?<p>Could DOJ also do this to overseas-based companies that operates in the U.S.?<p>Say you break up Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc., and people begin to adopt the platforms like say, Baidu, TikTok, Alibaba, etc. which grow to 90%+ market dominance. Can DOJ bring antitrust lawsuits against Alibaba?
The big one is Amazon. The revenue from AWS funds the ability for them to crush the high street on the shopping side. They should be forced to sell off AWS as a separate company.
While it's probably true that most of the tech companies have some form of platform monopolies, William Barr, out of all people, is not to be trusted. Hatchet man through and through.<p>The motives here are entirely political. Notice that the ISPs, telecom industry in general, defense industries are left out of this discussion.<p>Tech companies lean left, largely donate to the Democrats, and have been the focus of conservative groups for years as they are considered "biased" towards those on the Left. Like many things about Trump's administration, it's about revenge against those who oppose him, be they companies, state or individuals.
I think to myself how I would probably be just fine if the Google search engine became a public service tomorrow and all advertisements were removed, or perhaps only a small area of the page were allowed to be used to make enough money to pay the costs of upkeep.<p>I'm reminded of how I was so enamored by the internet during the age of the directory. Humans assembled information to share with each other, and there were different search engines you could use as well. It was just so much more interesting at the time.<p>There are still wonderful examples of information being assembled by humans like Wikipedia. But these types of sites struggle to have enough money to operate, while other companies just dominate everything, especially anything that involves money. That's how the market works.<p>But there are certain things the way having libraries, police, firefighters, maybe you can health insurance, where if profit is the only thing that's going to be considered, it just creates a society that is less worthwhile. Perhaps the search engine needs to be considered a public service.
Google has achieved its market position through providing a service its customers want to use. They have not restricted any competitor. Anyone can easily use another search engine, and Google does nothing to stop them.<p>The US government’s increasing hostility towards peaceful trade is alarming. Google is one of America’s greatest business successes of this century.
Regardless of any one's opinion about this being right or wrong, good or bad, Google has spent enormous resources preparing for this moment. From lobbying efforts to the Alphabet restructuring, Google has been acutely aware of this possibility years ago.<p>This will not be an easy case for the states.
I think this was a long time coming. However, I don't trust the current administration's motives for doing it. My instinct is that this is just some behind-the-scenes string pulling to eliminate an entity that is seen more as a political threat than an economic one.
Its interesting that Google is the first target here. From my anecdotal experience the last decade has been.<p>Content discovery: Google Reader -> (Twitter, Facebook, Apple Podcasts)
Chat: Google Talk/Hangouts -> (Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Imessage, Facetime, Zoom)
Product Search: Google -> Amazon
Video: Youtube -> (Youtube, Prime Video, Apple TV, Netflix, Tiktok)<p>A lot of these examples are big tech -> big tech but still if anything it seems like the rest of the FANG that have grown their businesses.<p>Obviously any lawsuit doesnt need to win over consumers, but personally I could care less who owns what in adtech.
Looking at that picture, it's amazing how much more put-together Sundar Pichai is than Bill Gates. Some of that might be their individual personalities, some might be that the tech industry has grown up a bit.
About fucking time. Search is the big one but please don't neglect Android and Chrome.<p>And take Apple to task as well - their app store policies and new app signing requirements for OSX are absurd.<p>Amazon has just started abusing it's monopoly so they'll be in the next antitrust wave I imagine and get away here.<p>Don't even get me started on Whatsapp.<p>Consistently anti-user and competition crushing behaviour in tech should be dealt with forcefully. Not some 5 billion $ chickenshit fine please.
Why not Apple????<p>I don't understand. Apples has more than 50% of the phone marketplace AND locks everything down. They also have twice the revenue of Google.
one thing I always have a hard time understanding. What if a tech giant is considered a Monopoly but it makes my - as a consumer - life easier? I mean having flights tool readily available near Google Search which helps me quickly find a cheap flight without upselling me with hotels and car rentals etc on aggregators like Expedia is something I love and makes my experience better.
Anyone know of any reasons DOJ might be going after Google for reasons unrelated to antitrust issues?<p>Globally, how does breaking up Google benefit the US?
I think it‘s kind of funny that there was an article today about Google‘s Pixel division being disjointed and not integrated enough with the Android division.<p>Maybe part of the reason for the publics perception of Google‘s teams and divisions seemingly operating in an independent and chaotic manner is a way of minimizing the attack surface for antitrust accusations.
I think some antitrust enforcement in tech is overdue. But it needs to be applied broadly and fairly across the entire industry. Singling out single companies is just picking winners and losers.<p>Making big acquisitions much more difficult and reviewing the big acquistitions of the last decade would be the right place to start in my opinion.
I'm sure I don't need to point it out but:<p>If we believe for a moment, this is a play against Google's liberal position, or at the very least Google's employees liberal outlook.. (I will try to pull up references).<p>Lets say it's true: These actions are by all accounts the same as the old communist states.. Only this time they're under the guise of legal proceedings which have some precedent. Americans would usually be so alergic to the idea of such a thought that there would be uproar.. But nationalism and faith in a leader/idea has prevailed.<p>I would argue that it's super rich for the Justice Dept to be worried about antitrust all of a sudden, as a European, I've been fortunate to be protected far better than the US over the years by why of data protection laws. Also knowing Google and other major tech companies penchant for moving their headquarters abroad (Ireland for example), its super interesting to see a swift interest in antitrust..<p>The US has had, and still does I believe, a huge fight to get chip & pin on debit and credit cards because of insurance liability.. But hey.. Those tech companies.. Gotta get them first.<p>I'm no tinfoil hat wearer, but if it walks like a duck .
Tech is an area where the contradictions inherent in the liberal approach to regulating companies are most clear. Liberal theories of nice capitalism require multiple competing companies on "fair" grounds. But it is obviously annoying and inefficient to have market competition in software most of the time - once a tool is developed, it's nearly free for 100% of people to use it rather than 50%, and it's crucial that all such tools interoperate nicely. Hence why various walled-off social media platforms are annoying and people are squeezed into at most only a couple for a given purpose. When right wingers point out that anti-trust stuff is inefficient, to an extent they're right.<p>The rational thing is to have a "monopoly" that isn't evil. But that means that democratic control shouldn't be after-the-fact, external regulation (shown time and time again to be insufficient and generally bought off) but fundamental to the operating of these companies. In essence, Google makes the case for democratic management of production - socialism - very clear.<p>But the other important part of this theory is it's not just about "what would be nice to have" in some utopian sense. Larger companies have competitive advantages that cause them to grow even faster - some real economies of scale, more political heft, greater bargaining power. This leads to the system being inherently unstable and tending towards concentration, which is apparent in pretty much every sector of tech. Trying to permanently reverse this trend through anti-trust is as nonsensical as suggesting people go back to living in the woods; it is in opposition to the fundamental trends inherent in market economies. The only way we can move is forward, to the resolution of these contradictions by working class ownership of all by all.
They'd me much better off having them open source YouTube and/or Gmail. I don't really think Google as a whole is an evil corporation, and there are a lot worse companies out there with a clear monopoly.
I can't help but think that fighting big tech with anti trust approaches is like fighting the T-1000 with a katana. You can win a few fights, but it just reassembles itself because they will outsmart the challenge adapt to the new situation.<p>If you want real change then you got to be more radical than just separating Google search from Gmail or Instagram from Facebook.<p>I have no idea how, but the goal should be to change their incentives.
It’s funny how Microsoft has learned that anti-trust has nothing to do with competition and is 100% politics and public perception. Just sell to other businesses and you can do whatever you want.
This is good to see as there has been tons of posts here on HN detailing Google abusing their power in the last few years.<p>Prior to I'm guessing 2013 to 2015, Google to many was viewed as the company who actually did no evil & a dream company to work.<p>Maybe them absorbing other company's and their cultures affected them?