I read this story just now and I found it incredibly frustrating -- it reads like a gossip column. Lots of details about who wants to do what and when and who objects, but incredibly light on actual details.
What laws are they going to claim Google has broken? Vague hand-waves about "advertising" and "Google is involved in your life" doesn't cut it for me.
Does anyone have a source or a hunch of what specific anti-trust laws Google is violating with what specific actions?
My guess is there will be multiple lines of attack, but this paper[0] which was also at least implicitly referenced in the recent Congressional hearing seems very likely to be one of them:
Approximately 86% of online display advertising space in the U.S. is bought and sold in real-time on electronic trading venues, which the industry calls "advertising exchanges." With intermediaries that route buy and sell orders, the structure of the ad market is similar to the structure of electronically traded financial markets. In advertising, a single company, Alphabet (“Google”), simultaneously operates the leading trading venue, as well as the leading intermediaries that buyers and sellers go through to trade. At the same time, Google itself is one of the largest sellers of ad space globally. This Paper explains how Google dominates advertising markets by engaging in conduct that lawmakers prohibit in other electronic trading markets: Google’s exchange shares superior trading information and speed with the Google-owned intermediaries, Google steers buy and sell orders to its exchange and websites (Search & YouTube), and Google abuses its access to inside information. In the market for electronically traded equities, we require exchanges to provide traders with fair access to data and speed, we identify and manage intermediary conflicts of interest, and we require trading disclosures to help police the market. Because ads now trade on electronic trading venues too, should we borrow these three competition principles to protect the integrity of advertising?
Do the electronic exchanges mentioned in this paper include adds sold on Facebook and product recommendations from Amazon? It's hard to believe that Facebook's add space is that much smaller than Alphabet, and if Facebook is not included in the definition of "online display advertising space", then that seems like a pretty large omission.
Your examples have online ads but google operates in the “programmatic” space, Facebook doesn’t. Amazon has a competing product in the programmatic space but it’s not the product you’re thinking of.
Companies in this space: google, the trade desk, Amazon, Verizon, at&t (Xandr), etc.
Keywords to search for are ad exchange, dsp (demand side platform), ssp (supply side platform), dmp (data management platform). Googles products are dv360 and doubleclick bid manager.
Facebook is way way smaller than google, amazon’s advertising unit doesn’t even compare.
This also doesn’t talk about google search. When you advertise online (paid) the three channels are search, social, and programmatic.
Nobody's saying Facebook and Amazon won't get charges too. They and Apple were all part of the same investigation. The investigators say all four companies are abusing their positions but they haven't given a lot of detail yet.
> In the market for electronically traded equities, we require exchanges to provide traders with fair access to data and speed, we identify and manage intermediary conflicts of interest, and we require trading disclosures to help police the market. Because ads now trade on electronic trading venues too, should we borrow these three competition principles to protect the integrity of advertising?
It boils down to: should we regulate ad exchanges like we regulate equity exchanges, such that the exchange operator (e.g. Alphabet, NYSE) cannot also be a participant in the traded assets.
If you believe the answer is yes, alphabet's ad exchange should not be in the same parent company as youtube and google.
Unbundling the ad exchange from alphabet's other services sounds like it would be a herculean technical nightmare!
Might be easier to start from scratch (:
Of all the crazy stuff that has been proposed on HN under the umbrella of "breaking up Google", excising the ad exchange might be the least technically challenging, and also one of the few that are economically practical.
Sell AdWords space just like everyone else, right? The tight integration between Search and Ads might be lost though, since they wouldn't be able to talk to each other the same way. I'd imagine that'd take a chunk out of revenue.
TBH I think if major browsers ceased development for 5 years with the exception of bug and security fixes, the web would only get better. Right now it's a race between their "improvements" and ever more complicated web frameworks. You don't ever get to really _master_ the web platform.
What competition is there for any of those services?
Bing, whatever MS brands Hotmail as these days, Yahoo, Firefox & Opera? They're all small potatoes. Apple mail and maps isn't really competition, either.
Similar problem in Asia, I believe, just different players.
I would like to point out that most exchanges do not operate this way, and that even in equities, dealers have eschewed rules by not technically being an exchange, but functionally doing so.
All banks have trading desks, and the vast majority of the the trading they do is engaging in a private contract with themselves and their customers. Citadel/Jane Street both use ECNs to simply tally a trade that they do privately, and in markets where Citadel has to use an exchange, they get extremely (suspiciously) good rates and preferential treatment.
I do want exchanges and dealers to be separate entities, but I would also prefer it if this justice were doled out fairly—not just when it’s politically convenient to pursue it.
>such that the exchange operator (e.g. Alphabet, NYSE) cannot also be a participant in the traded assets.
If I recall correctly, ICE, which owns the NYSE, is itself traded on the NYSE. Obviously their position is small compared to that of Alphabet on the ad exchanges but I wonder if things go against Alphabet, would that force ICE off of the exchanges it owns?
I just meant that I work in adtech and all the sales reps/account managers are taking that course and posting the certificate to their linkedin to show they did some learning.
To put it more simply: google owns the software you brands use to buy ads, the software publishers use to sell ads, and the marketplace in between. And they’re the #1 player for each.
FB is selling ads on their own properties though, no? They are not setting the prices the like for other publishers. OF course there is a case of antitrust for them , for essentially buying out the potential competition.
It could be. The absence of news of an investigation is not proof of an absence of the investigation itself.
People like to harp on equal enforcement, but equal doesn't mean simultaneous, and realistically speaking the DOJ is not some infinitely funded organization with prosecutors growing on trees.
>> Justice Dept. plans to file antitrust charges against Google in coming weeks (nytimes.com)
> I read this story just now and I found it incredibly frustrating -- it reads like a gossip column. Lots of details about who wants to do what and when and who objects, but incredibly light on actual details.
That's the actual story here, which doesn't appear to be the story you want to read.
> What laws are they going to claim Google has broken? Vague hand-waves about "advertising" and "Google is involved in your life" doesn't cut it for me.
You will find out when the DOJ files the charges in a month (if the deadline reported here is accurate). They probably haven't even finalized the details you want to know yet (otherwise they probably would have have filed already).
Google controls advertising on both the supply side and demand side. It's not hard to think ways in which this is anticompetitive. A ton of stuff is black boxes. E.g. are adsense chargebacks real? Are keyword bids fair?
Google's algorithms are trade secrets just like Coca-Cola recipe formula is. You can not expect somebody making billions and revealing their secret "know-how".
Come on - the company spending the money has MORE visability into what their google ad spend buys them then in almost any other area.
I don't even care if I overpay on a "bid" for a spot - the metric I'm using is return on spend. And trust me, the mainline media companies driving this do not promise advertisers "fair" bidding. They have sales people trying to extract every nickle they can (through sometimes horrible accounting practices where they pay different divisions to drive up various "costs").
Maybe for you ad price is not an issue. That's like saying the price of steak is not an issue for you. There are a ton of billboard companies and TV channels, so competition is presumed to lead to price discovery and low prices. Google has no competition.
Google has no competition in marketing? Are these serious statements? I can advertise on Instagram, pay social media influencers and the ways to market to folks are literally endless, from postcards, to delivery route saturation campaigns to annoying popups on Hulu videos to microtargeted facebook ads. I hate facebook, don't have the app, but campaigns on facebook at least historically could do amazingly well if you had the targeting down.
Historically one paper in town basically got most advertising. Those folks printed money. Classifieds etc.
There has been an explosion of marketing opportunities now. I can market on amazon if I think that would yield more (it does sometimes).
Why are you conflating google with all of marketing and TV ads etc? That's like claimingn that airlines and sealines are the same market. Google's competitors are not billboards, they are the (now extinct) other online ad marketplaces. Their problem is that they control the search and display ad marketplace absolutely, they can ask advertisers to pay $100, pay the publisher $1 and nobody will know if they are being scammed because there is no competiting marketplace to compare.
Huh? Something like 60% goes to website - it's in the agreement.
If they are going to try and prove google charged $100 and paid $1 - good luck. Google makes enough money just on their 40%, and can change that % any time. Google could just set their rate to 50% if they wanted if they'd still be competitive.
If the DOJ is relying on this type of argument, that google is secretly scamming folks, they are probably toast I think.
No that is not going to be their argument, it will probably be along the lines: google may be skewing the bids towards the $100 high end in order to maximize their own cut. We don't know whether bids should really be $100 because all their competitors have died so there is nothing to compare.
I don't think google would violate their agreement with publishers. That said there are many questions to be asked there too : what is that "invalid traffic". Why are inventories not filled , why are some ads not allwed etc etc. Google can claim their agreement is "take it or leave it" , but that is where their problem lies. If both advertisers and publishers are forced to "take it" due to lack of alternatives, it is an admission that they are in a monopolistic position.
Let's be 100% clear, google "skewing" the bids to the high end - EVERY person selling ads tries to get as much as they can from the ads they sell.
The DOJ is making this a crime now? They are going to lose in seconds.
The website hosting the ads and google both want the price they get to be as high as possible. That is what google is selling, ads, and they want as much as they can.
Google is not pretending to be a charity. There is no requirement they or websites charge low rates for ads, so yes, google skews the bids as high as they can without losing volume.
I'm really worried if this is the strength of the DOJ case, this is horrible and clearly political.
You've also been posting repeatedly in the flamewar style, unfortunately. We ban accounts that do that, because it's destructive of the site mandate. So could you please not do that any more?
Google has every incentive to find you the least expensive lead, which is not good for you. The least expensive lead is the one that would buy from you even if they didn't see the ad. This means you wasted money, and a lot of it.
But I can judge whether I'm wasting money with google ads vs using TV ads or billboards. Do NPR promise me my sponsorship will result in increased sales or that it's the "lowest" possible price?
Maybe some people hearing an NPR sponsorship would have bought from me anyways - is this now a crime?
A representative number of what? The real price of the CPA? But google controls both the bid price and the ask price, so it could be arbitrary for all i know.
Every other marketing option also is arbitrary. A social influencer doesn't owe you a low price, they will charge what they can. Google will charge what it can for CPA etc.
Once more, there are thousands and thousands of influencers, their price is set through competition. Google is only 1 (one) company, no competition to force them to adjust their prices.
Not a gossip column, political reporting. This is appropriate because this is a political story. The subject isn't the case against Google but the internal conflicts in building the case.
Tend to agree, with particular attention to the peeve that hit me in the very first sentence: the phrase "career lawyers." Like I'm supposed to think "Ohh, THESE lawyers are experienced and smart, not like all those hobbyist amateur lawyers the Attorney General of the United States usually consults with! How dare he countermand these particular infallible and always-correct lawyers!!"
Have never heard the term used that way, and can't find anything about it. Even further off topic - yet not - have search engines' functionality and results quality really degraded this much? Apparently quoting a phrase doesn't even work anymore. I get loads of info on a career AS a lawyer.
Anyway, given that a political appointee would presumably be a relative newcomer, and a "career anything" tends to reflect a longer term of experience, are you saying there's no connotation whatsoever of expertise in this usage?
This is so grossly political that it's disgusting. Clearly the administration sees Google through the lens of an adversary, which is astonishing enough.
When reading something like this, "according to five people briefed on internal department conversations." is the first clue. You have mass leakage of internal discussions, with career ending consequences. You can't have any greater signal that something is very wrong, and that people believe the chain of reporting is compromised.
The question of whether Google represents a monopoly is critical for every software professional in this forum, and it is a trillion dollar US company that represents most people's discovery platform for information. It has has nuance, and there are gray areas that are going to have generational impact when they are litigated. It an important legal question and not well served by a thin case served out two months from an election.
> This is so grossly political that it's disgusting
A one-trillion dollars company can only be tackled politically, let's not fool ourselves here. In other words I find nothing "disgusting" about this, if anything the US authorities should have been more open in their approach, i.e. pointing out that letting a few tech behemoths take control of our society (a highly technological one) it's not in the best interest of the populace. Again, you cannot tackle (very) big stuff like this in a non-political matter.
What is different now about Google's situation today as compared to one year ago, aside from the US being 2 months from an election and a raging viral pandemic?
Couple problems with your conspiracy- this began years ago, it’s been in the works for a long time, it is being led by a democrat and has bipartisan supprt
If it cannot be done honestly that is a major hint that the political apparatus is in the wrong here. It is only done by those trying to seize power for selfish ends. Everything about how it is done screams "don't trust those offspring of bitches".
The antitrust congress committee a couple weeks ago is head by a democrat and was bi-partisan so I don’t suspect it’s the administration leading this, but perhaps are working with congress
"You have mass leakage of internal discussions, with career ending consequences. You can't have any greater signal that something is very wrong, and that people believe the chain of reporting is compromised."
Leaks from DOJ is SOP; Trump or not the place is a hot bed of political grifters posing as law enforcement officials and playing footsies with their media contacts.
And I don't share your alarm over the potential consequences. The political class won't hurt Alphabet. At worst there will be a shakedown, some new toothless minders will emerge (captured on inception,) and then they'll throw the fish back, just like they did with Microsoft.
Hacker news is so bipolar on this. I've seen calls on this site for immediate antitrust law cases against google, and now that the Trump DOJ is doing it, immediately, there's a rush to defend Google. It's getting nauseating really.
Something being 'political' is not bad, especially when it being 'political' enforces the will of the people against those who ought to be subject to the will of the people. In particular, many Americans believe Google to be engaging in anti-competitive practices, so being political by following what the American populace wants cannot and should not be used as an insult.
HN isn't an entity. You see discussions here praising Haskell or Lisp as the second coming, and then discussions about how awful they are and how they'll never amount to anything because they don't match the underlying machine as well as C.
It's different people with different opinions, experiences, and views expressing them at different times.
HN is an entity. Among other things it’s a community. As a community it has prevailing opinions about certain things, and you can measure that with how things are up/down voted. It’s also true that many of the prevailing opinions here are completely at odds with each other.
These comments are bizarre. This topic has been discussed ad nauseam in hacker news for many years. The discussion on here was justifiably more extensive and explained more deeply than anywhere else. People on hacker news have used Google services for 15+ years. They’ve built businesses around Google’s platform. They’ve built businesses which compete with Google. They’ve seen Google do things which dismantled other businesses so that Google could earn some incremental revenue in order to continue to pay their executives and employees wildly bloated salaries (e.g. Anthony Levandowski paid over $100m; that’s insane.)
Google has a lot of deep problems. They managed to kick the US regulatory can down the road over and over again. Now they have to deal with it. All but 1 state AG was on board for this. They were very cozy with the Obama White House so there is very good justification for this to happen now.
> I've seen calls on this site for immediate antitrust law cases against google, and now that the Trump DOJ is doing it, immediately, there's a rush to defend Google.
Well, that's my actual position. "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason."
I think it's important to enforce the laws we have fairly. However, going after political opponents because they are political opponents, and retroactively figuring out what laws you can use against them, is very different from enforcing the laws fairly. I think we should be going after many more companies than we do on antitrust grounds (and I think society would be better if we had even more stringent antitrust laws). Going after a single company and saying "Hmmm, antitrust?" does not actually succeed at maintaining the rule of law.
(I do, for what it's worth, agree that "political" is not an insult. It's a descriptor, and it applies to just about anything involving the government or the shape of society. In this case, I think it happens to be a descriptor for something bad. It is entirely good and proper for politics to influence what laws we have; it is improper for politics to influence against whom we choose to enforce them.)
This comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24369239) has mentioned that multiple major companies are being investigated, so maybe the investigation into Google just happens to be further along.
That's a good point, but also, given that "and Facebook and Amazon" are often Trump's next words after "Google," it doesn't do much to convince me that this isn't politically-motivated selective enforcement. (Though, on the other other hand, I'm not sure what big tech companies Trump isn't mad at, so maybe this is a low-selectivity filter.)
But Google is not a political opponent of trump and if biden were to go after facebook one could make the same accusation. This is a ridiculous standard. Those with opposing political views (and it's not clear Google really has political views) are not exempt from the law.
I don't think Google sees itself as an opponent of Trump, but Trump certainly acts as if Google is an opponent (cf. https://twitter.com/search?q=from:realdonaldtrump+google), and that's what matters here. I don't think it particularly matters whether Google really is an opponent of Trump, either.
(My personal opinion is that Google is much less of an opponent than Trump claims, but also, since politics is not a dirty word and the existence of a giant multinational corporation is inherently political even if it weren't for all the things that make Google Google, it would be entirely reasonable for Google to choose to be more of an opponent than they are - and it still would not make me feel like selective enforcement of the laws is justifiable.)
> Clearly the administration sees Google through the lens of an adversary, which is astonishing enough.
How is that astonishing? Google has made it more than clear that they will use their vast resources to help Trump's opponents. It's almost a meme at this point that if you want to search for something politically incorrect - or anything that doesn't align with the left - you need to use Bing or DDG.
The link is not to Reddit, it's to their new site. You'd think people could decide for themselves if they want to go to the actual forum, but Google doesn't think you're bright enough to make your own choice, apparently.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. All you example proves is that Google and Bing follow different metrics for relevance -- Google's being more relevant for someone looking for the former subreddit that was widely discussed in other media outlets, Bing's being more relevant for someone looking for the current incarnation i.e. dedicated Trump supporters. The idea that there is some conspiracy within Google to promote Trump's opponents needs more proof than that.
This is a poltical play. All of these should be targets but the WH is looking for a pre-election "win", more symbolic than anything.
Google is ~80% of search in the US. Large percentage of online advertising. Lots of anti-competitive stuff to point to.
Apple is 50% at best of the smartphone market and their major competitors are South Korean and Chinese. Targeting Apple, with no major US competitor, is NOT a win. Not a good thing to be bringing up in an election year.
Amazon would also be a complicated anti-trust target, you need to specifically focus on online retail effects while not allowing Amazon to switch the conversation to talking about general retail and Walmart/Target. So, too complicated for any kind of quick traction.
Every administration uses the announcement of proceedings (in various fields) as an achievement in and of itself. Similarly, passing laws and regulations is regarded as an achievement, regardless of whether the laws achieve their stated aims.
Yeah if the dust has settled in five years that would be surprisingly quick. I'm curious what the community of legal scholars considers most likely in this case.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say YouTube's value to a certain political campaign might have played at part in bumping up Google's priority. Apple and Amazon do not have a similar propaganda^w free speech platform that has to be kept on a short leash with similar urgency.
Obviously that wouldn't never happen in the U.S.A. - the DoJ's dealings have been entirely professional, non-partisan and above-board.
This isn't a particularly strong argument. Kleenex isn't on the antitrust chopping block even though you never hear anyone say, "Hey, can you pass me an AngelSoft?"
Even if that is true, do you deny that they are search engines themselves.
Siri, Alexa etc are even more opaque as they don't give a list of results, rather have deep integration to their own services and can't even be replaced by an alternative.
I know antitrust covers more than just the classic case of monopolies driving up consumer prices. But looking at it just from the anti-consumer lens, the case against Amazon really is kind of funny, when they're at the same time blamed for pushing prices down so low that that the fed uses them as a possible explanation for low inflation [1].
There are reportedly investigations against Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook; with DOJ taking the first two and the FTC taking the latter. Google was likely the easiest because there was a prior FTC investigation and EU enforcement actions taken against Google. Additionally, more state AGs rallied to the Google case.
The Republican Party now views Google as a hostile, specifically anti-Republican entity. Google is regarded as a political enemy.
It's not just about the election. The Republicans will persistently pursue any comapny that attempts to attack them as Google openly has. Google declared war on that political party, that party is now striking back. It was an enormous mistake by Google, as the Republican Party is one of the few entities in the US that is drastically more powerful than Google is; they can make their operational existence absolute hell, and they can destroy the company over time very easily just by pursuing their executives using available power levers, the best execs will avoid Google rather than deal with all the shit. It's what prompted both Larry and Sergey to run for cover as fast as they could, so they could avoid the scrutiny and investigations; I pity Pichai, he's the well-paid volunteer patsy to stand in and take the fire for Larry and Sergey.
Seems like you'd be the one surprised: Even though they have cut their lobbying budget in the past two years, Alphabet has spent more on lobbying Congress over the past decade than any other tech firm, except maybe Amazon.
This seems topsy-turvy to me. _Of course_ Google is at the top of the list! Amazon and Apple don't own YouTube, as well as both the supply and demand sides of the vast majority of the advertising market.
There's plenty of reasons to go after all of the big tech companies, but Google seems like an obvious candidate for first.
Apple and amazon have antitrust issues in their own walled garden ecosystems, with the app store and amazon marketplace. I would think Amazon an initial candidate actually, since it's been displacing so many existing businesses.
Amazon has huge warehouses in lots of states which means they have political power to threaten pulling jobs from districts or states. Google is a much softer target.
Not sure how much of a net positive Amazon jobs are. New York already refused to deal with all the demands Amazon had when it planned its HQ there. Large companies know exactly how much perceived value they bring to the table and try to make sure that society pays for it at least twice over without giving any guarantees.
>Tech is always the soft target for governments worldwide.
lol. Take a look at credit card regulation in Europe and the amount of regulation passed on banks in the last 20 years alone (for good reasons).
The only thing that's soft about tech is the industry's constant whinging because they're finally recognizing that the good old days of getting away with everything might be over.
Credit cards are actually a good example. Let's slap the 0.2% interchange cap that is the legal limit in the EU on the Apple store and see what happens then.
> Let's slap the 0.2% interchange cap that is the legal limit in the EU on the Apple store and see what happens then.
That's exactly the wrong solution, because it implies within it that they get to continue holding a monopoly as long as they're a regulated one. And then the regulations address the most visible seven of the two hundred thousand problems that are caused by monopolies and leave all of the other ones.
What's needed is to reintroduce meaningful competition.
>That's exactly the wrong solution, because it implies within it that they get to continue holding a monopoly as long as they're a regulated one.
That's a pretty common solution when infrastructure is concerned, which platforms basically are. Having 20 stores on your phone to me makes about as much sense as having 50 postal services driving on the streets.
Not really sure what's wrong with basically making two regulations. Apple/Google get to charge ~1% or whatever for running the store, and they don't get to ban stuff other than content that's unlawful. To me it seems like that solves 99% of the issues we've been hearing about.
> That's a pretty common solution when infrastructure is concerned, which platforms basically are.
It's pretty common for physical infrastructure because it has high fixed costs. Building a water distribution network is billion dollar enterprise. App stores are the complete opposite of that -- if it weren't for the platforms purposely interfering with competing stores, an individual would be able to set one up in a weekend.
> Having 20 stores on your phone to me makes about as much sense as having 50 postal services driving on the streets.
But we do have 50 postal services driving on the streets. Or at least more than one anyway -- USPS, FedEx, UPS, Amazon, plus private couriers, trucking companies and so on.
You might as well ask why we have multiple retailers. "Wouldn't it be more efficient if everybody had to buy everything at Walmart and we just regulated them as a monopoly?" Some minor theoretical increase in efficiency is not worth the crushing oppression that would inevitably bring.
> Not really sure what's wrong with basically making two regulations. Apple/Google get to charge ~1% or whatever for running the store, and they don't get to ban stuff other than content that's unlawful. To me it seems like that solves 99% of the issues we've been hearing about.
Which means you're putting the role of vetting apps onto some other third parties -- good, now there will be competition and you won't be screwed if the monopoly store rejects something they shouldn't. But then what is the Google or Apple store even supposed to be doing? Hosting the app? Anybody can do that. Payment processing? There are a dozen companies that already do that.
The only reason they have a monopoly is that they use control over the platform to purposely put barriers in front of app store competitors. It's not a natural monopoly whatsoever.
And you're just proving the point about how the regulations only solve the most obvious problems and leave all the other ones. For example, if you let them exclude app store competitors, even if they can't charge high fees or exclude apps they don't like, they could still bury them in an unfindable hole by eliminating direct links and putting it on page 5000 of any search results, or cover anything they don't like in arbitrarily scary warning prompts, or find a hundred other ways to make your life hard unless you bend the knee. Whereas if their being unreasonable could be remedied by just going to another store, it actually puts a check on unreasonable behavior in general by way of competitive pressure, without you having to predict and explicitly prohibit it ahead of time.
I think competition is completely overrated, there's actual research that digital customers are even stickier than physical ones and less likely to shop for alternatives (just ask your aunt how often she goes shopping for web browsers).
Android actually allows different stores without too much hassle and everyone is still on Google Play.
The problem with competition is that competition requires choice and choice comes with cost, and people don't like having to make decisions every five minutes, that's the secret sauce behind TikTok's success, it abstracted all the nasty choice away you have to make in social networks, or why twitter beats Mastodon.
Point being you're ending up with Amazon/Walmart/Megacorp XY anyway because that's just how advanced economies roll, they tend towards more concentration, I absolutely won't be surprised if the retail sector is going to consolidate next and small retail just gets wiped out by tech, covid has given us a taste of that already.
It's either regulated behemoths or unregulated ones, the 90s internet isn't coming back.
Competition is the only thing standing in the way of serfdom. Choice is the only thing that allows you to say no to anything because you can get what you need somewhere else. Without it your only option is to say yes to anything no matter how little you want it.
> there's actual research that digital customers are even stickier than physical ones and less likely to shop for alternatives (just ask your aunt how often she goes shopping for web browsers).
Even when this is true, it doesn't mean that competition isn't working. When switching costs are low and people don't switch anyway, it means that it's working well -- in an efficient market all the producers are required to make their products equally good to avoid losing business to the others. Sticking with what you have because the ability to easily switch caused the producer to make it just as good as the alternatives is a very different thing than sticking with what you have even though it's terrible because switching costs are high.
You use browsers as an example, but remember that when Internet Explorer was stagnating, your aunt and half the world switched to Firefox.
Moreover, this is still also a reflection of their anti-competitive behavior rather than actual consumer choice. If when you bought a phone it came with a "web" icon and the first time you click on it, it listed all the popular browsers and had you choose one, that would be a whole different landscape than the one we have where your phone comes with one chosen for you and then suspiciously a disproportionate number of iOS users use Safari and a disproportionate number of Android users use Chrome. If switching costs were actually low, the browser share on each platform should be about the same.
> Android actually allows different stores without too much hassle and everyone is still on Google Play.
This is to some extent the same thing -- Google Play is less abusive than Apple because the competitive pressure keeps them in check more.
But even there, the amount of hassle of installing another store is too much -- if you try to install anything but the default, you not only get scary warnings, the other stores can't actually update the apps they install. And Google privileges themselves immensely by being installed as the default.
> The problem with competition is that competition requires choice and choice comes with cost, and people don't like having to make decisions every five minutes
That's not the problem with competition, it's the mechanism that incumbents use to destroy it.
"People don't want choices" is only true when there are many choices but all the choices are roughly equivalent, so that the gain from a better choice is smaller than the cost of taking the time to evaluate the alternatives. It's only true when the efficient market hypothesis is true. But the efficient market hypothesis requires people to be evaluating their alternatives, or it won't be true.
So if you give everyone a reasonable choice by default, at a time when competition exists, they take it. Because that option is about as good as the others and it saves them time. But when you give the same default to everyone, that destroys competition -- tomorrow none of the other alternatives will exist, because they can't survive just by being as good as the competition when something else is the default. And without them there is nothing left to prevent the default choice from becoming a stagnant and abusive monopoly.
> Point being you're ending up with Amazon/Walmart/Megacorp XY anyway because that's just how advanced economies roll, they tend towards more concentration
They tend towards more concentration because of the unconscionable lack of antitrust enforcement. This isn't a feature of "advanced economies" -- it's just Standard Oil and US Steel all over again.
> I absolutely won't be surprised if the retail sector is going to consolidate next and small retail just gets wiped out by tech, covid has given us a taste of that already.
"Small retail" has been getting wiped out by Walmart and Home Depot for decades. Economies of scale exist. But Walmart doesn't have an anti-competitive moat, it only has low prices. And it still has to compete with Amazon, Target, Costco, CVS, Best Buy, Dollar General, etc. None of which is "small retail" but that doesn't mean any of them is going without effective competition.
> It's either regulated behemoths or unregulated ones, the 90s internet isn't coming back.
Smash the behemoths into non-vertically-integrated pieces and watch the 90s internet come back.
Because tech has monopolies over specific markets (or duopolies) engaged in anti-competitive practices that harm business and consumers while being comically unregulated.
Banking, credit, and defense all have a pretty good balance of competition and regulation. That's not to say there aren't areas that should be targeted by governments, but tech is hardly a "soft target." It's never been hit!
Well, except for all the 90s/00s Microsoft + Internet Explorer antitrust drama -- though admittedly Microsoft came out of it mostly unscathed, if a bit humbled.
Not that antitrust has to be based on market share but - it is kinda hard to claim Facebook has a monopoly on much of anything. Facebook is a big player but there are dozens of big alternatives. That is not at all the case for Google. Search, YouTube, browsers, Android all have a dominant market position.
Google has complete control over all internet search traffic in most of the world. They get to decide which websites are popular and which are not. This affects every person who owns a website or blog; a LOT of people. This is too much power for one company.
Amazon is just an online retailer, their monopoly only affects people who have shops on Amazon; this is not as harmful because it does not affect as many people and businesses (currently).
Same with Apple, their monopoly only affects people and businesses who want to sell apps on the Apple App store; this is a small number of people and businesses compared to the number affected by Google's search monopoly.
If you own a website, your life is being affected by Google. At a society level, Google can control the narrative of any social issue by tweaking its ranking algorithms to serve its own interests.
From first hand experience as an open source author who runs an open source project website, it certainly seems that Google has been treating me progressively worse over time.
I think you know the truth and you're saying the opposite. Maybe you own Google shares, maybe you work there, maybe someone is paying you to post comments on HN...
How can anyone believe what you're saying? We can all look around and see for ourselves with our own eyes that Google's monopoly is harming us.
Why should anyone believe Google more than their own eyes?
Even if our eyes were deceiving us, doesn't it say something about Google that we have become so distrusting of it?
So if a company earns the trust of their users (and grows very big and successful as a result), they get to claim full credit for it, but if they lose that trust, they're not responsible?
I'd trust the gut feelings of the majority of people rather than the opinions of a handful of experts... What's worse about this case is that there are no experts coming out in defense of Google; they do have financial incentives; so I suspect that they simply have no material to work with!
They cannot show proof to defend the fairness of Google's ranking algorithm because they know that any insight into how it works would conclusively prove that it's not fair. That's why Google is keeping the algorithm a secret.
Experts and authority figures have deceived people enough times that they no longer deserve any trust. It's simple game theory.
For me, the point of no return was the 2008 bank bailouts and it was made worse with the 2020 COVID bailouts...
In spite of the fact that the government had promised that 2008 would be the last bailouts.
Reserve banks of the world are printing massive amounts of money and essentially giving it to corporations (via 'loans' which are used for stock buybacks) and in doing so they betrayed the trust of every honest worker who earns a salary in fiat.
It's not that we want to rely on gut feelings. Gut feelings are simply the lesser of two evils.
And BTW, there are plenty of intellectuals who promote the viewpoint that the system is fragile and corrupt such as Nassim Taleb, Noam Chomsky, Chamath Palihapitiya and others. If you want to make sense of the modern world, just read some of their books or watch some of their interviews and presentations on YouTube. The evidence that authorities cannot be trusted is absolutely clear.
I don't think people realize how much of an effect google has had on shaping the internet over the past decade. I get the impression that most people think Google is just following-along with the trends/changes occurring on the internet, rather than being the driving/molding force. And the fact that Google is politically biased internally should also be equally worrying.
The DoJ obviously shouldn't rush into a case poorly prepared. At the same time though, antitrust issues with Google have been known for so long, and the DoJ itself has been preparing the case for so long... At some point I'd like to see the actual case filed. After all, after being filed this case will take years to work its way through the courts.
Sure it could be for political reasons but it's also possible that Barr just set the deadline to ensure that the lawyers get a move on already instead of dragging their feet.
Other comments have pointed out that he is pushing the timeline against the advice of career lawyers. Everything this Attorney General does should be scrutinized for underlying partisan motivation.
My guess is that he has ulterior political motives linked to the 2020 presidential election, and he wants to build leverage with Google in relation to those motives.
Career lawyers can’t have underlying partisan motivations either?
This article is scant on real facts, instead it’s just more rumor and innuendo from “anonymous sources”. Which apparently is just fine even though in the majority of these stories once the bombastic claims are dropped and more facts come out later, revealing thatthe claims are either grossly overstated or outright lies it doesn’t matter because everyone has moved on to the next “ooh shiny”.
People used to ostracize organizations that take such continual gaslighting to performance art levels, but apparently its the new normal because “orange man bad” or something.
> Career lawyers can’t have underlying partisan motivations either?
They can, we know that the current Attorney General is a hack that eagerly ignores betrays his duties to play politics, doing offense/defense for Trump
Anonymously sources are standards procedure and the majority of these stories are verified. And yes it is an undeniable fact that Trump is terrible, putting it in baby language (orang man bad)doesn't change it one bit. And it's a fact that he has abused the law and his office to go after his perceived opponents, even if regulatory action is needed if it comes from corrupt motives it's much more likely to be overturned in court.
Barr is a political appointee who replaced Sessions, who was dismissed by Trump for being "disloyal." Barr plays the public political game well.
Career workers in Federal agencies can be partisan, but it's harder to think they're more influenced by politics than the politician. Secret conspiracies are really hard to believe, because they're really hard to pull off.
I'm more willing to believe investigators always want more time, and this is a case where our hunger for political reasoning colors our interpretation. Not saying this is the case, just my Occam's Razor.
Sure any lawyer can have ulterior motives. It just so happens that this particular AG has a well established track record of politicizing his work in public office, dating back to the Nixon and Reagan years. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to take that track record into consideration when analyzing his move against Google.
I'm not a fan of the man, but if you're trying to make a case against him you should make it accurate. He did not hold any public office position under the Nixon administration, he was in college during it. He then became a civil servant in the CIA starting in 1973.
You are correct. It's Roger Stone who was a Nixon advisor. Stone is the federal felon which AG Barr recently freed from prison by overriding his sentencing guideline, for purely political reasons. I had my criminals mixed up.
The article reveals the real concern - google has impacted "telecoms and media companies".
These groups are VERY powerful. They don't want things like net neutrality, they want to hoover up broadband subsidies without actually delivering service (and often faking coverage maps etc). And despite all their claims, they are enormous monopoly like groups, now under republican administrations with much GREATER concentrations across both content libraries and internet access (time warner etc).
Under this administration, massive anti-competitive consolidation has been permitted and encouraged in areas with much much greater consumer harm, by companies who IMMEDIATELY go back on their promises.
"On August 7, US district judge Analisa Torres granted the Department of Justice’s request to terminate the Paramount Consent Decrees"
The absolute ridiculous irony here is the govt is hand over fist screwing consumers, and now is going after... google!? ... has having ripped folks off?
Do I believe my cable co was both selling my data for profit and jacking up my prices because I had no choice? Sure, even when their service was terrible I was stuck. Any enforcement? Bare minimum (I had to call monthly to get them to remove their modem rental fee - I wasn't using their modem, but a year after I started they added the charge and insisted I had their modem but wouldn't tell me the device ID).
Australia / New Zealand are going to be some good examples here. Very arbitrarily (vs principles based) rulemaking coming.
> The count faces two crushing deadlines — to compile an accurate tally by Sept. 30, and to process and double-check the numbers in time to deliver population totals to the president by Dec. 31. The Census Bureau earlier had told Congress it needed to push the delivery of population totals to April 2021 because of the pandemic.
> The Trump administration ordered the speedup, critics say, because it wants to subtract undocumented immigrants from the totals before sending them in January to Congress to reapportion the House. That plan — which faces multiple court challenges — would reshuffle House seats to give a modest advantage to the Republican Party.
> It comes as the administration has installed political appointees in the Census Bureau’s top ranks — two in June and a third named last week to a new post: deputy director for data. Critics say the administration wants to change crucial statistical methodologies to give Republicans an even greater edge.
The Vaccine that has already gone through normal stage 2 trials ensuring safety? All this talk about a vaccine being 'rushed' is so anti-science, it's a joke. The vaccine may certainly be ineffective or undereffective if rushed through phase 3 trials, but the idea it'll be unsafe is hogwash.
Stage 1 and 2 trials establish safety in generally healthy people. Stage 3 is primarily to establish efficacy, but is also vital to establish safety in the broader population, including among people with existing diseases.
For their own safety, unhealthy people are not generally admitted into stage 1 and 2 trials.
Curtailing stage 3 testing for political gain is dangerous.
Rushed filings are much less likely to survive the court system.
This would suggest a prosecution that is designed to fail once it reaches the courts. In other words, something designed to make noise without changing Google's behavior.
All? One would at least like to know how common this is. In a corporate environment, it would hardly be unusual for a manager to insist on a faster schedule than developers would prefer.
It isn't at all common for the AG to override his department's attorneys' investigative schedules, let alone for political reasons related to his boss's reelection campaign for reasons and stemming from his crew's inability to Stop Lying All Of The Time.
Are you sure? If so, how? Because all the reporting on all of these topics is extremely politicized, and anyone on one side of the equation is guaranteed to say something like this.
Right. But in this case I was replying to a comparison with a corporate environment, which is not actually comparable to the government's situation. The motive is clearly not any true urgency (Alphabet is not changing their corporate behavior enough to avoid these charges if it takes 1 month to finish getting ready or 3).
I don’t like the timing of this, obvious political motivation.
That said, I think it would be a good thing for Google, Apple, Amazon, and maybe Microsoft to go through this process. When the process works well, the companies may make needed adjustments to the way they do business, and get this all over with in a few years.
I am a very happy paying customer of Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. I would still like them all to be investigated and adjustments made. Capitalism and free markets work very well with the appropriate amount of government oversite - set guardrails for allowed behavior.
Funny how the tone of the comments, so far, is negative. I wonder why.
If the exact same investigation were ramping up in 6 months, under a Biden controlled DOJ, I'd imagine it'd be one comment after another praising the decision.
Regardless, this should be an easy case if they want to win. I can't think of a company in modern times which has obtained so much power and has behaved so poorly in the past few years.
Name their actual bad behavior then - instead of going with the techlash style vaucous talking point "assertion that something must be done" and then locking up when asked about any details. It is amazing at how propaganda talking points cause humans to fail a Turing test like that by acting indistinguishable from bots.
What laws are they going to claim Google has broken? Vague hand-waves about "advertising" and "Google is involved in your life" doesn't cut it for me.
Does anyone have a source or a hunch of what specific anti-trust laws Google is violating with what specific actions?