[HN Gopher] U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against...
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U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google
Author : mancerayder
Score : 390 points
Date : 2021-11-14 00:15 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| mabbo wrote:
| As more data comes out about Google, Apple, Amazon, one simple
| underlying thing becomes clear: a single company cannot be
| trusted to operate a marketplace _while also being a
| participant_.
|
| Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular
| apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to
| compete. Amazon sees what products are successful and profitable,
| then makes knock-offs which they promote over the originals. And
| now, reading into this, Google is manipulating their ad markets
| using inside knowledge.
|
| It's all very profitable.
|
| If we cannot trust large companies to _not_ abuse this kind of
| power, then they should be prevented by law from playing both
| sides. This may result in the breakup of some very large
| companies, akin to the 1934 Air Mail Act that broke up Boeing.
| monkeydust wrote:
| As someone who's been involved in developing financial
| exchanges this concept is bizarre. There is regulation and
| participant agreements that would prevent NYSE for example from
| running its own market making firm and abusing it's position as
| exchange to benefit over other participants for profit, if it
| did this others would leave and the exchange would eventually
| die.
| oblio wrote:
| Small and medium vendors can't abandon Amazon. And with
| enough of them you create the largest marketplace on the
| planet.
| thow-01187 wrote:
| The notion of: "it's a little bit like X, a little bit like Y
| - but it's neither X nor Y, therefore we it's a wild-west
| anarchy without any rules or regulations" - this is such a
| glaring loophole in our legal system that it must be
| intentional. Derivatives bubble, ad-tech, gig-work, crypto-
| mania, AirBnB, and many other socially-parasitic enterprises
| exist solely because our legal code is missing "try-catch-
| finally" clauses
| Nasrudith wrote:
| It is intentional - the legal system defaults to absolute
| freedom in absense of laws. Besides have you seen how
| goddamn inept just rulemaking is when done based upon the
| old standards which have nothing to do with the advantages
| and limitations of the new medium?
|
| Look at attempts to prelegislate things which do not really
| exist yet and you get utter embarrassments of law at best
| and at worst hamstring your nation by laws which assume
| that a TI graphing calculator has the potential to go rogue
| and start deliberately killing people.
| irq-1 wrote:
| They didn't have any trouble during the drug war when new
| variations were made because they weren't illegal -- the
| government made all variants illegal and continued on.
| That's what they do when they care. When they don't care
| they pretend there's nothing they can do.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act
|
| > ...any chemical "substantially similar" to a controlled
| substance listed in Schedule I or II to be treated as if it
| were listed in Schedule I
| btown wrote:
| Not only is adtech virtually unregulated compared to
| financial exchanges, it's also immensely more fragmented, and
| ad networks like Google AdSense are tremendously sticky once
| they've been exclusively integrated on the long tail of
| millions of publisher sites. See
| https://lumapartners.com/content/lumascapes/display-ad-
| tech-... for all the parties involved. There's a lot less
| transparency for all parties involved (see the work of , and
| arguably some version of an SEC for adtech is long overdue.
| If ad exchanges were operated with the transparency of
| broker-dealers, initiatives like https://checkmyads.org/
| wouldn't need to exist.
| Bellamy wrote:
| Another example: FDA is funded by pharma companies.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| No wonder people think businesses run governments when they
| use bad metrics of control like that. The earth itself
| controls oil companies and is therefore responsible for
| global warming by that logic!
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| The underlying assumption is that this behavior is bad.
|
| Why is it bad? Especially bad enough to be regulated by a new
| law?
| seanhunter wrote:
| For one thing it's bad because of information asymmetry
| between the market owner and other participants. The market
| owner knows all the information but each other participant
| only knows a fraction of the information. If the information
| was all completely public it would be less bad probably. This
| is why in financial markets "dark pools" (private alternative
| execution venues) ended up getting new regulation from the
| SEC to prevent abuse
| https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/advocacy/issues/dark-
| pools#s...
|
| Antitrust law doesn't come into effect just because something
| is bad in the abstract sense though, it comes into effect
| when there is harm to the consumer as a result (that's my
| understanding anyway). The harm here is due to the market
| distortion primarily (I would think).
| sjtindell wrote:
| It hinders fair competition, which hurts consumers. It
| misallocates dollars to these gatekeepers.
| tonightstoast wrote:
| The current chair of the FTC has an interesting paper on this
| question (written before she became chair).
|
| https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.p.
| ..
| skohan wrote:
| Are you kidding? You don't think this kind of behavior
| disincentivizes innovation?
|
| And it's not exactly new. Common carrier regulations have
| been a thing forever.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Because this kind of behaviour results in monopolies which
| stifle innovation and invariably harm people.
| II2II wrote:
| It is a conflict of interest that allows them to gain a
| disproportionate amount of control over the market. It causes
| direct harm to competitors, through both the access to
| confidential sales data and access to the market. It also
| causes harm to consumers (at least in cases of locked down
| platforms like iOS) since they no longer have access to
| competitor's products. In short, it is no longer a free
| market.
| snarfy wrote:
| I can open a lemonade stand, I just can't sell my own lemonade,
| is that corrrect?
| Sayrus wrote:
| Now that's one hell of a straw man. Do you also plan on
| controlling this stand, allowing others to sell on your stand
| while watching every single transaction (and maybe the recipe
| so that the analogy is complete?) and while also having the
| power to remove them from your stand?
|
| Because if you are only talking about opening a stand and
| selling your lemonade, then you don't have the same foothold
| as Apple, Google or Amazon.
| snarfy wrote:
| > same foothold
|
| Yes, this is the problem. Participating in the market they
| create is not. If that were true every grocery store that
| has a bakery, deli, or meat counter is a problem.
|
| They are too big. Monopolistic forces are the problem.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| What apps does Apple sell in the App Store that used to be sold
| by third parties, but were then banned?
| oblio wrote:
| F.lux. The examples are countless.
|
| Well, not sold in this case, but given away for free to
| increase the moat, then banned.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Look at how the Notes app has evolved... There are apps for
| scanning documents, for example which are now superseded.
|
| The Music app which now has a streaming service...
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Spotify is still in the App Store, and iTunes/Apple Music
| existed long before Spotify.
| mthoms wrote:
| Spotify launched in 2006. Apple Music: 2015.
|
| iTunes is not a subscription service like Spotify.
| ngngngng wrote:
| Does this only go for internet companies? Or do you think it
| applies to Walmart selling its own Equate brand of everything
| or Costco selling its own Kirkland brand of everything?
| sitkack wrote:
| Trader Joe's pulls the same thing with the house brand. House
| Brand, undercoat, whatevers. If you want Capitalism to work,
| then everything need to be a market. For markets to be
| efficient we need protocols and interfaces. For this to work
| we need to disambiguate to the root, the post office should
| probably deliver milk and potatoes.
| [deleted]
| laurent92 wrote:
| There is urgence in banning Walmart from selling home brands
| next to competitors, because it has hampered the discussion
| on the GAFA monopolies every time it was asked! For its own
| sake, _this_ is causing harm to the customer...
| riazrizvi wrote:
| If 92.47% of all stores in the USA were only Walmart then
| yes, there would be a national interest in determining how
| grocery store competition had been destroyed/denied and we
| would want to fix it.
|
| In such a situation you would see a degradation of store
| product quality vs price. It might not be so clear with
| internet search because Google's ascendence was coincident
| with innovation that it has hoovered up. But once you see
| competition restored, with things like the return of a Search
| API, or of more transparent ranking metrics, or of
| customizable ranking algorithms then you will begin to see
| what you are missing.
| jefftk wrote:
| Where are you getting 92.47%? Amazon's share of online
| shopping is well under that, no?
| charrondev wrote:
| I'm guessing that number is in reference to googles
| dominance of the search market?
|
| I'm assuming they are less than that with regards to the
| advertisement market (I'm not super familiar with the
| space, but as I understand Facebook is a huge player
| there as well).
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| What market though? There is no search market. It is a
| service given away for free. There is no such thing as a
| monopoly on something that does not cost anything.
| kaibee wrote:
| > There is no such thing as a monopoly on something that
| does not cost anything.
|
| This is the wrong way to think about it. How much would
| _Google_ be willing to pay to maintain that position?
| Well, Mozilla's primary source of revenue, is afaik, from
| having Google as the default search engine, so at least
| that much, for whatever percent of the browser market-
| share.
| effingwewt wrote:
| You're kidding, right? the first damn near full page of
| google search is nothing but _ads_ which they make a
| killing off of.
|
| If search wasn't profitable then ads in search and SEO
| wouldn't exist.
| freeflight wrote:
| Companies like Google and Facebook have pretty much
| cornered the market of the attention economy.
|
| The vast majority of web users have their eyes and
| attention directly guided by one of these [0]. If they
| decide you do not exist, then you will effectively cease
| existing for billions of people on the web because they
| do not know a web outside of Google/YouTube or the
| Facebook ecosystem.
|
| [0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-
| how.htm...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| As others have pointed out there are differences between the
| big internet companies and the physical chain stores however
| I think for the purposes of drafting a law, unless it applies
| only to internet commerce, it might be reasonable to write it
| as applying to any store above a certain size as well (I
| guess we want Ma to be able to sell her homemade preserves at
| Ma and Pa's country store)
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| There are a few differences.
|
| The big tech companies have a much higher market share. For
| phone app makers, the App Store is the only point of access
| to the majority of affluent Americans; Google controls access
| to the rest of the 1st world population (sideloading is
| possible on Android but 99.9% of normies won't use your app
| if it's not on the store). Amazon does have competitors and
| you can also run your own e-shop, but they are the
| gatekeepers for a large portion of the online sales market -
| getting kicked off of Amazon is going to hurt bad for any
| online retailer. Of course getting kicked out of Walmart is
| also bad, but there are lots of competitors that lots of
| people use (grocery stores which have regional chains as well
| as smaller local chains, Target, Costco, Amazon, etc.).
|
| Which leads into the second point - Apple has a long history
| of integrating cool features/apps into their OS and then
| kicking out the original creator from the app store. This
| destroys the creator / original company and basically
| transfers the idea's profits to Apple. Retail stores and
| Amazon do make knockoffs, but generally the original product
| is still sold alongside it. In many cases the branded product
| is superior to the generic product and many people will pay
| extra for it; in many other cases the brand also supplies the
| generic label product so that's beneficial for both parties.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _The big tech companies have a much higher market share.
| For phone app makers, the App Store is the only point of
| access to the majority of affluent Americans; Google
| controls access to the rest of the 1st world population
| (sideloading is possible on Android but 99.9% of normies
| won 't use your app if it's not on the store)._
|
| To use real figures, Apple has 60% of the mobile operating
| system market in the US[1], and Google has 40%. Apple's App
| Store has 100% more revenue than Google's Play Store[2],
| and the two are responsible for over 99% of all mobile app
| sales in the US. Both Google and Apple dominate the mobile
| app payment market in the US, as well, since they both ban
| all other forms of app payments on their app stores.
|
| [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-
| and-us-...
|
| [2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
| thow-01187 wrote:
| It would be interesting to see the revenue split between
| App Store and Play Store in the US. Since iOS skews
| towards more affluent users, and more affluent users are
| way more likely to spend, it wouldn't be surprising if
| App store gets 90%+ of the US market in terms of revenue
| - finally dispelling the "it's not a monopoly" argument
| kymaz wrote:
| The effects of costco and walmart's behavior is largely
| contained within their own retail space. Amazon.com has no
| such constraint.
|
| I think my answer is yesno. It isn't about the action of
| making and selling the competing products, but about how the
| internet and FAANG scale changes the customer-business
| dynamics. Consider that when you browse wares in a physical
| store like Costco or Walmart, the selection is constrained to
| what can fit within a building, thus the absolute worthless
| garbage junk and knockoffs will be culled to make space for
| less return-prone items ( At Costco, I don't see 5 pages or
| aisles of identical products listed under different brands
| that are mechanically indistinguishable from 'kirkland
| signature' products). Costco also seems to care about
| counterfeits and whether or not something they sold was found
| to be bad (this has happened to me, a food item at costco was
| found to be the source of a few food poisoning cases and was
| traced back to a single item at costco, and costo went around
| calling everyone who had that batch on their purchase history
| to let them know). I've wound up with counterfeit pieces of
| junk off Amazon that I'm not going to go through the effort
| of refunding/returning/complaining about, so it's all
| slippage that AMZN gets away with. Returns and replacements
| are so fast at brick and mortar stores 5 miles away from
| home!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| In your analogy you name two large brick-and-mortar
| retailers. Allow me to posit my own analogy: If Amazon is the
| Walmart of the web then who is the Costco? Who is the Target?
| There isn't any.
|
| Retailers stick their neck out to put an item on the shelf
| because space is limited. The product is made. It's on the
| shelf. If it doesn't sell then someone loses money. If Equate
| brand sucks I can choose an alternative. If everything on the
| shelf sucks I can go to another store.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Costco, Target and Walmart all have their own online
| presence. Your entire argument makes no sense.
| foerbert wrote:
| They were obviously just using an analogy with real names
| to say Amazon does not have a similar-size competitor or
| three.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Walmart is a similar sized competitor, though. Depending
| on how you break it down, eBay is as well. The analogy
| makes no sense. Walmart is a competitor, Aliexpress,
| Flipkart, etc.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What percentage of online revenue does Walmart make? How
| much does Amazon make?
| jimmont wrote:
| the difference is in the measure of fair competition; anyone
| can compete, it simply can't be unfair; these tech companies
| are competing unfairly and to the extent it's not only
| obvious to participants, it's obvious to government. One
| doesn't typically build a case without supporting evidence as
| would help generally in situations like this.
| notatoad wrote:
| yes, in a scenario where wal-mart or costco is acting as
| _marketplace_ rather than seller (i.e. their online stores).
|
| when you see brand-name products on a shelf at wal-mart
| beside their own-brand, it's because wal-mart has purchased
| that product and is re-selling it. wal-mart has taken the
| risk of buying the stock in the first place. brands still
| have a chance to succeed.
|
| when a brand acts as a marketplace, they aren't taking on the
| risk. they're selling shelf space, not buying things to put
| on the shelves. when they participate in the marketplace as
| well as operating it, they are competing with their own
| customers. that's the behaviour that's essentially a recipe
| to destroy competition.
| toast0 wrote:
| > when you see brand-name products on a shelf at wal-mart
| beside their own-brand, it's because wal-mart has purchased
| that product and is re-selling it.
|
| Goods on the shelf at stores in general are a mix of items
| on consignment, the vendor provided the goods and the
| vendor will be paid only if or when the goods sell; goods
| that were purchased on net-30 or net-N terms where the
| goods are delivered but not paid for until 30 (or N) days
| later; and also some goods that were purchased and paid for
| before delivery to the store (or store warehouse). Of
| course, even when the goods aren't on consignment, larger
| stores often negotiate favorable terms for unsold goods;
| typically the vendor must refund the store as well as pay
| for return shipping or disposal. A large amount of risk
| still falls to the vendor.
|
| Anyway, store brands are fine, IMHO, but there's two things
| Amazon does that weird me out: a) in some categories they
| apparently have several store brands and it's not always
| clear it's an amazon brand, whereas Costco uses a single
| brand and most other stores use just a couple; b) there
| have been reports that Amazon will request supplier
| information from merchants of products that are selling
| well, and then Amazon goes to those suppliers and
| negotiates bulk purchases; it seems to me, that's making
| your merchants do all the work to discover items of
| interest and where to get them made and then Amazon swoops
| in and takes over.
| rcdwealth wrote:
| Difference is that neither Wallmart, Equate, Costco are
| marketplaces for third parties.
| amelius wrote:
| Do you have an argument against that?
| hnxs wrote:
| Can you explain how Costco is relevant here when they make
| most of their money off membership fees and not sales?
| klipt wrote:
| Would you say the same about Amazon promoting its own
| brand, if Amazon made more money off Prime than sales?
| cgriswald wrote:
| I'd say in the case of Amazon, store brands are missing
| the point. They can let sellers take all the risk of
| determining what the market will support, while profiting
| whether the seller is successful or not. If successful,
| Amazon can reach its own deal with the manufacturer and
| compete _with the very same branded product_ , possibly
| at a lower price, without having to pay into the
| marketplace, and with the capability of manipulating the
| search results.
| bothandeach wrote:
| Yes but. It's your country, you let them do these things. You
| set up your country to let them do these things. So no real
| reason to complain.
| acdha wrote:
| Complaining is how problems get fixed. If we took your advice
| we'd still be living in a country where voting was restricted
| to white male land owners and most of us would be dreaming
| about rate reductions at the company store.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| For real, do we have any more influence in this ?
|
| Looking at what's happening now, Apple and Google are not
| under scrutiny because of our collective petitioning or
| votes, it's solely because of competitors with deep enough
| pockets to duck it in court.
|
| As a proof of that, there's no one to fight Facebook so not
| much effectively changes on that front, despite all the
| outcry and editorials thrown at them.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Anybody can figure out what Apps are popular, or are well liked
| by their users. Any 3rd party could operate the Apple App
| Store, and Apple (or anybody else in the world) would still
| know what apps were popular on it, and Apple would still be
| able to implement them as features/apps for their own operating
| systems. To resolve the conflict you're describing, an
| operating system vendor would have to be prohibited from
| distributing software.
| emkoemko wrote:
| imagine your Netflix and have to pay Apple massive % to be on
| their devices... then comes Apple with its own service and they
| can charge less because they don't charge them self's the %
| giving them very anti competitive advantage.
| charcircuit wrote:
| No, it would be a competitive thing. In chess capturing your
| opponents pieces to weaken them is a valid strategy you will
| see in any tournament. Capturing Netflix's marketshare by
| offering a cheaper alternative is competitive. Putting your
| enemy in disadvantaged positions is just part of the game.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I don't understand how your analogy is even remotely
| relevant. In chess, both sides can make the exact same
| moves. Neither side can change the rules. Neither side can
| impose any extra costs on the other side in an asymmetric
| way. It's a classic example of a level playing field, and
| it's the exact opposite of the asymmetric roles that Apple
| and Netflix play on the iOS platform.
|
| The only way in which your analogy could possibly apply is
| if you're saying Netflix is free to create its own mobile
| OS ecosystem where they can impose asymmetric rules and
| taxes on Apple TV. But it's neither possible nor desirable
| for every app maker to create their own OS and perhaps even
| their own hardware.
|
| The definition of "competitive" you seem to be using here
| is not useful.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >The only way in which your analogy could possibly apply
| is if you're saying Netflix is free to create its own
| mobile OS ecosystem where they can impose asymmetric
| rules and taxes on Apple TV
|
| That is an option for Netflix. If they made their own
| platform they could offer a more competitive price.
|
| Apple was created in 1996. Netflix was made in 1997.
| Maybe a good strategy of having a dominant streaming
| platform in 202x would have been to launch a mobile
| platform. Netflix had the same chance as Apple to take
| that path, but they didn't. Apple can now capitalize on
| good moves that it made in the past. In chess you can't
| just recognize that you are in a bad position and then
| ask a tournament organizer if you can be reset into an
| equal position again. Either you continue playing that
| bad position, or you resign.
|
| >But it's neither possible nor desirable for every app
| maker to create their own OS and perhaps even their own
| hardware.
|
| If you have no choice but to charge more than your
| competitors and you can't justify the extra cost with
| extra features or whatever and people stop using your
| service and you go bankrupt then you have lost the game.
|
| >The definition of "competitive" you seem to be using
| here is not useful.
|
| It seems useful to me. It's the basis of what makes this
| game interesting.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> That is an option for Netflix. If they made their own
| platform they could offer a more competitive price._
|
| It may be an option for Netflix. It may be an option for
| Facebook. But it's not an option for 99.999% of app
| makers and it would be bad for consumers. Very bad.
| Imagine you had to buy one device per service you're
| using. I don't want to buy a Netflix device to watch
| Netflix movies. This is just bonkers.
|
| _> It seems useful to me. It's the basis of what makes
| this game interesting._
|
| No. It's more than just useless. It is a great
| demonstration of how every ideology becomes insanity if
| you take it to its extremes.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| This ignores the network effects for users and
| integration costs for developers. Once a competitor gains
| monopoly/monopsony/oligopoly position with those factors
| introducing a new challenger becomes nearly impossible at
| any cost. Ask Microsoft.
|
| Anyway, Apple began in 1976, not 1996. And by '96 they
| had both an established hardware brand and decades more
| expertise than when Netflix launched.
| andygcook wrote:
| Apple was founded in 1976, which is a full twenty years
| before Netflix.
| taylorhou wrote:
| interesting point. I wonder if an incremental regulation can
| be passed whereas if the marketplace decides to become a
| participant/competitor, those in which it competes against no
| longer have to pay the marketplace fees to "even the playing
| field" at least from a financial standpoint.
|
| doesn't even have to be regulation. these companies can do it
| in good faith but alas, life's not fair.
| 32gbsd wrote:
| we love these large companies. less people to trust, plus free-
| ish services
| epistasis wrote:
| > Amazon sees what products are successful and profitable, then
| makes knock-offs which they promote over the originals. And
| now, reading into this, Google is manipulating their ad markets
| using inside knowledge.
|
| This is nothing new, as brick and mortar retailers have store
| brands for popular products as well.
|
| While I'm glad that the move to the internet lets us reevaluate
| some of the social relations, I have a reeeeaaaaal hard time
| finding any way that this sort of thing harms consumers.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| This is a tired argument.
|
| Amazon doesn't work like a supermarket: a closer analogy
| would be a shopping mall also providing cash registers to the
| stores. Amazon doesn't buy from the producers nor act as a
| distributor on most transactions. The risk is all
| externalized, and they face minimal penalty (no loss of shell
| space, no stocking risk) by having their product alongside
| the original one.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| It's a difficult argument, but perhaps one on quality could
| be made (IANAL and maybe talking out my ASS). By having
| Amazon promote their lesser-quality-but-supposed-same-product
| the consumer is being hurt. I argue this as I have spent too
| much on Amazon Basics. One specific case, USB cables, I had
| to go buy am alternate brand of the same product soon
| thereafter.
| epistasis wrote:
| Agreed that this will happen, but I also think this is
| exactly the same thing that's expected of store brands:
| cheaper, but could be of lower quality.
| mjevans wrote:
| The Amazon brands I see as the ONE product they should (in
| theory) never allow co-mingling on and thus the safe one to
| buy for a known quality.
| lenkite wrote:
| "This is nothing new, as brick and mortar retailers have
| store brands for popular products as well".
|
| The analogy seems spurious to me. Do brick and mortar
| retailers charge other brands for being a market-place ?
| Don't they actually _buy_ products of other brands ?
| kreeben wrote:
| Some super markets carry your favorite brand of frozen
| chicken nuggets, others do not. Makes me think there are
| agreements between producers and retailers and that those
| agreements are all about money.
|
| I bet there are clauses in those agreements that state that
| the retailer should "make my brand of ketchup the first
| brand that customers see" and that they cater to that
| clause "for a small fee".
| thow-01187 wrote:
| Yes, this is the crucial difference
|
| Brick and mortar stores are dealers, Amazon is a broker.
| Dealers have inventories - they purchase items from the
| suppliers and resell them - if they misjudge demand,
| they're left off with useless goods. Brokers simply
| facilitate a transaction between two parties - there's no
| risk involved. The fact that brokers get to charge a higher
| mark-up than dealers is just bizarre
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Dealers have inventories - they purchase items from the
| suppliers and resell them - if they misjudge demand,
| they're left off with useless goods.
|
| Everything is negotiable. If a retailer has more power
| than a supplier, then the retailer can demand a
| guaranteed sale clause in the contract, requiring the
| supplier to take back unsold goods and refund them.
|
| https://www.comcapfactoring.com/blog/walmart-vendor-
| financin...
|
| https://factor-this.com/walmart-supplier-financing/
| PeterisP wrote:
| The major brick and mortar stores are _not_ solely
| dealers, they often have various deals where they sell
| items on consignment and do not pay for inventory until
| after they 're sold, require payment for "shelf space",
| etc. That's transparent from a customer perspective, but
| from a supplier viewpoint they're often quite close to
| brokers in practice.
| mthoms wrote:
| The consignment model and paying for shelf space are the
| _exception_ in retail though, not the rule.
|
| They tend to exist only where there is a huge asymmetry
| in power between retailer (usually large chains) and
| suppliers.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Isn't _most_ of retail done by large chains with a huge
| asymmetry in power?
| xioxox wrote:
| In the UK, the big supermarket Tesco were criticised
| heavily for how they charged their suppliers for various
| things:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/mar/30/tesco-
| reduc...
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Surprisingly no (or at least not always). Think for example
| of the displays of idk, stacks of holiday branded coke near
| the entrance of Walmart. Coca cola pays Walmart for that
| space and a coke employee likely puts the product there.
|
| Joe's corner store and Walmart work differently, only one
| negotiates brand deals.
| mabbo wrote:
| Maybe it was never right that those stores were also doing
| that.
|
| There's also a matter of the level of dominance that the
| platform has. Something like half of e-commerce takes place
| on Amazon; most online ads are via Google; and Apple
| literally invented the name "App Store".
|
| As for consumer harm, when the market is manipulated to
| remove competition, we are all harmed. Not today, not
| directly, but every day after that.
| epistasis wrote:
| I think the solution is two fold: 1) strong anti-monopoly
| law, and 2) holding brick and mortar retailers to the same
| standard that we apply to online retailers.
|
| I think that you'll find that most grocery retailers have
| nearly as large a monopoly inside their geographic area as
| Amazon does in the retail space.
| winternett wrote:
| Just think about all the development and financial data and
| ideas that google has a direct untraceable back door into
| through running gmail, android phones, and chrome browser
| alone...
|
| I have resorted to using an old school notepad for my
| development ideas pretty much. A software company I used to
| work for got shuttered just 3 months after a big software
| company paid the startup a visit to observe operations back in
| 98, I've always been wary of corporate espionage since.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| That's not what the comment you're replying to is talking
| about. They may not be trusted to control a marketplace,
| doesn't mean we have to entertain silly conspiracy theories
| about them reading your google docs! As another comment says
| below, there is no way that can be happening because google
| engineers would not keep it secret! Regarding your paper
| notepad, I keep paper by my laptop also, it's a nice medium.
| But seriously, to think it's protecting you against IP
| espionage is (a) tinfoil hat territory and (b) almost
| certainly a massive overestimation of your IP. You don't want
| to go through life miscalibrated in this regard; apart from
| anything else it will confuse those for whom you are a role
| model.
| rapnie wrote:
| It always completely astounded me how countless professional
| businesses are casually and mindlessly handing over their
| most private internal communication and metrics to Google on
| a platter. And aren't Google's privacy policies and ToS's
| stating that all collected information can be used to
| "improve their own services" or something along those lines?
| Does that include 'extract business advantage' from your
| data? I don't know and IANAL, but I'd prefer some separation
| from such an ad-tech giant with my corporate intelligence.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| (Not a Google engineer)
|
| Google's engineers are notoriously loose-lipped (which is a
| good thing!!!). There's no way they would be able to keep a
| secret like this. Anytime a customer's private data gets
| accessed, you either a) need approval by someone or b)
| "break the glass", which is only reserved for oncall fires.
| Either way, it gets audited.
|
| The only way I would believe something like this is if an
| executive/higher up requests data access, gets it, and the
| person auditing looks the other way.
| capableweb wrote:
| The last case of ad bidding proves that while not
| everyone at Google knows whats going on, they are abusing
| the data they are sitting on.
| extropy wrote:
| Which case is that?
| [deleted]
| underwater wrote:
| That's assuming that there isn't another back channel to
| access that data.
|
| And even if they don't access file or email content,
| metadata like access data like Play Store performance,
| Google searches for competing products, and Google
| Analytics data, might seem like fair game.
| dannyw wrote:
| How does Google respond to secret FISA orders which by
| law cannot be audited or known by anyone but the direct
| receiver and one pre-screened attorney?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Most businesses on Google Workspace don't see the US
| government as an adversary. If they do, they encrypt
| things or don't use Workspace.
| extropy wrote:
| This. If US government on your things to worry about
| list, you host in Russia Cloud or China Cloud. Or roll
| your own data center in some non US allied country.
| dannyw wrote:
| That's not my point. My point is by law Google must have
| secret and extremely challenging to audit processes for
| accessing user data, which can be abused for corporate
| espionage.
| amelius wrote:
| Who says Google doesn't have some secret group with
| security clearance, and only top management knows of its
| existence?
| ThePowerOfDirge wrote:
| You missspelled Baidu and CCP there.
| roenxi wrote:
| Google employs a huge number of engineers. It can
| assemble a very tight lipped group of people if it wants
| to.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| You can perform these analyses with 'anonymized' data to
| both observe the broad trends across a huge dataset, and
| still claim you haven't invaded privacy.
|
| With the scale of surveillance data available to Google,
| this is how they have their cake and eat it too.
|
| Once you know that note-taking apps (e.g.) are a hugely
| growing space, it's easy to use publicly available data
| to find the startups making a splash. Not once did
| Google's data tell them Startup X is an acquihire target.
| And yet, here they are at Startup X's door.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Sure, but that sounds much better than Google peaking
| into Startup X's emails and determining how much runway
| they have left, how management feels about their ability
| to succeed, etc.
| Zababa wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true. For example the video about
| serving 5 petabytes of data took 11 years to come out:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29082014
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| "It's to fight terrorism, don't tell anyone"
| freeflight wrote:
| So Google has all the "checks&balances" in place, and
| corporate managed to turn them into a flawless and
| perfect system?
|
| And the source for that claim is not even a Google
| engineer, but apparently somebody who heard how Google
| engineers are "notoriously loose-lipped".
|
| From which loose-lipped Google engineer did you get that
| information about "needing approval", "breaking glass"
| and "audits"?
|
| _> The only way I would believe something like this is
| if an executive /higher up requests data access, gets it,
| and the person auditing looks the other way._
|
| It's much easier to believe once you remember how Google
| actually makes its money [0].
|
| In that context it not only becomes believable, but it
| actually fits perfectly into their MO [1].
|
| [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-
| doesnt-...
|
| [1] https://www.theregister.com/2016/03/09/google_venture
| s_yield...
| joshuamorton wrote:
| [I work at Google]
|
| Your first link explains how Google doesn't actually give
| your data to anyone else. Your second link is about a
| company that Google Ventures invested in. The equivalent
| would be that some company claims a YC-backed startup
| stole some of their IP, and that somehow YC is at fault,
| which is silly. Google isn't even a party to the lawsuit
| (further, it's not clear that the company who sued even
| won and to an extent it looks like they might be a patent
| troll).
|
| > From which loose-lipped Google engineer did you get
| that information about "needing approval", "breaking
| glass" and "audits"?
|
| A bunch of it is public: https://cloud.google.com/access-
| transparency. Access Transparency provides the access
| logs to the customer, and Access Approvals allows a cloud
| customer to prevent Google from accessing their data
| without approval from the company. But yes, you could
| also go searching HN for discussion of these topics and
| probably find quite a lot from people.
| pjmlp wrote:
| You forgot Chromebooks, that everyone around here is so eager
| to advocate, basically running their business on Google's
| infrastructure.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> You forgot Chromebooks, that everyone around here is so
| eager to advocate_
|
| Got a source for that?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Have fun, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&pr
| efix=false&qu...
| squarefoot wrote:
| I would advocate Chromebooks and Chromeboxes only because
| once I remove the bootloader protection, flash the coreboot
| firmware and install whichever OS I want, from my point of
| view they're wonderful little machines. But from normal
| users perspective, once they discover that the hardware is
| locked to prevent the install of anything but ChromeOS,
| they are garbage, and probably it is what they become once
| the user has enough of the Google ecosystem then ditch them
| well before their physical obsolescence. Locking down
| hardware to prevent installation of other operating systems
| should become illegal.
| j-bos wrote:
| Do you recommend any guides for removing the bootloader
| protection?
| agent48 wrote:
| h
| numair wrote:
| > antitrust complaint against _Alphabet 's Google_
|
| There's gonna be high-fives and cigars for all of the lawyers and
| lobbyists who have successfully executed on the strategy to spin
| off the ultra-high-revenue-generating but secretly-ultra-toxic
| asset into a standalone entity before the heat got turned on. J&J
| is trying to do this with the whole talc thing but it's probably
| too late.
|
| I am totally, totally impressed by Google's government and legal
| people. They've gotten the company out of almost every mess
| unscathed, and even done _something_ to erase its most senior
| executives' rumored associations with Jeffrey Epstein. It's truly
| remarkable. In my ultimate fantasy, they'd be working for the
| greater good, rather than _against it_ , but alas.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The spinoff isn't as significant as you might think - all the
| restructure did was aid in financial reporting and further
| separate things like Verily from the Ad business.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Excellent!
| eoo wrote:
| Breaking down Google is not gonna work.
|
| I guess that the simplest solution is to forbid Google from being
| in the ad exchange business. Take down AdX and most of the
| monopolizing effects they have on the ecosystem would be
| dampened.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Splitting Android and Chrome would be good enough for a start.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Better to split off YouTube so it has to compete with search
| for ads.
| zwaps wrote:
| It is mentioned in the article, but Google lost an appeal in the
| EU recently, related to ranking of its price search engine. But
| one wonders whether that's really such a big deal for Google.
|
| An interesting detail instead arises from the other cases. The
| one case Google apparently WANTS to settle out of court is the
| case on the use of data!
|
| Now, this should tell the careful reader quite a bit about what
| Google thinks is really important here.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > The one case Google apparently WANTS to settle out of court
| is the case on the use of data!
|
| Generally, companies want to settle out of court in order to
| bring a case to a defined conclusion and limit future
| liabilities. Along that vein, it's not an accident that this
| case is now news after the judgement in the EU.
| zwaps wrote:
| I should have been more clear. Google is settling this case
| because it matters, and because it does not want to have a
| public court judgment on the matter of data usage.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Supposing substantial antitrust actions are taken against Big
| Tech, would that have any effect on rank-and-file salaries in
| software? Big Tech kinda sets the bar regarding salaries, no?
| When MSFT was hit with antitrust action did it have any effect
| like this? Or is it an apples/orange comparison?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The last time Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar,
| Lucasfilm and eBay got hit with antitrust action, engineer
| compensation soared and has been on the rise since.
|
| Ultimately, prices are not determined by costs, and that
| applies to the labor market, as well.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
| djbusby wrote:
| I've been in tech since 1997, spent some time at MS (back in
| NT4,Win2k). The only wage pullback I've seen was dot-com
| implosion. It lasted maybe two years of slightly reduced pay.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| My lead has been working for 30 years as a dev and has told me
| his salary has been pretty consistent throughout so I don't
| believe that's the case. The coastal cities project absurd
| salaries but when I look at indeed across all of the US,
| 60-120k is pretty standard depending on entry to senior. If
| they got knocked down a peg, I highly doubt a lot of people
| working for google or microsoft would be vying for the lame
| boring "conservative" work environments in the midwest or
| south.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Higher wages. More market competition.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Price of labor is a function of supply/demand. Developers still
| in very short supply vs demand. But profitability sets a
| ceiling on how much you can afford to pay.
|
| It seems to me that if antitrust action were taken that really
| eats into FAANG profits, that industry pay would decline. Not
| overnight of course, but gradually in real terms. May still
| rise in nominal terms.
|
| Startups/companies have been forced to raise wages over time to
| compete with FAANG.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Unless of course deadweight loss from monopoly power n FAANG
| is causing the industry as a whole to be less productive and
| competitive. In that situation antitrust against FAANG could
| actually cause wages to rise.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Industry would be more competitive if FAANG were regulated
| appropriately IMO.
|
| But a lot of comp in tech is benchmarked against FAANG.
| Specifically if you are a startup trying to hire top
| 80th-90th percentile people. If their pay fell, I'm pretty
| confident the top end of industry pay would as well,
| despite more competition/productivity. Median pay likely
| unaffected.
|
| Even when you consider the low marginal cost to produce
| SaaS and similar, the same is true of any competitor. So
| you'd expect a highly competitive cloud (e.g.) landscape to
| be low margin despite low cost to provide.
|
| Looking specifically at Azure, AWS, Google Cloud... They
| become somewhat of a local monopoly over their customers
| due to costs of switching. The higher barrier/cost to
| switching to a competitor, the greater pricing power the
| company has. Even considering that the first choice has a
| lot of competition.
|
| Anyway, long story short, I think regulation that enables
| low cost of switching is inevitable in the longer run. As
| this provides the most competitive landscape, this highest
| net benefit to society. Would need to be crafted
| intelligently though.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Unless of course deadweight loss from monopoly power n
| FAANG is causing the industry as a whole to be less
| productive and competitive._
|
| It's this. Apple and Google control the _entire_ mobile
| software market. They tax it excessively, to the point that
| they get a 15% to 30% cut of almost every mobile app
| transaction, and have for decades. If a business can 't
| afford to give up 15% to 30% of their total revenue,
| forever, then they're effectively prevented from bringing
| their mobile apps to market. Apple and Google also
| effectively decide what apps are distributed to the vast
| majority of Americans, as their app stores are responsible
| for 99% of all mobile app downloads[1].
|
| It's insane that a duopoly has been allowed to heavily tax
| and stifle innovation over entire markets in the mobile
| space for more than a decade now. The entire mobile app,
| operating systems and payments markets are dominated by two
| companies, and they're doing everything in their power to
| remain dominant, at the expense of consumers and healthy,
| efficient markets.
|
| [1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
| kaycebasques wrote:
| > The lawsuit also highlights Google's use of a secret program
| dubbed "Project Bernanke" in 2013 that used bidding data to give
| its own ad-buying an advantage. For example, in a 2015 iteration
| of the program, Google allegedly dropped the second-highest bids
| from publishers' auctions, accumulated money into a pool and then
| spent that money to inflate only the bids belonging advertisers
| who used the company's Google Ads. They otherwise would have
| likely lost the auctions, the states alleged.
|
| Can someone rephrase this and possibly explain like I'm five? I'm
| not following the mechanics...
| seanhunter wrote:
| It's hard not to think this would be outright fraud rather than
| an antitrust issue to be honest. It will be interesting to see
| how this claim holds up.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Have you watched The Billion Dollar Code?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I was going to ask the same thing. Also using some info from
| the WSJ comment below.
|
| - WSJ: "Texas alleges that Google used its access to data from
| publishers' ad servers--where more than 90% of large publishers
| use Google to sell their digital ad space--to guide advertisers
| toward the price they would have to bid to secure an ad
| placement."
|
| - This is bid optimization & bid shading no? Both helping
| buyers place a high enough winning bid. And then also offering
| bid shading probable. With a second price auction the winning
| bid clear price is 2nd price + .01 or whatever. All DSPs offer
| this and use the open market data?
|
| - Next WSJ graph seems like the crux of the insider trading is
| not really accurate? If all major bidding platforms (dsp's)
| offer this feature. e.g. it doesn't " unfairly compete against
| rival ad-buying tools and pay publishers less on its winning
| bids for ad inventory." ?
|
| - "Google allegedly dropped the second-highest bids"
|
| - So publishers still got paid the highest bid?
|
| - Or maybe see above about bid shading. Maybe this could lower
| the clearing amount paid to the publisher? E.g. $10, $7, $5
| bids. Drop $7, winning price is now $5.01 ?
|
| - "accumulated money into a pool and then spent that money to
| inflate only the bids belonging advertisers who used the
| company's Google Ads"
|
| - I don't understand this. The WSJ article also doesn't mention
| what money is pooled.
| [deleted]
| nuclearnice3 wrote:
| I don't fully understand the mechanics either, but one point
| of clarification that might help.
|
| > - "Google allegedly dropped the second-highest bids" >> -
| So publishers still got paid the highest bid?
|
| During the relevant period and until end of 2021, Google is
| running a second price auction. The highest bid wins and then
| pays the second highest bid.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Yeah that's what I wrote in the later part the $10,7,5
| example I thought might be the case.
|
| If that's the flat out only thing literally happening, I
| can't think of a reasonable reason that would be in the
| best interest of the publishers paying google to sell
| supply side.
|
| it's all jumbled when you control all sides of the auction
| and infrastructure which is the real problem IMHO.
|
| Maybe I can see a scenario where bid shading is conflated
| here a bit or at least complicates the scenario.
|
| For instance 'drop' the 2nd bid maybe means placing a lower
| bid instead of 'deleting' one.
|
| all DSPs have a good sense of what will win the auction and
| offer bid shading to buyers.
|
| Just trying to think through that line of thought. For
| instance I buy political ads. Google knows that video
| inventory X usually sells for $30 CPM, but my settings have
| $50 CPM max bids because during the election it's hard to
| get scale sometimes. my DSP would bid shade lower to say
| $30.01 on that individual impression, and if I happen to be
| the 2nd price maybe that is 'drop' they are refering too?
|
| IDK i don't think traditional news media reporting here
| will ever give enough information / they understand enough
| waterloosong wrote:
| fair enough, reverse engineering media reporting on legal
| documents can be tricky
|
| You need to realize just one more thing: to ensure that
| there is no peeking into bids of other networks, the
| actual code of the auction could be executed on a remote
| server. But only a naive implementation would ask every
| ad network client to send all their ad bids to the
| server; on the other hand having ad networks send only
| the highest bid would not be enough for a second-price
| auction...
| ignoramous wrote:
| This summary by Jason Kint is pretty digestible:
| https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1451621332983103492
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Ok. So basically if i'm reading that correctly? :
|
| - google is basically offering bid shading on both sides of
| the transaction. (RPO on pub side according to this tweet) -
| Both dynamically increasing floor to buy NyTimes.com based on
| the current likely bid - And for buyers increasing/decreasing
| bid to pay the best 2nd price auction clearing price
|
| which imho is the main problem that should be legislated; you
| can't own all sides of a transaction AND the pipes. instead
| of trying to convince a jury of some complicated insider
| trading monopoly confusing mess.
| vrc wrote:
| This article explains it somewhat [1]. Still not much more
| detail, but more nuance than the Reuters piece.
|
| I guess the claim was that they manipulated where bids were
| placed based on who had the highest bid. So that if a non
| Google advertiser was going to win the auction, they removed
| the second highest bid if it was a Google advertiser s.t. the
| price paid for the slot dropped (second price auction). So in
| effect, they maintained a higher payout for pubs when Google
| programmatic bidders won by dropping the second price floor on
| non Google-programmatic winners. Thus making more money AND
| converting people towards programmatic.
|
| I believe their counter argument is that the data they had
| actually just made programmatic better from the start by
| predicting these outcomes, no fraud needed
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-
| bernanke...
| zulban wrote:
| I think you may have missed the mark on "explain like I'm
| five".
| waterloosong wrote:
| Who wouldn't.
|
| This is a second price auction that we speak of. Every ad
| company is polled to send no more than two bids. Naturally
| those would be the two highest bids from thousands that
| they handle. So let's say that Google first and second bids
| are G1 and G2, Facebook F1, and F2, some other company C1
| and C2 and so on. So if those bids are sorted in descending
| order it may look like, for example, A1 >
| B1 > A2 > C1 > B2 > C2 > ...
|
| In this example, the ad belonging to A1 gets served, the
| price is the value of bid B1.
|
| That's why it is called "second price" auction. If it was a
| first price auction, the A1 advertiser would pay A1 bid
| price, and could save some money by bidding slightly lower,
| but still more than B1. Neither of these companies know up-
| front what the other bid will be, but with a second price
| auction there is no need for it, the A1 advertiser pays the
| amount of B1 bid.
|
| Same goes for bids G1 and G2, they don't know what other
| bids will be. It could end up like this: G1
| > G2 > C1 > ...
|
| From time to time Google overhauls their AI. Let's say for
| simplicity that the two highest bids from Google are the
| same ads, the new bid for G1 is G'1 and the new bid for G2
| is G'2. Though it could change who wins the auction, for
| instance if it ends up like this G'2 > G'1
| > C1 > ...
|
| or C1 > G'1 > G'2 > ...
|
| Or it could change only what the price is, for example if
| it ends up like this, the price will lower from G2 to C1
| G'1 > C1 > G'2 > ...
|
| Or if there is some minimum bid value Z required by
| publisher and it it would be G'1 > C1 > Z > G'2, it would
| be only G'1 that is passed to the auction. "Google
| allegedly dropped the second-highest bids from publishers'
| auctions".
|
| The "inflate only the bids belonging advertisers who used
| the company's Google Ads" is a mixture of G'1 > G'2 > G2 >
| ... and G'1 > C1 > G1 > ... and that sort of stuff
|
| There is no accumulating money in a pool, keeping it to
| spending later on something; there is a need for balancing
| the two effects above, so that the overhaul won't go
| overboard either way.
|
| The case of C1 > G'1 > G1 > ... is missing from the Reuters
| snippet. If it is in the lawsuit, it would end up as
| "secretly forcing the advertisers who used competing ad
| network to pay more", I guess
| waterloosong wrote:
| A good introduction to that topic is About Enhanced CPC:
| https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2464964
|
| "ECPC works by automatically adjusting your manual bids for
| clicks that seem more or less likely to lead to a sale or
| conversion on your website"
|
| Of course, it is based on historical data
|
| But you end up having a quite complicated code calculating the
| auction bid.
|
| I doubt that you could code it easily based on a cursory
| reading of the About Enhanced CPC page.
|
| Even more futile is guessing what specific details of that code
| function that project Bernanke optimized, if your only source
| is the lawsuit doc and newspapers relating it
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| See paras. 148-154
|
| https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...
|
| There may be more details in the 3rd amended complaint that was
| just filed. Has anyone found a copy online.
|
| It would be surprising if anyone could ELI5 the mechanics of
| Project Bernanke in a HN thread. If they could, the state AGs
| would probably like to hear from them. :)
| [deleted]
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Google does not want documents produced to the DOJ to be shared
| with the state AGs.
|
| https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...
|
| Judge Castel reminded them that they must produce those documents
| to the state AGs.
|
| https://ia601404.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...
|
| Perhaps this team can benefit from the discovery conducted by the
| DOJ.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Google does not want documents produced to the DOJ to be
| shared with the state AGs.
|
| Are the documents produced to the DOJ public? Can attorneys
| general not use any public information?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Can document discovery really be this sweeping? Or is this some
| sort of request where the plaintiff can review potential
| documents before those documents are submitted into discovery
| and argued on?
| syspec wrote:
| I didn't find it in the article, but what is the complaints goal?
| To break up google from its advertising business?
| codyogden wrote:
| No. It likely won't break up Google. It really would have
| little effect on the consumers, in my opinion. This is about
| protecting the interests of large advertisers and publishers.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...
| ZhangSWEFAANG wrote:
| I don't think there is one unified goal but a series of
| suggested changes.
|
| For example, in the linked article
| (https://www.reuters.com/technology/dozens-us-states-sue-
| goog...),
|
| "The states want the consumers to get their money back. They
| also called for civil penalties and a court-imposed monitor to
| ensure Google eases the process for consumers, app developers
| and smartphone makers to use or promote alternatives to the
| Play Store and the official payment system for 20 years. In
| addition, the states seek to stop Google's payments to Samsung
| and developers."
| judge2020 wrote:
| That's a very different case. The HN article is about the Ad-
| rigging system abuse, not the consumer choice app store
| lawsuit.
|
| > accuses Google of using monopolistic and coercive tactics
| with advertisers in its efforts to dominate and drive out
| competition in online advertising.
| [deleted]
| judge2020 wrote:
| Would be nice if a case number were included. I can't find it
| anywhere in any of the original articles reporting on the
| Texas-led lawsuit, unfortunately.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| If it's antitrust then some sort of breakup would be the ends.
| eitland wrote:
| Still waiting for investigators to look into Chrome.
|
| In 2009 we were finally getting rid of IE and the web browser
| market was a healthy ecosystem with lots and lots of innovation
| happening.
|
| Today we are soon back on a browser monoculture with the owner of
| the most popular product being a company that has enormous
| interest in killing certain parts of the ecosystem and also has a
| long history of killing of their own products.
|
| How did it happen? In my opinion: massive abuse of power in two
| other markets (search and ads) to push their way into browsers as
| well. (Well, I'm feeling I might have been too generous above: I
| could add 2 more - video and office tools - by pointing how they
| selectively make Google Docs and YouTube perform worse in
| Firefox, being so brazen about it that just changing the headers
| so that Firefox identifies itself as Chrome makes the problems go
| away.)
| moonchrome wrote:
| Safari/WebKit on iOS is a far worse offender. Part of the
| reason you can't escape the app store tax is because WebKit
| intentionally gimps webapps.
|
| Even Microsoft wasn't this dirty with IE, you could always
| install other browsers.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I mean, this won't work in court since being forced to use
| WebKit isn't unique - it's just a technical requirement to
| developing on iOS. Just as you're forced to use specific
| Apple APIs to access sensor data or draw stuff to the screen,
| you're forced to use a specific APIs to run JavaScript code.
| the8472 wrote:
| > it's just a technical requirement to developing on iOS
|
| It's not a _technical_ requirement. It 's purely policy.
| Nothing but policy stops others from compiling their own
| runtimes for iOS.
|
| Sensors are different, you need to access the hardware.
| Browsers are just general purpose software.
| nojito wrote:
| Good luck trying to win a monopoly argument on an OS without
| a majority marketshare.
| cute_boi wrote:
| There is one good aspect of safari. Because of fear of
| loosing ios customer many website still works and doesn't
| shouts at you "This website only works on chrome".
|
| And Microsoft is worst company than apple in browser till
| today. Their product Skype doesn't even work on Firefox. And
| in macos you can easily switch firefox but in win11 good
| luck.
| eitland wrote:
| I hear this a lot.
|
| I'll listen
|
| - when Safari has anyone near the marketshare across all
| mobile devices as Chrome has on desktop and mobile.
|
| - Apple has spent billions on promoting it
|
| - has intentionally gimped several top ten web properties for
| other browsers
|
| until then this is a problem for iOS users, including me, not
| an internet problem.
|
| I get it, Safari is annoying, but lets not compare Apple
| fleecing their own users (including me) with Google trying to
| finish off what Microsoft failed to: to kill the open web.
| sershe wrote:
| Simple product (almost everyone wants more or less the same
| things and/or things are hard to compare, like security) and
| zero cost of switching is how it happened. It is expected that
| it would produce this distribution.
|
| I've started on Firefox before it was Firefox (2003?), then
| switched to Chrome when Firefox became slow, then switched back
| to Firefox when something annoyed me about Chrome (I don't even
| recall what), then switched to Firefox when I wanted more
| customization (how do I still live without custom tab colors?
| sigh), then switched to Chrome again because Firefox started to
| clamp down on extensions/customization and also it was kinda
| slow again. As far as I can tell, Firefox is currently in
| really bad shape... but I would switch instantly if I thought
| it was better.
|
| Google makes the best browser (IMO/so far/for an average user).
| There only compelling reason for an average user to use a
| different browser is lack of information.
| diggan wrote:
| Yeah, reminds me when Google purposefully blocked Firefox from
| accessing Inbox. Changing the user-agent revealed that they did
| that for no other purpose than "performance wasn't what we
| wanted" while the application worked fine as it was, proved by
| just changing the user-agent. They also let people use other
| applications that are slow in Firefox, like Google Photos, but
| somehow Inbox was different.
|
| Gist: https://gist.github.com/VictorB/1d0f4ee6dc5ec0d6646e
|
| HN comments at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8606879
| eitland wrote:
| Thanks! I've added it to my collection.
|
| I called authorities again earlier this week and they
| promised to get back to me if they need more evidence.
| dlubarov wrote:
| If you believe Google blocked Firefox for competitive
| reasons, how would you explain
|
| - The Google engineer's explanation
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498) - do you think
| he was just plain lying?
|
| - The Firefox performance bug he mentioned
| (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963). Do
| you think Google engineers went out of their way to search
| for new performance bugs in Firefox, then figure out how to
| introduce those bugs in Inbox's code?
|
| - If Google wanted to use Inbox support to hurt competitors,
| why would they invest engineering resources in making an
| Inbox app for iOS? Considering that Android vs iOS
| competition has much more impact on Google's business than
| Chrome vs Firefox competition (e.g. see how much Google pays
| to be the default iOS search provider).
| Angostura wrote:
| > Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular
| apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to
| compete.
|
| Do you have examples, I'm aware of a few examples where Apple
| built features in that used to be 3rd party apps. But kick them
| off?
| skinkestek wrote:
| I'm fairly sure there was a high profile case this spring (was
| it when Apple announced they'd let you use an iPad as a second
| screen?)
|
| I'm even more sure there was something going on even more
| recently with a third party apple watch keyboard for blind or
| something who got booted because "they abused accessible
| features" or something that had never been a problem before,
| and it so happened that Apple had a solution ready on their own
| launch a few days later.
| quitit wrote:
| One of these things is not like the others - and making an
| "everyone is doing it" kind of statement really understates the
| seriousness of what Google is doing.
|
| Google's actions here systematically undermine auctions to
| their direct financial benefit, while delivering sub-optimal
| results for advertisers. In a way that is not an accident, but
| deliberately engineered and even given snappy project names
| that allude to the exact purpose of the deception. A better
| comparison is how certain banks were found to be reordering
| transactions to maximise the number of overdraft fees owed.
|
| Apple only have a handful of apps and of those fewer are paid
| apps (they're the pro-level tools). To claim that apple uses
| its knowledge of the store to make app duplications, then boot
| the original concepts off the store is plainly false.
|
| An example given below by another reader is talking (I believe)
| about a company called Luna which produces a dongle that allows
| the mac to share their screen onto an iPad. Apple has always
| had this feature through the screen sharing service (I did the
| same, without a dongle, using VLC on a gen 1 iPad, long before
| Luna had a product - thus the feature is arguably obvious.)
| Over the years Apple have increased the functionality and ease
| of use of the screensharing features as their hardware has
| become more capable of running them - including the latest
| macos update which expanded these features further. Luna
| however feels they should have a monopoly on any screensharing
| functions with their dongle hardware. I'm yet to hear a
| convincing argument from this developer.
|
| I think the core issue is that the app store is large and
| invariably any changes Apple make to their own software can be
| tenuously attributed as copying of some random title on the app
| store. Common-sense arguments such as: apple don't charge for
| the feature, the feature is obvious, or the feature is merely
| an enhancement of an existing feature, are readily discounted
| in favour of depictions of an evil mastermind preying on
| utterly tiny revenue sources.
| dantheman wrote:
| It'd be great if states actually focused on real problems like
| education and medicine instead of going after tech which provides
| services for free and is generally liked.
|
| No one is blaming tech for debt or financial ruin.
| krono wrote:
| You cannot be serious. Where do you think all that money went?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Serious zero sum financial thinking there - assuming
| profiting from a transaction means the other party must be
| worse off. And implicitly applying the thieves's syllogism
| too that is "you have it, I want it, therefore you stole it
| from me".
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Self driving cars, free email, free docs, sheets etc.
|
| It is a serious point. Protecting advertising companies from
| each other is a perplexing choice of resource allocation
| given the alternatives.
| ajvs wrote:
| "don't go after monopolies which are abusing their
| dominance to keep everyone else poorer"
| onion2k wrote:
| Given the choice between free email and Google paying
| enough tax to improve the entire education system of the
| US, why do you think people would pick email? Do you
| believe _everyone_ is stupid?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It's an antritrust suit.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >why do you think people would pick email
|
| I don't like taxing so I would never advocate for taxing
| a person or a company.
| krono wrote:
| So big tech gave all this stuff away without asking or
| taking any sort of compensation (i.e. free), and yet
| they've managed to accumulate levels of influence and
| wealth previously only beholden to sovereign states.
|
| Coincidentally, around the same time big tech came into
| being, the nation that birthed, nurtured, and protected
| them started losing its world dominance to rival
| sovereignties that took the opposite approach in dealing
| with these generous givers by monitoring their behaviour,
| limiting their power and influence over the nation and its
| citizens, enforcing compliance with national policy (for
| good or bad), and extracting a fair share of the profits in
| return for their use of public infrastructure.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| They took the money they made in search ads and built a
| lot of products they give away, yes. The wealth is all
| from search ads.
|
| The US had a little moment of time where it was the
| dominant power. It wasn't the dominant power in 1900 and
| it won't be in 2050. The idea that the decline is because
| of Google etc defies a much simpler explanation. As soon
| as China moved off of straight communism they were bound
| for dominance due to their population and general work
| ethic. There is no reason that over the long term China
| should have lower GDP per person than the US. Hence
| they'll have about 4x the total GDP and be able to spend
| 4x as much on military due to their 4x population size v
| US.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| Google's abuse of the market takes money away from small
| businesses (buyers of ads, sellers of ads, displayers of ads)
| and consolidates that money back into Google's hands. It has a
| direct trickle down effect on financial ruin by making it less
| and less possible to operate a small business. The stealing of
| this money also raises prices on everything else (google-caused
| inflation) which harms consumers.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| Why not all of the above? The AG is an attorney. Their job is
| this kind of action, not education or medicine.
|
| The AG should be doing this and the appropriate people should
| be doing their jobs to improve education and medicine as well.
| lenkite wrote:
| Yep tech companies should continue to cheat and break laws as
| long as they offer some free stuff to folks. We should kneel
| and worship them as gods.
| Oddskar wrote:
| > provides services for free
|
| It's not free when _you_ are the product being sold.
| Goety wrote:
| They found the gap in the armor.
| [deleted]
| ZhangSWEFAANG wrote:
| What incentive is there for states to sue over monopolies? Is it
| simply to advocate for their constituencies?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Upholding the law? Having a functioning market and economy
| perhaps? It's the government's job to regulate the market.
|
| Abusing your (near) monopoly position to drive out competition
| is illegal.
| t-3 wrote:
| > Abusing your (near) monopoly position to drive out
| competition is illegal.
|
| Yes, but it happens so often with so little attention paid
| that stories like this more often make me think a politician
| is looking for election funding rather than trying to enforce
| the law.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Is that looking a gift horse in the mouth?
| t-3 wrote:
| Not really, when any investigations or actions are likely
| to be indefinitely delayed as soon as a lobbyist writes
| check. If they actually do something other than slap-on-
| the-wrist fines that don't even do damage, you won't hear
| me complaining, but I don't have high expectations. The
| EU seems to be far more interested in reigning in big
| tech, but they don't seem to be any more succesful, and
| their most substantive efforts have had lackluster
| results (I mean, really, is anyone's privacy improved by
| having more javascript popups added to _every single_
| page? Does it even lower the _potential_ for tracking and
| abuse, let alone reduce the actual commission of such
| acts?).
| ziml77 wrote:
| Is it possible the EU is being careful because the major
| tech companies that it would want to punish are all
| American? People over here could see those actions as the
| EU trying to take down American companies so that
| companies in EU countries can take an overwhelmingly
| dominant position. I would imagine that perception could
| lead to restrictions and tariffs just like we've applied
| to China.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| I'm not sure the EU cares:
| http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/editorcharts/EU-
| GOOGLE-...
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > I mean, really, is anyone's privacy improved by having
| more javascript popups added to every single page?
|
| How about app stores implementing "privacy dashboards"
| where you can see what data an app collects and how it
| uses it? With the idea that app makers become more
| careful in what they do because it becomes so obvious.
| That's a result of the GDPR.
|
| Things take a while when the law is designed for not
| being used as a ban hammer but to coerce better behavior.
| The DPAs are mostly working in the background to get
| actors into compliance. Every time you see a lawsuit over
| such things, a multi-year process broke down to the point
| where that's the last recourse.
| philjohn wrote:
| There seems to be other equally pressing market capture
| targets to go after - Sinclair broadcasting being one
| example.
|
| It seems interesting that "Old Media" is coming off unscathed
| and the ire is all directed at "New Media".
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Standard careerism demagoguery (remember Backpage?) and trying
| to bully for favorable coverage for themselves. The ignorants
| see "Big Tech" as a traditional media company and are mad they
| aren't playing ball.
| [deleted]
| koalaman wrote:
| Call me cynical, but I've always assumed these and the european
| efforts are bought by companies that are threatened by Google.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| "Project Bernanke" ie, a licence to print money.
|
| I bet they're perhaps regretting their witty code name right now.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| For the unfamiliar: in his role as Chair of the Federal
| Reserve, Ben Bernanke became somewhat infamous for his
| endorsement of "quantitative easing" as a response to the 2008
| financial crisis. This was (oversimplified) a mildly fancy way
| of flooding banks with newly-printed money to offset the impact
| of falling asset prices. Bernanke became known in some circles
| as "Helicopter Ben" in reference to an earlier speech in which
| he (in turn) approvingly referenced Milton Friedman's thought
| experiment of a "helicopter drop" of cash to the general public
| as a method for boosting liquidity in the economy [1].
|
| (I feel compelled to point out that as far as I can tell, there
| doesn't seem to be a solid consensus that quantitative easing
| was objectively poor policy under the circumstances; a lot of
| this discourse apparently fell somewhere in the gray area
| between good-natured ribbing, vacuous memeing, economics school
| schisms, and mockery of the ostensible hypocrisy of "fiscally
| conservative" Republicans).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money
| chalst wrote:
| It's worth noting that the main beneficiaries of QE are the
| fixed-income desks at commercial banks, unlike the actual
| helicopter money proposal, which would benefit the people
| most hurt by recessions, holders of debt outside the
| financial system.
|
| It says a lot about the quality of public discourse on
| finance that the debate around QE has mostly been around
| whether it is inflationary, and not who benefits from this
| rather peculiar way of dealing with the failure of
| traditional monetary policy at the zero lower bound.
| IncRnd wrote:
| That they would even use that name indicates they hold
| themselves superior and beyond reproach. That bubble seems
| about to burst now.
| perth wrote:
| Not sure if this was mentioned but does anyone else think it's
| sleazy that Google tries to poach employees from other companies
| via Foobar[1]?
|
| [1] https://foobar.withgoogle.com
| Nasrudith wrote:
| No - fuck anybody who thinks employers own their employees. We
| want "poaching" - that is a healthy labor market.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| What's that?
| perth wrote:
| Google hijacked my search result with that fine recruiting
| method at work a few weeks ago. I checked it out with a
| burner Google account and it seems like it was a recruiting
| method where they have you solve programming questions on
| that service[1]. I did a few of the "levels" and they're all
| just tricky programming questions. However..
|
| Even not signed into an account, which, I don't sign in to
| any Google services at work in interest of protecting IP,
| Google was able to track enough via cookies / me being on an
| si corp network to throw that to me.
|
| [1] Pic I took on my phone: https://i.imgur.com/7X7ybUv.jpeg
| Jensson wrote:
| Google has done that for about a decade.
| perth wrote:
| And.. does doing something questionable for a long time
| make it good? Shouldn't abusing their dominance in the
| search engine marketplace to poach employees be a pretty
| big anti-trust thing?
| sidibe wrote:
| It has nothing to do with you being on a corp network. I've
| gotten that on my personal computer
| perth wrote:
| Then how do they choose who to flip the switch on for it?
| Purely fingerprinting of searches completely at random
| with no direction?
| sidibe wrote:
| I don't know how it's decided but yeah pretty sure it's
| just based on searches and randomness. Someone searching
| for programming terms related to openings and willing to
| answer the questions is likely to be a good candidate
| perth wrote:
| I'm still skeptical that location/network address doesn't
| have a "weight" in the equation; but yeah it could be un-
| related you make a good point.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Foobar is well-known and sometimes super easy to guess. For
| a few years before 2019, you could get it by simply
| searching "python list comprehension". It's just a way to
| find people searching certain stuff and encourage them to
| work at Google. Having an automated system pre-screening
| people in this way vastly improves the quality of
| applicants that come in.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17289580
| perth wrote:
| Ok well this ycombinator post you linked confirmed my
| suspicions that the challenge is targeted based on
| location/network address.
|
| > "ISTR that only works from the USA."
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| Nope. I've had foobar from outside the US.
| Jerry2 wrote:
| I find it sad that all this is coming from state AGs and not from
| the DOJ and FTC. It just shows how corrupt our federal
| institutions are due to regulatory capture [1].
|
| I still remember how Google escaped antitrust enforcement during
| the Obama presidency. There was a "revolving door" for Google
| execs and White House officials who would fill positions at both
| places [2].
|
| When FTC prepared a massive report of Google's antitrust
| violations [3], the enforcement was quashed as a result of White
| House lobbying by Google's lobbyists (most of whom worked for the
| government a year or two prior.) [4]
|
| Lots of emails were released under FOIA showing how (former)
| Google execs who were at the White House told the FTC not to
| bring on the lawsuit. [5] [6]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
|
| [2] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-
| close...
|
| [3] https://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/
|
| [4] https://archive.md/74r5F
|
| [5]
| https://www.theregister.com/2016/08/18/google_had_obamas_ear...
|
| [6] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-makes-most-of-close-
| ties...
| nverno wrote:
| The DOJ has a lawsuit against Google in the works, it's even
| mentioned in the article. [[I'm hesitant to provide a citation
| as I'm not sure of the latest source]]
| vmception wrote:
| Also aside from corruption and capture, there are external
| forces.
|
| States really have little leverage, they want competition but
| could really just wind up completely unserviced as a
| corporation says bye bye to their irrelevant market.
|
| The feds dont go heavy handed as they have the capability to
| and massive leverage, but actually debilitating a company
| could be giving the market to the other remaining companies
| which from their perspective is worse because they created
| the monopoly.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > States really have little leverage, they want competition
| but could really just wind up completely unserviced as a
| corporation says bye bye to their irrelevant market.
|
| The state of Texas has a GDP similar to that of Canada, the
| state of New York to that of Russia, the state of
| California to that of France. Are these irrelevant markets?
| Even Vermont, all the way at the bottom, is beating out El
| Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, etc.
|
| Also note that multiple states are joining together in the
| same suit.
|
| Even if a corporation was willing to abandon an entire
| state over this, then all the people in that state would
| need something else, and that something else would become
| big enough for third parties to have to care about it and
| thereby become a viable competitor everywhere. Which might
| just be the best thing that could happen.
| vmception wrote:
| When a service has a little asterisk that singles out
| some states they dont operate, its not necessarily
| because of a specific law, it can be in response to
| specific regulatory action against that service that they
| opted not to deal with
| djbusby wrote:
| So? Do nothing and let the current monopoly get stronger?
| vmception wrote:
| They just try to make their stance clear that they want
| competition to be more organic than whatever they are
| reacting to. Monopolies arent prohibited, anti-
| competitive practices are sanctionable.
| nverno wrote:
| I think it is a safe bet that there will always be new
| monopolies developing. There are always new markets, and
| benefits often don't scale linearly with growth.
|
| It's a complicated, error-prone business, trying to
| disrupt monopolies effectively in such a way that is
| actually beneficial to the community. If you think about
| it, the cost/benefit analysis is based largely on
| economic predictions which are never that accurate.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I think it is a safe bet that there will always be new
| monopolies developing. There are always new markets, and
| benefits often don't scale linearly with growth.
|
| Find a monopoly and you'll probably find a regulation
| propping it up.
|
| For many of these tech companies it's DMCA 1201 and other
| things that prohibit adversarial interoperability.
|
| If you have a law that lets you boot competitors out of
| adjacent markets once you have dominance in one of them,
| you take over the other one too. Then nobody can compete
| with you unless they can replace you in both markets,
| meanwhile you enter a third.
|
| The first thing we need is to get rid of such laws.
| MereInterest wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This tech stuff isn't a natural monopoly.
|
| The defining characteristic of a natural monopoly is that
| customer is paying a large amount per unit to cover costs
| that stay the same no matter the amount of usage. The
| per-unit cost for most of this tech stuff is
| approximately zero, and the ones that aren't zero (e.g.
| semiconductor manufacturing) have significant unit
| production costs and are not a natural monopoly either.
|
| It's also questionable whether even "natural monopolies"
| would be monopolies absent regulation. It's more
| _efficient_ to have a single power grid, but if there was
| no law granting a statutory monopoly to a single provider
| and the existing provider became abusive, somebody would
| build a parallel power grid. Because having two would
| cost twice as much as having one, but that 's still less
| than paying five times as much to an unrestrained
| monopolist. So the result of unregulated "natural
| monopoly" still isn't a monopoly, it's just competition
| which is unusually inefficient.
| mrep wrote:
| I would argue it basically is because the high fixed
| costs are from paying the developers to write and
| maintain good competitive software and the marginal cost
| of each new user is basically free.
|
| That exactly matches wiki: "A natural monopoly has a high
| fixed cost for a product that does not depend on output,
| but its marginal cost of producing one more good is
| roughly constant, and small."
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The traditional definition wasn't really contemplating
| software, because the important thing that makes it a
| natural monopoly is that building a second one would
| cause the user to have to pay a lot more. If you have one
| power grid, it costs a billion dollars to operate, so the
| average user has to pay $1B/N where N is the number of
| users on the grid. If you have two power grids, now the
| average user has to pay $2B/N, which is twice as much,
| and most importantly, is a large difference.
|
| With software, there are so many users that the
| difference between $X/N and $2X/N is still ~zero. You can
| have two providers, or ten, and you're in no danger of
| them being unable to recover their development costs even
| at low prices. The cost of paying a number that rounds to
| zero twice is well worth the benefits of competition.
|
| In other words, the barriers to entry are low (absent
| some artificial constraint). It isn't that the fixed
| costs are _high_ , they're only "high" relative to the
| essentially non-existent unit cost. That's totally
| different. It means that if you want to enter the market
| for email clients or messaging apps or phone games, that
| can be done by an individual or a small business. A small
| business can't build their own power grid.
| djbusby wrote:
| Shouldn't the DOJ _not_ be concerned with the economic
| impact? Isn 't their objective Justice not Economic
| Prosperity?
| nverno wrote:
| In the US, they are concerned with economic impact, they
| do a whole in-depth economic cost/benefit analysis as
| part of determining if it's worth breaking up a
| monopolist. Whatever 'justice' means in this scenario
| seems highly subjective. If a monopolist was providing by
| far the best/cheapest goods and services, more people
| might prefer that scenario to an alternative competitive
| market with less benefit on average.
|
| It's arguably unjust for the government to handicap
| specific people, but also unjust for others not to feel
| like they all have a fair shot to capture the market. Any
| time people, not fate, are in charge of handicapping some
| people will think they are getting the shaft.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| That sounds rational, but it's not. There's nobody,
| public or private sector, nobody at all that can make a
| real economic assessment of the value of a service line
| Facebook or Google. Those who claim otherwise are stupid,
| lying, or selling something. Markets and economics are
| unpredictable systems that have nothing to do with models
| of rational actors behaving in their own self interest.
| They're fundamentally extensions of chaotic biological
| systems and inherently resistant to oracles as a matter
| of mathematical reality.
|
| What would be rational is if we actually endeavored as a
| society to make sure everyone is accountable to the same
| rules to the same degree. By using this magical thinking
| / cost benefit analysis, we're simply incentivizing
| victory for the best storytelling middleman.
| nverno wrote:
| I think the difficulties/uncertainties you mention here
| are a large factor in the feds reluctance to break up
| monopolies. I have no personal opinion on these methods
| without taking a much deeper dive into the details. It
| does seem like the big breakup of Ma Bell worked out
| well, though.
|
| The statement "everyone is accountable to the same rules
| to the same degree" could be either pro- or anti- federal
| action.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| During Obama it didn't seem like the problem it is today.
|
| I'm not saying it wasen't a problem, but America thought these
| FANG companies were solving our problems.
|
| I never liked Google Executives going to the White House, but I
| don't think it was because Obama sold out. Tech was very new.
| Google honestly wanted to help.
|
| It seemed like every young guy wanted to be Zuck. Hell even
| Zuck thought he could run for president one day.
|
| It was all so inspiring. Now it's just ugly.
| DannyBee wrote:
| I was there in DC with Google from 2006-2012, and I think
| that's a fair view. We got asked if we could help, and wanted
| to help, so we tried where we could. Of course now everyone
| just wants to paint everything with malicious and negative
| intent so I'm sure someone will in response, but it really
| was just a bunch of smart techies trying to help.
|
| (Can't speak generally to zuck, but at least from what I saw
| people didn't really view Facebook and zuck the same way)
| earthscienceman wrote:
| You lived in a bubble, nobody wanted to be Zuck in my circles
| and he was mocked ruthlessly for how out of touch and selfish
| he was. His comment about becoming president was seen to
| reinforce that. Facebook was also widely seen as rapidly
| becoming the place for drama and vapid political commentary.
| This was ... college during 2008, so not exactly last year.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yes, no one I knew wanted to be zuck.
|
| But I'm surprised you could find much drama or political
| commentary through all the app spam of the late 00's in
| Facebook.
| stemlord wrote:
| Same here, so many of us have been eagerly waiting for this
| bs to unfurl for a very long time now.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| >During Obama it didn't seem like the problem it is today.
|
| The career antitrust officials at FTC thought Google should
| be prosecuted, but the political appointees (of both parties)
| that control the agency shut down their investigation.
|
| >The investigators, who handed the document to the five FTC
| commissioners who would decide whether to launch an antitrust
| suit, found in 2012 that the search company's "conduct has
| resulted -- and will result -- in real harm to consumers and
| to innovation in the online search and advertising markets."
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/google-
| cause...
|
| Meanwhile, the EU proceeded with their own antitrust
| investigation into many of the same issues and Google was
| found to be guilty.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > During Obama it didn't seem like the problem it is today.
|
| > I'm not saying it wasen't a problem, but America thought
| these FANG companies were solving our problems.
|
| You are unintentionally projecting what you believed to be
| the truth, thinking that others also believed the same as
| you. I can assure you that not all of America thought those
| FANG companies were solving our problems.
| [deleted]
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