I think it’s worth saying for people not too familiar with the space that this is specifically about Display and Video ads on third party websites. The lawsuit is about how Google managed to get in the entire stack (publisher, exchange and (less importantly for the lawsuit) buy side) and (according to the plaintiffs) abused their positions.
I’d really encourage people read the lawsuit. It’s long, but most of the reporting on it seems to be way too superficial and leads to people saying things like “they should split YouTube and Google search”, which really has nothing to do with the complaint…
To be fair, while that has nothing to do with the complaint: mannnn they really should. Insert MS comparison and a comment on how the US seems to not have the power to do anything more than wag their finger at anti-trust here.
I'm guessing the worst case is they are forced to sell off the exchange side of the Ads business, which isn't that much revenue compared to the revenue they make selling ad space.
This is probably going to have a lot less effect than what people are assuming it will have.
Google and Facebook have never had more competition in the Ad space. Apple and Amazon are building big Ad businesses fast. That's not the problem. The problem is they play both sides of the market and they dominate both sides of the market. Therefore they have a lot of pricing power.
This isn't the reason they are making 100s of billions a year. The reason they are making that amount is because they are the best at what they do and you can't find the service they provide any where else except Facebook and Google.
>This isn't the reason they are making 100s of billions a year.
I do believe that the 're-targeting' Google can afford by having their assets on the majority of sites helps them maximise CPM, which would certainly be a problem for any alternate search engine who isn't interested in tracking people around the web/net. I can't remember specific figures but noted in the UK CMA report that Google generally makes twice as much as Bing on search ads (and worth bearing in mind that much of the rest of the entrants are essentially Bing meta search engines in the West)
But I agree they're certainly considered the best at search in many ways, though the increased CPM they make allows them to be made the default search engine of choice on most devices.
Becomes a bit of a chicken and egg problem when the most prominent search engine can reinforce its position as one.
I'm not sure on how Bing ads work, but I think Google makes more because they are better at targeting and with limited space and high demand you get higher pricing.
Facebook and Google are really the only two ad platforms that I know off that you can really target ads to the people you want and you can build ads around those you are targeting instead of making generic ads like you see on other platform and TV.
I agree with your take. Most likely they’ll be forced to divest from the Ads Exchange business which won’t affect them materially.
It would open up some possibilities for actors in that space to shift the balance of (pricing) power a bit, but I’m unsure the impact will be huge. All the big new advertising platforms tend to own their whole stack like you mentioned (Amazon, Apple) and for good reasons.
I believe that not controlling the exchange will affect them materially. Not because of the exchange's profits, but because of the data that it provides that lets Google optimize their campaigns (giving it an unfair advantage, as the competition has no access to this data).
I hope something comes of this, but other than a change in administration, what's new on this in the last decade? Hasn't Google essentially controlled most of online advertising for eons? In fact, perhaps more recently Facebook/Meta has chipped into that market more than how things were 8-10 years ago.
I was part of an acquisition that Google made in the ad-tech industry back in 2011 and there was a months long DOJ investigation before approving the purchase. The conclusion was it would not harm competition. Within less than two years our product was eliminated or folded into Google's and the staff scattered to the wind (inside and outside Google), and our customers became Google's customers. They've been doing this forever, back to DoubleClick, etc.
Is this timing connected in any way with layoff announcements? Or a general push by the Biden admin generally?
Not American, so not as informed about the ins and outs, and genuinely curious.
In 2017, Lina M. Khan, at the age of 27, published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox. It said everyone was getting antitrust wrong, and there were other ways giant conglomerates were harming competition. Traditionally, unless the consumer was harmed through short term price fixing, just about anything was allowed to fly. The paper took the legal world by storm, and two years ago, she was nominated, confirmed, and appointed as chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
So largely, someone new, with new ideas, took over a regulatory body that has been coasting along on its lorals. The FTC will now behave non-traditionally, disregarding what has been a very consistent school of thought (defined by Yale Law School professor Robert Bork and University of Chicago Law School professors Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook) since the 1977 Continental Television v. GTE Sylvania Supreme Court Case redefined the Judicial Systems perspective on anti-trust, neutering the Sherman Act.
In 1978 Robert Bork wrote the book The Antitrust Paradox and Richard Posner wrote Antitrust Law, summarizing the previous decades shift in attitude towards government intervention in the marketplace. Khan believes the those three people influenced the government to become too lenient and hands-off, when it should have been doing more to protect the marketplace from harmful entities that threaten competitiveness.
Lina Khan may have written great papers but she isn't fit for the job. She harbors a hate for big tech and cannot be impartial in her dealings.
See her recent attempt to prevent Meta from acquiring Within. There is no sane, level-headed case that could possibly paint this acquisition as an antitrust violation. Even most legal experts will agree that Lina Khan's case is a stretch at best.
It's clear that this case is simply motivated by a hatred for Meta more than anything rational, and such decision making can harm the emergence of nascent technology such as AR/VR.
FTC commissioners wear many hats. They exercise executive power in a rulemaking capacity, but they also have both prosecutorial and quasi-judicial power. They can authorize complaints, and the commissioners sit as an appellate court to review the decisions of their in-house court.
I don't know anything about the acquisition, but speaking generally, appointees leave less lasting precedent when they spend their time chasing individual vendettas rather than establishing consistent ruts that the system can run down once they leave.
There is a point where changing the rules now appears to benefit incumbents, despite them being the targets here. Nobody new will be able to grow this way to compete with existing large players. If they cant acquire small things, they will just be forced to clone them, yet the smaller tier players wont be able to "just clone things."
Instagram falls into the same category. When Mark acquired it, it was tiny. He is who grew it. Facebook acquired a mobile camera app because it didn't have an app yet. Same how it acquired Beluga and turned it into messenger. Adobe acquiring Photoshop, then Macromedia. Mirosoft acquiring Powerpoint and then hotmail.com.
I don't think your analogy holds here; Instagram was already an active and popular social network before Facebook acquired it, not a "camera app." Did it grow? Certainly. While we don't know what would have happened to it had FB not bought it, it's quite possible FB bought it precisely because it was growing and becoming 'cool.'
Instagram was what, 19 month old when FB bought it? It has 13 employees. It had 0 revenue. It had 30 million people on it. (Facebook hit a billion people in 2012.)
It was tiny. It was the hip up-and-coming app. It had the limelight, and importantly to FB it was mobile first.
I think our memories like to kind of project back its success after acquisition onto what it was before, and get distorted by its billion dollar price. He paid a lot for a not a lot, because he was buying a fad while it was still hot, before Twitter or Google could. He then dumped gasoline on a matchstick. Would ANYBODY else have poured that much money into Instagram that quickly? I think we can all picture what would have happened to it if it had found its way into the Twitter portfolio. (I would surmise it may no longer even exist and have been folded into Twitter having a picture posting feature.)
In hindsight it was absolutely anti-competitive in some way, but I don't know how the law could act to block buying shiny things with potential.
Legal opinions vary. Certainly Robert Bork would agree with you. He would also probably agree with your vicious libel of Chair Khan.
Those who really care about the development of particular technologies typically don't welcome consolidation in related industries. It wouldn't have been good news for electric cars, if Tesla had been acquired by GM in say 2008. Why the unhinged invective against Khan?
It's neither libel or unhinged. I'm not the only one out there that finds the case around Within a stretch at best.
Plenty of mergers and acquisitions have driven technological progress, and so long as they aren't anticompetitive it's not problematic. See Meta and Oculus, for instance, or Apple's merger with Next.
Acquisitions and mergers fundamentally reduce duplication of work and allow you to combine building blocks to create something greater. Blindly blocking any and all of them as Khan is, is indicative that her bias against big tech has the potential to harm progress overall for no perceivable actual gain.
...she isn't fit for the job. She harbors a hate... There is no sane, level-headed case... simply motivated by a hatred for Meta more than anything rational...
...
It's neither libel or unhinged!
ITT you've claimed that she isn't sane, isn't rational, is motivated solely by hate, and is unfit for her job. You've given us no reason to believe any of this, and the source of it all seems merely to be a political disagreement. This is a respected professional who has been nominated by the president and approved by Congress. Please, find a hinge.
I'm not the only one out there that finds the case around Within a stretch at best.
Yes we've already established that you agree with Robert Bork. I'd say probably Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito are also on your side. Care to cite some less odious support?
Khan and FTC clearly don't have the resources to block all mergers and acquisitions. It's amusing that you complain this impossible thing is happening in the same thread in which your political bedfellows complain it isn't happening. [0]
Regulatory cases like this get launched to test the waters. I see the Within thing as tipping at toe in, to see what the judicial branch will allow them to get away with. They are probably reaching for an extreme on purpose to find the boundary.
Can you enlighten me as to why this is only a problem when somebody is not reflexively in favor of handing the keys to everything to large companies, and not when they are?
>Within was named[13] the #1 VR app for iOS by Apple Insider, featured[13] as "Best New App" on iTunes and is the most downloaded and highest rated[14] cinematic VR app for Google Cardboard.
This appears to be a clear-cut case of consolidation of key companies operating in a sector. Care to share why you think this isn't "sane"?
How does this hatred work? Does she keep a leaderboard? Does big tech include foreign companies? I don't know much about this person other than the usual media bio sketches. Where can I read more?
It works through frivolous lawsuits attempting to block everything Big Tech does regardless of reason, eg the acquisition of Within, which has no justifiable antitrust case whatsoever.
Within is an app developer whose apps compete with apps owned by Meta, run on hardware owned by Meta, and are sold in an app store owned by Meta. Why does this confuse you?
There is no viable anticompetitive case for VR as it is a nascent industry which barely exists. Furthermore, Meta is far from the only player in the VR space today - Valve, Pico, HTC, Samsung, and Microsoft amongst others all play a role in the VR ecosystem.
Said phrase was coined intentionally. It was a purposeful allusion of sorts to the idiom.
Resting to me meant inaction. Conversely, the FTC appears to still analyze things for antitrust, but was doing so through an outdated framework.
Lorals means "pertaining to lore." I meant it to mean that Bork and Co had created an unquestionable mythology around what anti-trust was. Blasphemists were ignored and discarded.
So, new idiom minted. Maybe someday it can make it into the dictionary, and cite this post.
Coasting on your lorals = on auto-pilot, not questioning what put you on your trajectory, complacent enough to keep the flight path and speed. Tangently related to: appeal to tradition, argumentum ad antiquitatem, argumentum ad antiquitam, appeal to antiquity, and appeal to common practice.
The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. In some consumer protection matters, the FTC appears with, or supports, the U.S. Department of Justice.
Biden's FTC appointments are redefining FTC perspective on anti-trust, and DOJ is following suit.
And the quality high. The name "standard" was a reference to standards of measure and control; the implication in the name was "We're the brand that won't blow up your house when you use it."
> Lina M. Khan, at the age of 27, published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox
Is this a puff piece? She's just some government employee - she doesn't produce anything. It remains to be seen whether her aggressive interpretation of antitrust law will actually benefit consumers. We can split up Google into 100 companies and then we'll find out that the bales of cash advertising produces are no longer subsidizing the less profitable services. Maybe you'll have to pay to upload to YouTube or you won't get 15 GB of free gmail space or Hangouts will require an enterprise plan. But it'll all be worth it because some other adtech company who cares even less about your privacy than Google will now be able to sell search ads?
I was casually pointing out someone comparatively green was in charge now, as opposed to an experienced tenured dogmatic bureaucrat. I left it ambiguous whether inexperience would be a boon to free thinking and a new era or a hinderance and burden to the economy. Maybe things have been being done the way they were "always" done, for a reason.
Take it as a rorschach test.
I think your comment was valuable in that it suggested the work being done on antitrust by Lina Khan. For those who are interested, I would also recommend reading the excellent Matt Stoller on Substack [1] who does a weekly analysis on antitrust regulation, monopolies, and more.
He is talking about how the prevailing attitude towards antitrust in the executive branch has changed. Lina Khan is a symbol and motivator of that change. Not sure what you're talking about.
You’re summarizing the problem with trusts in capitalism here in your argument. Capitalism works to generate innovation and wealth because there’s competitive forces driving that. No one can compete with gmail and YouTube because they are being subsidized by another business segment. If you get rid of that competition it leads to stagnation
Who is competing with gmail? Please include market share and revenue in your analysis
>>and YouTube
Lots of companies operating in the video delivery space too.
This is more defensibile than the YouTube argument, there is Rumble and Vimeo for instance. But again,
What is the market share and revenue for YouTube vs these other “competitors”?
>Who is competing with gmail? Please include market share and revenue in your analysis
Outlook, Yahoo, (insert a long list of Chinese providers here), Yandex, Fastmail, Zoho Mail, Hey, Protonmail and so forth.
All of the above have actually managed to capture a decent share of the market, and there are many more.
>This is more defensibile than the YouTube argument, there is Rumble and Vimeo for instance. But again, What is the market share and revenue for YouTube vs these other “competitors”?
Instagram and Facebook are also huge in the same space. I'd guess that Akamai is even bigger.
As an American it may just be attitudes. The last two administrations didn’t do much to Google, Democrat or Republican.
But the idea of big tech being a wonder that unequivocally makes life better and doesn’t need oversight seems to be falling apart. Both for good (privacy) and bad (‘kill section 230!’) reasons.
When goods and services become commodities humans always take them for granted because they can be. We don’t ooh and ahh over high grade steel or steam engines anymore even though they would have been revolutionary 400 years ago. Big tech got past their novelty phase and now people want more improvements. It’s how our economic system works
This. And god forbid you suggest on HN that it's OK if Google and other tech megacaps are actually run for the collective benefit of their stockholders, which besides current and former employees, includes practically every American with a retirement account, including those not fortunate enough to win the FAANG lottery. Expect downvotes and flags, presumably from those who seriously believe Google should just keep paying people $300k a year indefinitely, despite perceived underperformance.
It's not entitled at all. How much of the world literally runs on technology developed by tech workers?
From being able to call your family from anywhere in the world to the most critical systems, tech workers are the reason that quality of life is so much better today than it was, say, pre-internet.
The affordances provided by the smartphone alone are an example of this. How is this not obvious proof that tech workers have fundamentally changed the world and improved QoL?
Tech is part of a web of industries that provide to each other. What phones without the rare Earth metals a traditional combustion machine digs up?
As far as you or I go specifically, reality does not need either of us to actually exist. Plenty of folks still around without the two of us.
For numerous health metrics a slower pre-internet life was healthier. All the technological churn has had long lived impact on environment that will make life worse in the future.
We've been burning hydrocarbons to keep warm and move around long before tech. But the future of energy (and thus of our civilization) will come from tech, not from looking back at burning wood and whale oil. See renewables, fusion and even nuclear.
Progress has been slow, but dealing with Google is a completely bipartisan issue. We've moved really far: A few years ago, the FTC was chaired by a guy who wrote Google-funded studies claiming Google's monopoly was good, and Google reps visited the White House some 400 times during the Obama administration. The revolving door between Google and the federal government didn't stop turning for several years straight.
Now both parties see the threat (albeit for differing reasons), but the federal government needs a lot of time to build a case like this, and Google is extremely adept at stalling for time.
During the EU investigation, Google waited every deadline to the final day, then asking for more time multiple times, and then finally on the last possible extension day tor respond would come back with a bull~~~~ one page "we don't think we broke this law" statement. They know the fine won't be nearly as big as the profits so they're running out the clock as long as possible. Every lawyer there knows they're crooks.
The administration change indeed has a lot to do with this. New chairs at the FCC (Rosenworcel) and FTC (Sohn) have a much more antitrust bent than in the past.
The layoff announcements are connected if you take it that M&A in big tech has been out of control for years, but it's tangential.
Update on my own comment here as a reply: I read the actual legal document, and it specifically calls out the aquisition of my former employer (AdMeld) by Google as one of the key anti-competitive moves Google made in the display ads space.
> I hope something comes of this, but other than a change in administration, what's new on this in the last decade? Hasn't Google essentially controlled most of online advertising for eons?
As the article points out, "preventing monopolies" is not the prima facie goal of antitrust law as traditionally interpreted. Monopolies are bad because of their effects on the market (e.g. they can raise prices higher than a competitive market would allow), not because of their "monopoliness".
There is a somewhat confusing quote in the article that implies that the DOJ is filing this suite in an attempt to get higher courts to revisit that standard. But then it finishes the paragraph with "put corporate America on notice", and I genuinely don't know whether that was the intent of the quoted prosecutor or not. This angle would be really big news if so, but... it seems poorly sourced.
(Full disclosure: I work at Google, but nowhere near advertising.)
The US has, for maybe 30 years or so, looked past the traditional trust busting intention of anti-trust (hey, it's in the name!) laws - preventing monopolies.
The more modern interpretation has basically been "monopolies are ok if it lowers consumer prices", which sort of never made sense. Once you finish strangling all your competition, wouldn't you then raise prices? And then what, the government lets them do that until some vague line in the sand is crossed and we then actually enforce the law?
There are issues on the other side too - monopsony, where a company is so big they are the only nature buyer. You get this with Walmart being able to disproportionately squeeze their suppliers. You have this problem in labor markets sometimes because who else are you going to work for if your employer is super sized?
Lina Khan's writings, and the fact that Biden admin appointed her, indicates these recent assumptions about allowance of monopolies can probably be thrown out the window.
> Lina Khan's writings, and the fact that Biden admin appointed her, indicates these recent assumptions about allowance of monopolies can probably be thrown out the window.
Right, that's what the article is trying to imply. But it doesn't have a quote that actually says it, so I'm saying this is pretty thin. There are a lot of people (clearly including you) who would like to see antitrust law revisited in the courts. I just don't see it from this article.
Yes, there is a general push by the Biden administration to beef up antitrust enforcement, including in tech.
That's why you see this lawsuit, which you are right wouldn't have happened under former administrations. "there was a months long DOJ investigation before approving the purchase. The conclusion was it would not harm competition." And they were wrong, right?
I am not a pro-Biden sort of person (I consider myself to the left of Biden, by a wide margin), but the antitrust direction is encouraging. And hopefully will get some things done before he is out of office... we'll see.
> In a July 2021 executive order, President Joe Biden articulated the administration’s broad antitrust policy. That order instructed the antitrust agencies to increase enforcement to prevent a rise in consumer prices and competitive harm in labor markets, and preserve nascent competition. Additionally, in what the order calls a “whole-of-government competition policy,” it charged more than a dozen other agencies to protect competition using their authority under a range of statutes.
That essay happens to be from from a corporate perspective that does not like that the administration has made mergers "less predictable"! I approve of making monopolistic mergers harder, but it's interesting to see it covered from the opposite bias. You can google for more, but another source, a brief American Bar Association update:
> Biden administration steps up antitrust enforcement: Antitrust enforcement in the Biden administration is about o change, according to Timothy Wu, who played a key role in the executive order President Joe Biden signed in July aimed at limiting corporate dominance and making American businesses more competitive...
> Wu serves as the Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy, National Economic Council. He is a key figure on the White House Competition Council, which was created in Biden’s executive order to bring a whole-of-the government enforcement effort to promote competition in the U.S. economy.
In addition to the July 2021 memo, it can see in who he has chosen as appointees to key roles -- various people who have been pushing for stronger antitrust enforcement and new legal theories:
Will likely result in some sum of x millions in fines. This will make zero difference in Google's control over search and anything related.
We all seen this movie multiple times and end is always the same..
Not for an antitrust lawsuit. The remedy for antitrust is divestiture; if found guilty and the judge assigns that penalty, Google can't just pay their way out of it; they'd have to shut down / slice off into an independent company (probably) DoubleClick and some other acquisitions.
Think less "EU fair practices violations" and more "Ma Bell breakup." The difference is that the EU lacks criminal authority (or jurisdiction or, like, an army to extrajudicially invade the United States) to jail Sundar Pichai, but the US absolutely could if the company is found to be an illegal trust and he fails to take steps to remedy the situation.
Divestiture was on the table for U.S. v Microsoft but ultimately Microsoft paid a penalty and operated under federal supervision for years afterward.
It's hard to know how big of an impact that had on them. They definitely stagnated and missed huge product opportunities like search, social, and mobile. But it's not clear whether they would have missed those anyway based on their business model and culture at the time.
While I hope to see something along those lines, please be aware that divestiture is not the only possible antitrust remedy. Fines, time-limited consent decrees, and other lesser measures are not only possible, but much more likely, especially in our current political climate.
To name only two: AdWords / AdSense is the "auction model" that made Google famous as an online ad brand and is the one they developed (mostly) in-house: advertisers bid on ad impressions, publishers get paid for offering slots on their pages to do the impressions. It's a very hands-off model in that advertisers don't need to control what sites their ads run on and site owners don't need to control what ads get run; Google handles all that handshaking (and brokers all that money).
That model doesn't work at all for a lot of companies that need way more control over the content shown on their pages (either because they have serious concerns about brand-image that they're unwilling to hand to a third party or they're just wedded to the traditional "steak dinner and fancy suits" advertising model and aren't comfortable working with their advertisers at arm's length). So Google also sells a suite of data-management products for companies that broker their advertising clients directly but are vending ad space on digital services. This is the DoubleClick model: it's (for example) the New York Times's pages and the New York Times's ad clients but Google's infrastructure physically vending the ads, tracking conversion data, tracking completion of advertising contracts, running predictive models to see how valuable ad slots can be, etc.
To the layperson, this is just all "ads," but a not-very-sharp knife can be driven clean through these two business units (from the outside. From the inside, they are no doubt built atop the same Google special-sauce NIH fabric, so it'd in practice be a colossal pain in the ass to divest either of them; either one will have to be rewritten to work as a mundane cloud service or the company carved off will be taking a copy of Google's infrastructure special-sauce with it, running Borg and the logging infrastructure, using stubby and dapper, resolving global resource contention with chubby, etc... All stuff Google really doesn't want to compete with in the holistic way it's woven together inside their house).
I am not sure Google could survive splitting prod. The enormous value of internal vertical integration that enabled them to grow ads & search traffic would be hard to replicate if there wasn't one signal source of truth that you could contact directly when there is an infrastructure problem.
I think "colossal pain in the ass" underestimates the order of magnitude of pain it would involve (borne by the hapless engineers, no doubt). Divesting the Cloud part of Google (IE moving Cloud into its own independent "prod2") is also somethinig interesting to think about.
So now they are going to have to separate into three businesses - an infrastructure business and two other business that buy services from their infrastructure since it really can’t be separated at this point.
And you really think that the government is going to go that far or that it’s a good idea?
Google would still make $$$ because of all of their ad space on Search, YouTube etc.
But they would farm that ad space to multiple exchanges that would be competing for both advertisers and space, and so profits from running the ad exchanges would go down and those ad exchange profits would not be flowing to Google.
I'm neither arguing for nor against this, but that's conceptually how it would work.
Google's ad space is far more valuable than its cut in ads, I'm pretty sure.
But in any case if it's anything like the breakup of Ma Bell, stockholders would wind up with separate shares of both 1) the products and 2) the ads. Which one calls itself "Google" is just branding. (Although obviously the search engine would keep the brand.)
All of their businesses that display ads could display ads from AdWords/DoubleClick, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon, just like any other website that hosts third party ads.
So now the government is going to force a separation into multiple companies and by doing so increase user tracking and sharing information across companies…
You and I are in agreement. It's one of the reasons I think trying to break up Google is actually a terrible idea for the health of the Internet (in any frame of reference other than an anarchist "burn it to the ground" mentality).
I'm not defending it, but the win would be for website owners who might make slightly more profits, and advertisers who might pay slightly less for ads -- all because increased competition would reduce profits by ad exchanges.
Of course, that's against not just more tracking/sharing as you mention, but also probably significantly worse ad loading times and bloat in general.
It's awfully hard and hypothetical to estimate the impact of either.
Anti-trust lawsuits don't require an absolute monopoly. It requires proving that a company behaved anti-competitively.
> The lawsuit said Google had “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising.”
> Anti-trust lawsuits don't require an absolute monopoly. It requires proving that a company behaved anti-competitively.
Indeed, the original purpose of anti-trust laws was to prevent trusts and cartels--multiple companies collectively fixing prices and ensuring that no new entrants can compete.
> Anti-trust lawsuits don't require an absolute monopoly. It requires proving that a company behaved anti-competitively
Also, having a monopoly (even an absolution monopoly) does not automatically mean you are violating antitrust law. You had to do something anti-competitive to get that monopoly or be doing something anti-competitive to maintain it.
The easiest way to think about it is that US antitrust law is about preventing monopolization, not about preventing monopolies.
Epic Games is still fighting their antitrust case against Apple so the federal government isn’t going to swoop in and take over the case. If Epic truly fails and DOJ doesn’t see it as a favorable outcome, they might further explore antitrust litigation.
I've never understood this kind of "regulators should ignore evidence of wrongdoing as long as there is also evidence of someone else engaging in wrongdoing" thinking. Even granting that Apple is super-mega-unbearably evil, do you really think regulators should serialize investigations and actions, only moving on to the #2 worst offender once the #1 is sorted?
>do you really think regulators should serialize investigations and actions, only moving on to the #2 worst offender once the #1 is sorted?
Actually, yes. Because if they take down the #2 worst offender, that leaves #1 as the default option for consumers, and strengthens #1's position at #2's expense. It makes the problem even worse than before.
As a consumer who doesn't want to use Apple devices, and uses Google because that's basically the only other option for many things, anything that greatly harms Google harms me. Take down Apple and create more competition, and then I'll have more options and I'll be able to maybe choose some things other than Google. After Apple is broken apart, then Google becomes the #1 problem, so go after them at that time. (Yes, I know this particular case probably won't have that much effect on Google.)
According to a quick google search, iOS has almost 60% marketshare in the US. Many other top-GDP nations are similar.
A bunch of people in India using Android isn't much help when you're in a country where most people use Apple.
By your logic, most monopolies shouldn't be investigated or regulated at all, because most people on the entire planet don't use their products. One airline is fine, because most humans don't ever fly. One car company is fine, because most humans don't have cars. Etc.
Coke has 60% market share for colas in the US. Do your same complaints apply?
It all depends on how you define the market. If you’re motivated to desire a certain outcome, it’s easy to define the market in a way to get what you want.
Choosing to drink Coke doesn't force you to eat or drink anything else; there's no customer lock-in possible with a drink, nor any way of using that power to extend market dominance into other sectors.
Meta is cited in the complaint [1]. Google and Facebook realized there was a risk they could each cannibalize the others' margins if they both had to compete in a market with many players. They made a deal to avoid that.
The relevant part is around paragraph 187, under the "Google Further Stunts Header Bidding by Working to Bring
Facebook and Amazon into Its Open Bidding Fold" header.
Maybe relevant disclosure: I used to work for a company that was a launch partner of Facebook's Audience Network [2]. In a separate lawsuit in 2020, some state attorneys general claimed that Facebook's internal communications showed that FAN was just a smokescreen to get Facebook leverage to make a deal with Google. Oops, silly us.
> Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league?
Being a monopoly doesn’t mean you have no competitors - it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something (ie that there was not enough competition for efficient pricing).
I think in the case of Apple it's more difficult to challenge due to the existence of Android. iOS doesn't even have 50% of the market mobile OS market share globally. You can argue Apple has a monopoly on their own products, but then we'd need to also discuss the same for Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, and any other device that has its own marketplace.
I'm not sure about the stats on gaming consoles, but Apple has over 50% marketshare in the US last I checked, and we're talking about US law here so US marketshare is really more important than how many Android phones people in India and China have. So having a majority of the market which almost everyone these days buys from (almost everyone has a smartphone now, not like gaming consoles which are a niche market), and then forcing everyone with an iDevice to use the Apple App store, is a clear monopoly unlike some gaming console that a small single-digit percentage of the population (or less) owns, and competes with 2 other big competitors, is not the same.
It is not just about AppStore fees but also about the fact that you are forbidden to use any other store to buy/download apps from and you are forbidden use any 3rd-partty payment processor for payments inside your app. They force you to use their systems with 30% cut. That feels anti-competitive quite a lot!
The critical thing here is how you define "market". Some people say that iPhones are a market, therefore Apple is a monopoly. Some people (like Apple) say that mobile devices are market, and Apple has like 30% market share.
You would have to show that that apple has colluded with other app stores to maintain a 30% fee. Otherwise, they charge the fee, and a competitor is free to attract developers with a lower fee, which is competition.
You could argue that apple abused their market position to administer the fee. Or you could argue that they are entitled to charge the fee and consumers are free to leave the platform. It's a grey area.
To be fair, and I don't agree with this, the word monopoly appears in the complaint 66 times. The NYT is reporting the story, but the FTC is the one "misusing" the word.
I'm just trying to help out here. I don't disagree with you, but it gets tiring that every single time some market position is abused, and the word "monopoly" gets used, there is at least one pedantic getting hung up on the "mono" part.
Android/iOS market share? Duopoly really. Call it a monopoly? "How is it a monopoly when..."
What they mean. What is always meant, is, you have a market position so significant, that you can use to get an unfair advantage on competition. That's what this is about, that is what all of these usually are about.
But, it gets sidetracked by misuse of words that should be understood from context.
Antitrust, isn't exclusively about monopolies abusing their market position. It doesn't care that much about whether it is one actor abusing it's position, or if it's two... Or three.
But this new paradigm of antitrust isn’t about if there’s one two or three of something. It’s a more complex form of antitrust.
The Amazon antitrust paradox is about how they aren’t a market leader in tons of their product categories but that they can cross leverage advantages between product categories and verticals to create anticompetitiveness. It’s an analysis of the internal structure of the business, not if they have competition in a narrow subset of outcomes.
Monopoly is being used as a substitute for the words bad actor or predatory not duopoly etc. IMHO it’s sloppiness and jargon to invoke emotion, and I’d prefer they used more precise words.
I am saying the word monopoly IS being misused, but I am not arguing that it is because its actually a duopoly, but it is being used as a substitute word in places better words belong.
I do not disagree at all with that. In fact, I also think I said, or implied at the least, that it was used incorrectly. However, for the sake of discussing the articles, every time this comes up, it would be more productive if people still understood that it isn't the monopoly part that is important, but the antitrust. Similar to what you were saying.
Google owns 90%+ of search, Android, and the Ad side. The three together allow it to crush competitors from both ends all while taking a 35% cut. The most lucrative part of the ad business is paid downloads. how many of those searches start in Google with e.g. "Download Spotify". Google makes money selling that to Spotify and they can do it at a much higher rate because no other ad seller has access to search inventory for "download Spotify" or similar searches.
> no other ad seller has access to search inventory for "download Spotify”
I think that behavior should be broadly illegal on the basis that it’s tantamount to false advertising and extortion.
Google claims to be a search engine; if you search for something very specific and well known like Spotify, providing you a paid advertisement as the top hit is essentially fraud.
Joking aside, what this could mean is a larger percentage of ad revenue shared with smaller publishers (website and mobile apps). The current situation is not entirely unlike the app-store cut these companies take.
Unlikely. Such "accusations" are so commonly in the news for the purpose of distracting from the lack of consequences. These reports give a passing appearance of responsible enforcement that almost never actually comes.
As a consumer, I'm wondering if it would be better for me if ads were more or less expensive. Maybe more expensive would be better? Would it be good if they were taxed, or there were minimum prices that websites could charge advertisers?
Also, is Google's ad tech or third-party ad tech better from a privacy point of view? A lot of people distrust Google, but why would they trust no-name third-party ad tech any more? Are there any online advertising companies that have a better track record on privacy?
It seems the anti-trust framework doesn't map very well to consumer concerns about advertising.
When you're building campuses that resemble theme parks more than offices I think it's time to let the FTC take a peak. Meta is in a similar position IMO.
Good choice of words. I worked there, and in the summer, there were so many visiting groups of people that "theme park" was the very phrase I thought of.
One of the conservative's legal project over the past 50 years main goals has been to maintain a Borkian consumer harm standard for anti-trust. With the current SCOTUS, I don't see much of a realistic path for this.
Bork argued that antitrust law shouldn't inherently challenge bigness. He felt that the antitrust should seek to maximize consumer welfare. That's been interpreted by the courts to mean lower prices, but any economist worth their salt will say consumer choice is an aspect of consumer welfare.
It doesn't matter if Little Caesars pizza is the cheapest option, if there aren't any other pizza options, consumer welfare is severely negatively impacted because some consumers won't like Little Caesars.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg—despite being lionized by liberals—was an extremely pro-business justice who played a strong role in the Supreme Court siding with businesses in all but one antitrust case from 1995ish on. With her gone, I think this case may actually have a chance
The cynic in me says that Thomas is open to the discussion to the extent that it hurts companies that he percieves as his enemies, and will shut it down as soon as it covers companies that he considers on his side.
One good thing about the Court is that you can go ahead and just read what he writes and develop your own opinion on what he thinks and why. It’s all public and free.
A test I have for any article about the Court or its Justices is a really simple one: if the article does link to the Opinion, it’s pushing an agenda or a narrative. Once you do this you’ll probably discover that well over half of the articles about the Supreme Court are not worth reading.
That would stand out among SC justices as abnormal, they're usually only biased when it can be consistent, which covers most cases but doesn't go so far as applying different law to different companies.
> Ruth Bader Ginsburg—despite being lionized by liberals—was an extremely pro-business justice who played a strong role in the Supreme Court siding with businesses in all but one antitrust case
I googled this because it seemed interesting.
The first two articles I looked up emphasize how little influence she had on anti-trust cases. At her hearing she said "Antitrust … is not my strong suit." It seems like she went along with other more experienced judges in this area such as Scalia or Breyer who is noted for being very business-friendly.
Where is your idea that Ginsburg was the lynchpin for weak anti-trust rulings coming from?
You identify an important point about Ginsburg, but the current court is mostly a creation of "the Federalist Society". Although these jokers claimed to be concerned about abortion when weaseling their way up the judiciary system, they are all far more concerned with Borkism. Compare the number of abortion cases that reach the Supreme Court with the number of cases focused on business, IP, monopoly, consumer rights, liability, etc.
And although it's not necessarily a liberal vs. conservative issue, it would be deceptive not to point out that this is entirely because of the Republican justices.
The current court was preceded by a far less conservative court which did precisely dick about the problem for decades. Stop trying to frame this as a party issue when this is a class issue -- and the bourgeoisie controls both sides of the aisle.
I linked to a summary of a UVA paper evaluating the SC decisions of the last century or so and graphing them as pro or anti-corporatist, which concluded that the current court is the most pro-business ever. You have handwaved that it maybe used to be this bad. If you have some sort of basis for your belief, I would be happy to consider it.
The basis of my belief is the undeniable fact that prior courts didn't do a damn thing about it despite decades of opportunities. This simply isn't a partisan issue, no matter how much certain petit bourgeoisie-aligned persons would like to frame it otherwise. This is entirely about the uniparty protecting its class interest in ensuring monopolies are not confronted -- unless they pissed off the wrong party member, of course.
I would love to continue arguing, but alas, you say your point is undeniable, and thus, I cannot deny it. Curses, I am foiled by this one simple trick that policy debaters did not want you to know!
I think polarization on social issues has made people forget that the conservative position / the liberal position isn't always a world ending flamewar.
Taking the position that market intervention isn't needed until consumer harm can be sufficiently demonstrated vs. market intervention is needed when any firm wields monopolistic power is a discussion about the role of government and what produces the best outcomes, not "look this side bad."
Agreed on the general point, but it's undeniable that corporatism has used conservative politics as the means to the end they desire. See also: every culture war, the fact that the only thing Republicans can agree on are court appointees and tax cuts.
Google is a global company with huge EU antitrust issues as well as the advertising monopoly dispute in the US which is more of a rival corporations issue than a political one. They are now looking too big to succeed...
I'm kind of sour on antitrust as much of a solution for today's issues. If we had five smaller Googles doing the same thing what would that make better?
Might be easier to get someone on the phone for support, one corp also wouldn't have all that profit sloshing around to go and unfairly dominate other markets.
I don't understand what you'd want instead. The way I see it, antitrust is the lowest bar in consumer (and business) protection. I'd advocate for more regulation, much more, but that seems unreachable in the current political situation in the US.
I suppose what I'm saying is I don't think antitrust is necessarily beneficial for consumers or client businesses. It could be. But generally speaking, large companies pay their employees better, are more likely to comply with regulations, and so on. Having businesses be small for the sake of being small is not necessarily good.
They are more likely to comply with regulations because they effectively get to write them. Smaller is better because a small company doesn't have the resources to corrupt the regulators.
Regulatory capture is a real concern but no, small companies just flagrantly violate the law and get away with it all the time. The stakes are higher for established ones. Many regulations also specifically exempt small companies.
Interesting example since I’d bet a majority of independent restaurants are sourcing the ingredients from Sysco. Anyway, restaurants, maybe not, but I usually prefer dealing with large companies because they are more reliable.
Forcing, say, the Google OS (Android/Chromebook) and Browser business to justify its existence independent of the ad-selling business, and YouTube to justify its video-hosting existence independent of the other two would certainly dramatically modify the landscape for all three.
Yes, five smaller Google's would be good, 4 more points of view.
Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter seems to have highlighted anyone with the greatest of intentions is never going to please everyone, and that choice and freedom to express that choice is good.
Consider this: one of the many complaints about big tech is companies having too much personal data on customers. But if we feel one entity having the data is bad, why is several having it better? That seems worse. Now it's even harder to keep track of.
But most alternatives choose not to retain personal data and have much more stringent privacy policies.
Realistically I don't think the average individual can fathom how much personal data the likes of Google has on people. Small example, I deleted my entire Youtube subscription/history several times, I keep getting recommended the same things. Clearly there's more to 'deleting it entirely'.
Perhaps your experience has been different than mine but I find the handling of personal data at very large companies is much more careful than what I have experienced elsewhere.
> Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter seems to have highlighted anyone with the greatest of intentions is never going to please everyone
I dunno, wouldn’t that require assuming that Elon Musk had “the greatest of intentions”, as well as being a generalization to “never” from a single failure?
I think in his case he saw the flaws with Twitter, the bans, the algorithmic black box and thought he could bring something better to the table. Perhaps he learnt better after the fact.
At least having more private black box algos gives people a choice rather than a monopoly on choice.
I'm less concerned about Google Ad market share and more concerned with their placement of Google properties above competitors on the search results page (IE, Google Reviews over Yelp, or airline prices, etc).
For the vast majority of google searches there are no relevant ads. All these searches are subsidized by someone googling "flights to new york" and booking a flight right there. Google provides an immense public good with free (and mostly ad-free) results to all kinds of questions, which other flight search engines do not.
Imagine: A flight search engine as a marketing gimick starts a web search engine, and shows flight results if someone searches for "flights to ...". Seems like a good thing, no? It seems like no other flight search engine would have a right to complain about unfair competition here.
Dunno about you, but if I search "SFO to NYC", the entire first page (after the Google Flights "onebox") is relevant results and they're not ads- but they effectively are- they're search results that include prices. scrolling down further I see 'sponsored results' (IIUC those are ads inline with the search results).
Yes. Google's Flights product. I'm saying they give it preferential ranking treatment so more people use it (regardless of whether it's a superior product) and I would love it if the government could actually prove that).
How would you draft the rule? Is it just that Google is forbidden to offer services of any kind that other people also offer? Speaking as an informed consumer I strenuously prefer Google Flights over all others. I'd feel harmed if the DOJ just outlawed the 1 offering that wasn't a giant scam.
I wouldn't know how to draft a rule (I don't even know if what they are doing is illegal). I think the Flights interface is superior to the competitors as well. However, it's unclear to what extent Google is using their control of ranking to ensure that their onebox shows up on top, and how much that prevents people from seeing competitor's sites.
I guess I find the question to be off point because when I search for flights from SFO to JFK I am looking for the ticket itself, not a fourth party that can resell the tickets to me. So all the links to Kayak etc are bad results anyway, although direct links to airlines' own sites would be good results. But that's essentially what Google Flights is: a vertical that cuts out middlemen.
If I search "sites that resell airline tickets" then Google Flights does not appear anywhere in the results.
> For the vast majority of google searches there are no relevant ads
Do you have a citation for this? All I could find was that about 5% of searches end up with an ad click, but surely that means they need to show ads on way more than 5% of searches.
I stopped using Google search quite a long time ago. I'm pretty sure it was heavy on ads for most search queries.
It's (was in cases) a symbiotic relationship. Without sites offering flights, Google could have never offered relevant results to searchers in the first place. Same for any other vertical.
If we get the price of advertising down, we can have twice as much to keep revenue flat. Then we can take the money and use it for dividends instead of services like gmail and because that's how competitive businesses have to operate. This world will be much better than having a benign monopolist /s
Sounds like a strategic way for Google to exit a business they aren't making much money on without spooking investors with fresh revenue concerns as AI ramps up as a potential replacement.
Not that it will. I'll die before I let AI be used for advertising.
I was neutral on google, they seem to be very low key, so they fly under the radar.
Then I started to see their little ads tricks and the story on how they "acquired" google maps aka terra vision and yes , wouldnt put it beyond them to use every trick in the book they can get away with.
> on how they "acquiered" google maps aka terra vision
I think you're thinking of Google Earth, and wasn't that story made up for a movie?
edit: wiki says[1] there actually was a lawsuit the miniseries was based on, but the accuser lost because they had actually taken someone else's ideas for Terravision and then turned around and patented it?
That mockumentary is full of shit if you read more on the case law and what actually happened.
Don’t worry, I felt made a fool of after watching too. The producers of Billion Dollar Code are weak for doing what they did, even if it makes the story better.
Well, the chronology of events does not do Google or any of the film critics any favors.
The German group presented the app at Kyoto, before anyone else did.
It appears at least to zooming tech was borrowed by google.
Google won in court, based on hearsay and date of patents.
I have to add, I have not even watched the movie, so my view should not be distorted, but I will give myself the unfiltered "based on a true story" as soon as I can.
I am firmly aware of that, however, keep in mind I did not see the movie yet.
So far, my opinion was based on reading about it, the blogs are often controversial, but I habe a tendency to conclude I will not trust Google on this matter for now.
It's pretty irritating that in the presence of clear collusion and abuse inflicted upon general consumers of things like eggs and motor fuels and insulin, the administration spends its limited enforcement capacity this way.
You'll be happy to know that the FTC is actually investigating and taking action against all of those things, though the egg price investigation is only a Senate request at this point.
We joined on collusion for oil at the start of the pandemic with an oil production cut deal that lasted into 2022:
> Oil prices remained depressed for the rest of March. On 2 April, U.S. President Donald Trump, after significant internal pressure, called Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, threatening to withdraw U.S. military support if OPEC and its allies did not cut oil production.[33] The following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered energy minister Alexander Novak to prepare an extraordinary OPEC meeting and stated that global production could be cut by 10 million barrels. In response to Putin's statement, oil prices jumped.[34] Even with a 10 million bpd cut, the International Energy Agency estimated that global oil stockpiles would still increase by 15 million bpd. IEA's director, Fatih Birol, stated that 50 million jobs related to oil refining and retail was at risk globally.[35] US oil prices increased by 25% on 2 April, the biggest one-day increase in history. Brent oil increased to $32 on 3 April.[36]
You've got to start somewhere. Google might not exercise its powers in ways that obviously hurt consumers the same way the Eggflation debacle is panning out, but I'm sure the second order effects cause us all a world of pain.
Here's hoping the US government turns a new page and starts a new era of anti-trust breakups. Pretty much every industry has been destroyed by monopolies over the past 20-30 years with next to no enforcement.
You have a long history of posting abusively to HN. I don't want to ban you from the "trash heap of this site", but you seem to be completely ignoring all the warnings (I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33914274 just a few weeks ago) and leaving little alternative. Would you please fix this?
This was coming one way or another. AI's threat to Google search is merely icing on the cake.
Google has deserved this for a long time coming. AMP, Chrome, removal of ad blocking, defaulting to Google on Chrome and Android, strong arming of web standards...
> And absolutely nothing came of browser bundling in the US.
But that has much less to do with the merits of the case, and much more to do with the fact that just before any action could be taken, George W Bush was elected president and began our current trajectory toward unbridled corporate governance of America.
Merits of the case decided by who? A bunch of not-lawyers on HN?
Do you think the government should step in and not allow any device to bundled with a browser? Why stop at browsers? Why don’t we just force all manufactures to ship every device without an OS?
Windows and Mac scare the user when switching to a non-first party browser. That, at minimum, should be highly illegal. It's wildly anti-competitive when the platform already has home field advantage.
System dialogues and prompts continue opening in the platform browser, which further continues to nag the user to switch back. Again, totally unfair. These nags and scares should not be allowed.
Competition is what makes our economy, our industry, and the pace of innovation great. Apple, Microsoft, and Google should have to work harder to maintain their insurmountable leads, not fall back on the almost sovereign militaristic advantages they hold. They have gluttonous cash flows that are impossible to attack, and they use that money to force themselves into new markets where innovators are working night and day with every fiber of their being. I don't mind these companies being the biggest in the world. What I hate is that they can so easily put their thumb on anyone trying to do better, and that they can easily extinguish the hard work of others.
I also really love how they set up the lock screen in windoze to open a new instance of Edge whenever someone clicks it in the middle. Time and again someone asks me why their computer is running slowly and I alt-tab to reveal dozens of copies of Edge displaying idiosyncratic Bing queries about the various subjects of lock screen photos. Yes thanks, these inexperienced users really need that sort of help to open many instances of an also-ran browser that makes their jobs more difficult. These users are incapable of clicking anywhere but the middle of the lock screen, even when they're trying to do so.
> That, at minimum, should be highly illegal. It's wildly anti-competitive when the platform already has home field advantage.
So should it also be illegal for third party browsers to keep nagging the user that they should be the default? That’s what Netscape did for years and what Chrome does
Apple will nag you to switch to Safari, even if you have literally never used Safari. It just pops up from time to time with a notification that cannot be ignored.
It is my default browser, so I guess not. That feels like less of a nag than the platform urging you to switch browsers without any indication that you'd like to do so.
Decided by the entirety of the legal apparatus prior to the election in 2000. I don't recall the details at this late date, and you can Google as well as I can, but my memory is that the judge in that case had recommended that Microsoft be broken up for it before Bush came to power.
That is too reductive. U.S. v. Microsoft was all about how Microsoft had strong-armed O.E.M.s into not shipping anyone else's browser. That's not the same as having a default browser.
Is this perhaps why Google has yet to respond to ChatGPT with their own version yet? In order for "competition" to be demonstrated as evidence against monopoly claims.
Similar to Google paying Mozilla Firefox $400m+ per year or otherwise Chrome would be the only dominant browser on the market and scrutinized much more.
