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…
curl https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66753787/1/united-states-v-google-llc/ \
|sed '1,/div id=\"opinion-content\">/d;/<pre>/s//<meta charset=utf-8 \/>&/;/<\/pre>/,$d' > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
Or feed the courtlistener.com URL directly to w3m or another text-mode browser.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not that it will. I'll die before I let AI be used for advertising.
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.
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?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#Other_concerns
Google engaged im negotiations to buy the patents.
And the software was presented in kioto in 1994, way before anyone else.
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.
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.
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.
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...
The government only gets involved when there is some abuse.
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.
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.
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
For more context. A long but good read on the current FTC chairman.
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?
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.
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.
So that's interesting.
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.)
That is absolutely what they are doing. The FTC has made it very clear they are taking a new approach.
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.
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.
— "Biden’s Broad Mandate Has Altered the Antitrust Landscape, Making Merger Clearance Process Less Predictable" https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2022/01/2022-i...
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.
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...
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:
"Biden’s Antitrust Team Signals a Big Swing at Corporate Titans" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/business/biden-antitrust-...
> 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.”
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.
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.
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.
[1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1563746/downl...
[2]: https://www.facebook.com/audiencenetwork/news-and-insights/h...
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).
Does it? Then why isn't every App Store's 30% developer fee a much more obvious monopoly?
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.53...
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.
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
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?
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.
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."
They'd have less bureaucracy, which might help them to innovate and move faster, and in different directions from each other.
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.
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?
They haven't been "limited" so much in the past as "unmotivated and inept," which has been changing over the last few years.
If you're actually interested in the changes, check out Matt Stoller's newsletter: https://mattstoller.substack.com
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/06/...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/06/...
https://www.axios.com/2023/01/24/egg-prices-gouging-ftc-inve...
Having FTC leadership that isn't insanely conflicted makes a difference.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/388069-ftc-names-lawye...
> 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]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Russia%E2%80%93Saudi_Arab...
Almost as soon as we became a net exporter, we joined in on everything we complained about others doing in the 70s.
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.
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.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/lora...
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.
At least having more private black box algos gives people a choice rather than a monopoly on choice.
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'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
The major case was more about MS forcing OEMs to buy licenses for Windows whether the computers shipped with Windows or not.
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.
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.
The lead plaintiff attorney is Jonathan Kanter, his bio has his collaboration and alignment with Khan mentioned twice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Kanter
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.
You will see some high-profile acquisitions fail this year.
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.
Well that was certainly Scalia's opinion of Thomas.
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.)
And yet immediately:
> ake 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.
But Apple is #2. In everything except AppStore revenue.
Google's Android is #1
Google's Chrome is #1
Google's search is #1
Google's ad engine is #1
Google's Gmail is #1
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.
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.e. in an effort to demonstrate competitiveness)
This one is about ad tech.
DoJ is probably filing this lawsuit first either it's easier to win and/or they have gathered enough evidence.
Pretty sure they are looking into App Store antitrust too.
It is also a monopoly. [1]
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/will-appl...
AFAIK, the app stores on gaming consoles want a similar cut.
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 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.
If I search "sites that resell airline tickets" then Google Flights does not appear anywhere in the results.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Oh no, how the big tech has suffered since she took up the post, their profits have... Tripled? This cant be right!
Is Big tech a cult and anyone not worshipping them is the enemy?
You do realise her job is to police big tech, not to do their bidding. She should like them no more than a prison guatdrd likes prisoners.
>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"?
This is kind of very obviously not true.
>and YouTube
Lots of companies operating in the video delivery space too.
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”?
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.
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.
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 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.
And you really think that the government is going to go that far or that it’s a good idea?
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.
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.)
Win???
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
...
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]
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.
You realize I literally prefaced it with "I'm not defending it"?
> Everything you said makes the user experience worse.
Yes, that was the whole point of my second sentence.
I was just explaining why some people do see it as a win. Even if you disagree, it's not an absurd position to take.
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.