It really feels like they've got some weird vendetta against Google and are just trying to kill it. Which really sucks because Google is the only big tech company that I haven't had negative interactions with. Using Apple and MS products feels like constant friction to try "force" me into their ecosystem. Whereas with Google you can just use a product, have it work with any device, any OS, across devices and you're never forced into anything else.
The DOJ also seems to be going way beyond their mandate in saying Google monopolizes search and ads. If the Microsoft precedent is anything to go by, just require Android users to choose a browser and search engine, allow other ad companies to bid on showing ads on search results or something, that seems fair.
But forcing them to sell Chrome, open proprietary algorithms to competitors and divest from business parnerships is way over the top and really, really feels like the government is doing a favour to Microsoft and Apple. Maybe Google didn't cooperate enough on something classified?
Maybe you are too young to remember when they did exactly this to Microsoft. The antitrust thing is a slow moving ship, both to start and stop.
MS and Apple both make hardware and control your OS. It is a fundamentally more in-your-face relationship with many more points of contact for an average consumer. That doesn't mean Google has been any less ruthless in pursuit of their almighty quarterly gains.
No, I remember the Microsoft anti-trust trial. It was barely a slap on the wrist.
If we were to try draw equivalence: they'd ask Google to stop paying to be the default search provider on platforms and to offer a choice of search provider on Android. That would be the same as what they required of MS (simply to not bundle Internet Explorer and to open up APIs). What the EU is currently asking of Apple is maybe equivalent.
What the DOJ is currently seeking from Google is way over the top given the MS precedent.
There was one ruling that was a lot more harsh but wound up getting overturned on appeal.
On June 7, 2000, the District Court ordered a breakup of Microsoft as its remedy. According to that judgment, Microsoft would have to be split into two separate units, one to produce the operating system and one to produce other software components. Microsoft immediately appealed the judgment to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. [1]
I suspect this will happen here. We seem to be a long ways off from an actual enforcement.
I also assume part of this sudden and intense recommendation is in part due to the upcoming change in power. While the case has been going on for a while, this admittedly feels like an ill-timed overreaction.
Search is an essential utility used by basically everyone on the planet with an internet connection. Google has a lock on 96% of that traffic and has increasingly made business decisions with respect to search that hurt the quality of the results and hurt both consumers and the people who get indexed by search. Google can unilaterally destroy your business with small opaque algorithm tweaks. They also increasingly have a monopoly on the browser, making decisions like deprecating support for ad blocking because it hurts the business.
Google makes about 16-22 billion dollars a quarter in profit but they still do layoffs and they still make decisions that harm consumers but help their own short term growth. Search is a basic utility that is essential to the function of the internet. It's like water and electricity. There are huge structural barriers to being able to compete in that market, so if we care at all about basic economic theory, Google probably ought to at least be operated as a non-profit, and realistically be subject to massive anti-trust enforcement considering they are the modern robber barons on top of our communication networks.
Also you can be heavily invested in Google apps and then one day suddenly google cuts you off and all you are ever going to get to talk is some email/chat bot who does not care to elevate a situation for you. Imagine having all your business docs, customer docs, and processes in google app suite and then just suddenly be cut off. It won’t happen with me since I avoid that situation, but what happens when google glitches and your small business folds because you can’t get to its data?
There's search engines other than Google and there's very, very minimal barriers to using a different search engine; literally just type in Bing.com instead of Google.com. Hell, if you're on MS Windows which has a similar monopoly on desktop devices, Bing will be shoved in your face over, over and over again and using Google actually requires more effort...
Most of them use Bing's indexes on the backend and some competition does not mean that Google doesn't have monopoly power over the market. Firefox exists but Chrome still has a much larger share of the market.
Just because something has monopoly because of being better shouldn't result in antitrust. Even in the browser case, Google is very active in standardisation, and also pays Firefox. Though I think we should definitely ban things like Google search engine advertising Google Chrome for free.
The only reason in many cases other search engines are 'better' at spam is the lack of attention given to it for SEO optimization. It is in many ways akin to saying Macs don't get viruses; rest assured, there are, and as Macs become more prevalent in the business sector for office use, there will be a huge incentive to accelerate it even more.
It seems like high-quality search is a very difficult task, largely due to their adversarial relationship with ‘spammers’. If someone else can do a better job, I’m sure their service will quickly capture the market.
The problem with monopolistic markets is that the new service won't quickly capture the market lol. That's why the DoJ is going after them, there are meaningful barriers to competition that creates incentives for Google to choose value for their business over maintaining a high quality service.
I am not sure that web search is a monopolistic market, though it seems that Google is the dominant player. Google itself wasn't the first player, and managed to capture a large market share from established incumbents. Why do you think that competitors couldn't quickly capture the market? You seem to think this is an obvious fact, but I don't see why, as switching costs are very low.
It seems to me that the important market is online ads (which is where other companies focus), and that Google is the only company willing to invest in web search.
Building a web index and search service to compete with Google requires huge capital expenditures and going up against a network effect that Google exerts on the market (often by paying other companies to be the default). The only company to marginally succeed is Microsoft, and virtually every other search service uses Bing's index on their backend. The cost of switching is low but the barriers to participating meaningfully in the market are high.
How is search a network effects business? It seems to me that each additional user would contribute less than the previous one, as opposed to Metcalfe's law (where each additional user adds more value than the last). How would paying to be a default be a network effect? Perhaps the capital cost to competing with Google is high, but if it were worth it, there are a number of firms which could afford it; it seems like it's just not worth it.
Maybe network effect isn't the right way to describe it but clearly Google has a ton of inertia here since their company is literally the verb for search.
I agree that Google has a lot of inertia in both search and search advertising. That still doesn’t answer why there aren’t more well-capitalized companies trying to win the search market. I suspect (but am not sure that) the answer is the market is more visible than it is worthwhile (somewhat akin to media and entertainment businesses).
It's not at all correct. Duckduckgo had 100 million searches a day[1], and its selling point was privacy friendly search, which has lot lot smaller market than better results. If someone develops better ranking, people would switch very fast.
holy sh*t what a comment!!! why stop here though, lets make ecommerce an essential utility and turn over amazon to the government too! and of course we all need to go somewhere so we should turn over tesla and all the other car companies to the government too! heck now that I re-read your comment I think we should forbid profit altogether and make sure all businesses in America are non-profit, utility-for-all!
Amazon does have an oligopoly over utility computing along with ms and Google. They run like 60% of the internet on AWS.
Tesla obviously does not have a monopoly on cars or even electric vehicles.
You can believe whatever you like but it's simple economics that big tech companies have monopoly power over their markets. Denying that is pretty baffling but this is Hackernews so I'm not sure what I expected.
I don’t think that you can make the case that the existence of aws has made access to cloud services more expensive.
There is a ton of vendors who are competing on price. Although to be fair once you pick a vendor you are locked in their ecosystem. There is definitely friction in the market.
you may want to move to another country though mate… free market, we all have alternatives (kagi, bing, chapgpt for search, temu, target, walmart… for ecomm, azure/google/oracle/ali for cloud…) … if every successful business was eventually treated by the likes of you as “utility” it’d be a hoot of a society
Lurking for awhile and this particular case is interesting in it's absurdity. Everyone comments on something as their first post, eh?
And doesn't HN look down on ad hominem? Anyhow, I don't work for Google if that's what you're implying. Just use their services, like the majority of normal people.
the majority (if not all) normal people would never agree with this:
"Whereas with Google you can just use a product, have it work with any device, any OS, across devices and you're never forced into anything else."
"really sucks because Google is the only big tech company that I haven't had negative interactions with."
but the cherry on top is this gem:
"Maybe Google didn't cooperate enough on something classified?"
This proposal seems like a powerful subsidy for Microsoft and OpenAI. Why can they partner while Google and Anthropic can't? It is strange to penalize a non-monopoly partnership like this.
The two companies are not the same; their dominant positions are in different markets which means the anti-trust implications of them extending into a specific market have to be judged separately.
As an extreme example, Oracle had a dominant position in the enterprise database market in the late '90s, but it wouldn't have been an abuse of that position if they'd integrated a web browser into Oracle 8.
I disagree somewhat regarding markets, segmentation, and offering.
Both have a Web search function as a headline offering. Both have ad enabled platforms. Both are integrating their AI into office and productivity platforms. Both are running integration APIs for their LLMs. Both are actively engaged in research. Both are large market players.
Breaking one will absolutely give the other an unfair advantage and entrench a market leader, which is against the principles of antitrust.
No. This case was launched by Trump's DOJ in 2020 [0], in conjunction with the Republican Attorneys General representing a bunch of states that Trump won handily this election. Trump's Attorney General Barr released a statement when they announced the lawsuit [1]:
> Today, millions of Americans rely on the Internet and online platforms for their daily lives. For years, there have been broad, bipartisan concerns about business practices leading to massive concentrations of economic power in our digital economy. Hearing those concerns, I have made it a primary commitment of my tenure as Attorney General for the Department of Justice to examine whether technology markets have been deprived of free, fair, and open competition.
This case has never has been a partisan issue. It was opened by a Republican DOJ and pushed through by a Democratic DOJ, and there's no reason to believe that the Republicans won't see through what they started.
There is no way that Google won’t be able to ummm “influence” Trump into not dropping this. 2016 was different, Trump was a neophyte and pulled in people who were actually competent and not necessarily sycophants, this time around he is -only- selecting sycophants. There won’t be delegations any longer other than small details, overriding detail will come only from Trump himself, he will not cede any major decisions this time. Those he doesn’t care about the details on you can refer to Project 2025 for likely policies. I consider busting up Google not being a “small item”. Trump has said that the justice department serves him and his needs/desires, and will not be an independent entity. This will go for all departments that he has the slightest bit of interest in.
Thanks, I’ve sort of assumed that all these things they’ve been announcing during the lame duck period were things Biden wanted to rush through that Trump has a high probability of nixing as tends to happen during the lame duck period when party control switches. I appreciate your insight on this specific issue.
Yeah, in this case the lame duck timing is purely coincidental, the government is acting to provide their proposal before a December deadline set by the federal judge.
Suggesting that Merrick Garland is somehow a "Democratic DOJ" is kind of laughable at this point. He's a Republican. He's been dragging his feet going after the biggest Republican crook in history. Appointing Merrick Garland is one of the biggest mistakes Biden ever made.
It sounds like the main reason to call him effectively a Republican is that he hasn't chosen to prosecute Trump, which is a lousy argument. Plenty of rational Democrats have been saying all along that prosecuting him would be counterproductive, as it turned out it was in the event. "I'm voting for the felon" was a rallying cry in the Midwest.
At least the fact that he got a state-level conviction means the felony will stick. Had he been convicted of a felony at the federal level he'd have won anyway and just pardoned himself.
> At least the fact that he got a state-level conviction means the felony will stick.
That’s far from guaranteed. He has multiple grounds to appeal that conviction both through the New York state courts - and if they don’t overturn it, then the federal courts. If it makes it to SCOTUS, odds are high the conservative majority will be looking for some federal law grounds to overturn it. But it might not ever make it that far. Legal commentators all along have been saying the prosecution’s legal theory is rather novel, and maybe the state appellate courts decide it is a novelty they don’t like. Plus, the way it uses allegations of uncharged federal crimes to upgrade a state misdemeanour to a state felony gives the federal courts an easy way to overturn it, by deciding the state courts have misconstrued the scope of those uncharged federal crimes.
Adorable how HN's in absolute denial over this comment and downvoting you.
Garland is a donator to the Federalist Society. Garland was a gift from Obama to the Republicans, trying to put someone who's right wing enough at the Supreme Court to appease the Rs. (And it didn't even work).
The defining feature of the privilege is that it's arbitrary. If it was governed by a set of consistent rules, then it would be less effective at making him feel like he had power - the system, rather, would have power instead.
Twitter is very small compared to the likes of Google though, so not very big. It doesn't make sense to break up such a small company that basically just does one thing.
More informatively: Trump was in favor of eliminating Section 230 protections for Twitter after they fact-checked one of his lies about election security.
Presumably he will now want to revoke Section 230 for non-Twitter companies.
Trump supports people who make him feel good and hates people who make him feel bad. He isn't pointing the DoJ at big tech. He is pointing the DoJ at people who make him feel bad. Trump thinks that YouTube (and Google more broadly) is unfair to conservatives and is full of whiney liberals.
You won't see consistent application of Trump's DoJ. It'll just be a hammer that he can swing at things he doesn't like.
It could even be the case that many of the things that he swings the hammer at will deserve it. But there will be similarly deserving people, groups, and organizations who get off scot free because Trump isn't personally angry at them.
Trump is not particularly in favor of anti-trust policy in general, but he (and the GOP more generally, though Trump’s personal angle that of the GOP more broadly are slightly different though in general alignment) are very much for punishment of anyone in the information space that isn’t actively tilting in the direction he prefers, and is absolutely in favor of using antitrust law as a lever for that.
I hope not. An important part of encouraging innovation in tech is to take power away from the megacorps that will otherwise use their capital and distribution channels and illegitimate practices (like bundling) to control everything and take all the gains. These actions from Lina Khan, the DOJ, the EU commissions, etc are crucial to creating a fair landscape for competition.
Trump took net neutrality off the table, he only wanted to punish big tech for perceived slights or not supporting him enough, he's famous for putting people with no knowledge of the problems or experience with them in power managing them.
Well the other posters answered, but in a nutshell because his record on consistency is non-existent.
Tax Reform, Immigration, Syria, TikTok, most of his original cabinet picks, he wanted to hang his vice president, Wikileaks and government leaks in general, the list goes on, his positions are about as fluid as any person I know.
Well he started the drive to ban TikTok, but did a 180 after a single meeting with a billionaire who owns part of it.
I have no idea what Trump's DOJ will do with this case; I doubt he knows or cares about the case himself. I won't be surprised either way they go with it.
I had to create an account to ask you this point blank.
Why are you acting like taking Net Neutrality rules off the table is a bad thing? Have you read what is in
the Net Neutrality rules? Or are you just regurgitating what the news and your favorite tubers of the time were telling you to do?
I read through 100 of the 400 pages, that was enough to make me sick. I was disgusted at the crap in there. A full 2/3rds of the rules I viewed were terrible. Many of those rules clearly existed only to enshrine the largest of players from ever being challenged or having any competition. I'm convinced anybody who speaks in favor of Net Neutrality is ignorant and hasn't bothered to read any of the guidelines contained therein. I can't be convinced that any intelligent free thinking consumer would ever want that drek to exist and am appalled that it has any defenders at all.
Go ahead and vote me down for abdicating for your better treatment. You can have true, real net neutrality without keeping competition out of it. But every vote down just tells me you love the colluding Comcast's and AT&T's customer service and prices.
I have a small internet company near me. Excellent service, lightning fast internet, a decent price. They have a limited number of available static IP numbers that can be granted to customers, I pay for one because I host a server for my needs, few customers actually need this feature. Under one of the first 20 rules (2015), they would have to provide total and equal service across the board to all customers. Innocent looking on paper, but impossible for the this small company to do realistically.
Another rule I recall (9 years ago, may be off a bit on this one) required a method for any government body or customer to call up and view a full summery of data usage at whim by logging into their account. This requires an incredibly costly and unrealistic implementation for a burgeoning company.
The point is that, taken alone, these rules seem altruistic and with good intent but when you imagine the requirements of hundreds of them, it is IMPOSSIBLE for new competitors to break into the field. The big boys already collecting your fees monthly can easily afford any thing being arbitrarily required.
That company of mine got bought out by the way. One of the big 4 bought them, it was a good 5 years. But we are going back to one choice of ISP in my area again. I fully expect the customers service to go to absolute shit and the cost monthly to slowly begin to rise.
I didn't vote you down, but having specific examples of problems with legislation you had is a much stronger argument, and is completely normal. The big boys are already creating a lot of negative competition and you are right that regulatory capture is really bad, more money = more influence in legislation.
However, the world of data caps and shitty service abounds very much because of the lack of SOME of these rules, and so the middle ground in my mind isn't destroy it all, it's fixing legislation.
Laws often have unintended consequences and trample on minority viewpoints, but while in the "destroy it all" framework we do get to reject some onerous rules, the vast majority of us get bent over a barrel, get more expensive service, and have no choice.
Net neutrality ensures equal access, protects consumers from conspicuous data caps while no investment is put into infrastructure, prevents ISPs from throttling things they don't like, and increases competition.
You didn't actually say what rules are bad, and we'd probably agree "hey this rule in this law is BS" - that's very different than "net neutrality is BS"
Feel free to go into detail about why NN is bad for consumers, I think you will find many ardent defenders here.
So it's hard to say, Trump hates Google, Gaetz hated Google, I assume any Trumpist (I guess it's Bondi now) thinks Google is "unfair to conservatives". So it's easy to imagine letting Google reap the penalties of the existing case being an easy choice for them.
On the other hand, he's promised to remove Khan, Kanter, etc, and end antitrust enforcement. So someone may have to actively decide to continue as is, or change tack a bit.
The third concern of course is that Trump is a crook. He might not like Google but I'm sure neither him nor Sundar would have any qualms with figuring out how to slide a billion dollars in Trump's pocket to make the case go away.
It also does not help that Google is often seen together with various left leaning initiatives - like Google is one of the big proponents. Plus there was some backlash on Twitter over Youtube hiding Joe Rogan video and so on.
Musk took over Twitter and then started xAI. Trump Social should announce they are going to be adding AI and resell Anthropic. They can take their 20% and everyone is happy.
> does anyone else think that trump is going to nix this thing as soon as he takes office?
Depends on how much Google is willing to scratch Trump's back. Remember, Trump is a corrupt quid pro quo President. All he needs is something valuable in exchange for his corrupt powers.
I remain utterly confused how apple's rule that you can't link to a purchase page, and can't mention the 30% tax in-app, hasn't had its day in court yet.
Like, you can have a free app in the store, with a website where you can purchase premium, and then in the app have an "upgrade" button that just displays the error "You cannot upgrade to premium in the app" and hope users find your website.
You aren't allowed to have "You can upgrade to premium using our site, at https://site.com" message because if you can pay money on site.com, having that error message is seen as evading the app store tax.
In both of those cases though, apple did the same amount of work, so the justification you sometimes hear, that "30% is fair because you're paying for app store resources and apple to advertise your app", seems like it doesn't really apply.
Like, spotify is a perfect example of this. They don't let you upgrade on iOS because paying 30% to apple would mean they'd lose money on every sell (music has very thin margins), and spotify isn't even allowed to display a good error message because linking to their webpage, or mentioning the app store tax, would be against app store ToS.
And then apple music also exists, and ignores the 30% tax. It seems so blindingly obviously harmful to consumers.
This all applies to the google play app store too, but at least on the google play app store, there's no "thought crime" of informing your users they can go punch in a credit card on the web.
> Apple allowed developers to include [information about other payment methods] but required that developers give Apple 27% of all sales made within seven days of being directed to these sites
That doesn't really sound like losing, a 27% penalty if you "steer users" is effectively the same as steering not being allowed.
That's not a penalty for steering users, that's Apple's commission for running the store. Their position has always been that the 30% is not a payment processing fee, it's an App Store fee, and the court agreed with them that that is acceptable.
So steer away, but pay your dues manually if you do so.
I'm honestly shocked how many people thought that the outcome would have been anything else. Apple has been very consistent in emphasizing that the 30% is not the payment processing fee, so the idea that getting paid with your own payment processor would bypass the fee was always absurd.
The best developers can hope for is for US regulators to follow the EU and force Apple to allow alternative stores with lower fees. There was never a chance that the government would ban Apple from charging its fee.
Apple is happy to take 0% of offsite payments if you don’t link to them though, so clearly apple is fine with an app store fee of 0, ie for spotify.
The only difference is if the app error says “You can’t pay in-app” or if it says “You can’t pay in app, you can pay on our site”
Restricting apps from informing users still seems like obvious harm to users, like if a retail store made a rule that “the manual that comes with your product can’t contain your homepage because you have an online shop that might have better prices than us”
If it were the cost of running the store, truly, it would charge based on app downloads or such. Not based on if users click a link to amazon.com in the kindle app and then buy 2 books or 3.
I'm honestly shocked at how many people seem to ignore Apple's developer fee. The Core Technology fee is a hackneyed attempt at trying to preserve the same broken system, and it too will be removed in time. It was only allowed to exist unchallenged when Apple created a minuscule loophole for nonprofits, and even then it was the cause of a second EU probe: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/24/apple-app-store-rules-are-in...
You keep showing up in these threads to repeat the same "this is how it is" shtick, but you're seemingly terrified of the "what could be" aspect. Apple's abuse of their coalesced power is still illegal in Europe and Apple is still in the process of designing their remediation. If the US wasn't fundamentally corrupt Apple would have been put on trial years ago - citing America's preliminary rulings is less of a feather in Apple's cap and more an example of how far consumer protections have fallen in the West.
> You keep showing up in these threads to repeat the same "this is how it is" shtick, but you're seemingly terrified of the "what could be" aspect.
You have to understand the way that things are in order to effectively advocate for the way that things should be. If you approach the world with a broken mental model and try to use that broken mental model to advocate that the world needs changing, you'll accomplish nothing.
We have spent years with people thinking that if they could just charge for their apps outside of the App Store that they'd magically be able to avoid the fee. That was never the case, it was never going to be the case, and I'm just here to clear that up. If you want to abolish the 30% fee, you need to ask for something besides abolishing the anti-steering provisions because the fee was never about the payment method.
People can advocate for whatever changes they want, I'm sincerely just here to try to make sure we're all talking about the way things really are, because otherwise it's just hot air.
> It really feels like the DOJ has it out for Google here. Apple's behavior is far more monopolistic, and Microsoft is no saint either.
As others have mentioned, the government can do more than one thing at a time. Here is a list: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/business/antitrust-.... Perhaps Google's case had just progressed faster, and perhaps it was more clear-cut or easier to prove.
> But Google has faced the broadest criticism for its actions, with the judges in all three antitrust cases chastising the company for its communications practices.
And they engaged in some pretty sketchy practices:
> If using the right words and deleting messages did not keep Google out of the courthouse, the company concluded, invoking the lawyers would....
> A message surfaced in the Epic trial in which a Google lawyer identified the practice of copying lawyers on documents as “fake privilege” and seemed rather amused by it. Mr. Walker said he was “disappointed” and “surprised” to hear that term....
> Last month, three advocacy groups, led by the American Economic Liberties Project, asked for Mr. Walker to be investigated by the California State Bar for coaching Google to “engage in widespread and illegal destruction” of documents relevant to federal trials.
If you're intentionally hiding things from government investigators, the legal presumption is there's a good reason. Judges are allowed to impute things from destroyed evidence. Otherwise, everyone would destroy evidence.
Why is it bizarre? Google has near-monopoly market share in search and in ads and Apple is the only thing standing between them and a monopoly on the browser. Furthermore, they've demonstrated anti-competitive behavior in all three markets.
The only market where Apple has a monopoly is the marketplace that they created for themselves, and a high profile case already tried and failed to use that definition of the market to argue antitrust. The DOJ is trying again anyway, but it made perfect sense for them to wait until Epic vs Apple was decided before starting work—why waste time on something that could be moot by the time they finish?
2nd one has screwed over consumers in the past and continues to screw over consumers. Can you even buy MS office any more or do you have to rent it now? What’s with putting ads in the software you purchased?
It's not just apple, basically every company that is bigger than google is going to benefit from this. Apple, Microsoft, even Nvidia is getting their only real competitor and the biggest company that isn't dependent on them (google TPUs) kneecapped.
Weirdly selective regulation that punishes one company arbitrarily while ignoring others feels like a step in the wrong direction. We need actual laws about this, not various capricious enforcement of haphazard existing regulations.
They need wins, and once the ball starts rolling, they can shift their focus. Government departments are restricted by budget. Going after 4 behemoths at the same time is not practical.
If google gets restrictions, then it makes apple look even more monopolistic. Like a trimming the hedges
Microsoft doesn't want Google to control the codebase Edge is based on and doesn't want anyone to counter the MSFT + OpenAI partnership, and the DOJ is trying to hand them their wishes.
Hopefully the judge rejects this overreach and rules on lawsuit scope.
I remember the time before google. We were all stuck IE with no competitive browsers and everyone was using Windows machines. Now we have three browsers and multiple platforms. I just bought a Chromebook plus, that can run linux apps but is easy enough for my kid to use. My wife uses windows laptop and I use a mac. We have Amazon Echos through out the house. We have 4 major players in the tech space instead of one. Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
And those four players are more of a cartel than competitors, having agreed to mostly stay out of each other's ways.
The primary overlapping markets between them are consumptive devices and cloud services -- which I presume they're all in because they consider it strategically important enough to their other businesses to incinerate money.
Apple and Google makes phones. All of them make tablets. Microsoft and Apple make laptops. All but Apple sell cloud computing. Google, Apple and Microsoft have office suites. Apple, Amazon and Google offer paid streaming platforms. Amazon, Apple and Google All offer smart assistants. I can keep going with things like game platforms, consumer storage,streaming music. Failing to see how they stay out of each other's way or have agreements with each other. Apple and Google literally give away their office apps which is the bread butter of Microsoft,
Apple and Google don't compete on phones, because they've each intentionally built incompatible ecosystems.
See earlier comment about consumer devices.
Office suites have Google sharing an MS Office-compatible suite they purchased. Apple has MS Office on its platform. But no real competition or innovation.
Who aside from Microsoft runs a gaming platform?
What looks like open competition gets a lot narrower in overlap once you look at the details.
Which is exactly what you'd expect, if you allowed companies to get too big and too dominant: they're not dumb, so they strategically rig the game in their favor to disadvantage new entrants, while carteling with similarly sized peers to ensure everyone mostly stays out of each other's pools.
I'm sorry, you're alleging that someone who used to work for Microsoft, but doesn't anymore, is ... well, still secretly working for Microsoft? Like, he's a spy inside the DOJ, but you've figured out his clever game? I don't understand.
A common argument is that former corporate insiders remain loyal to their former employers once in positions of authority in the government so as to obtain lucrative positions once their time in government ends. It’s also possible there are corrupt private contracts in place to entice those actions.
I’m not sure why you’re being so sarcastic as it’s not a novel idea and it’s less “figured out the clever game” and more that even the appearance of impropriety removes faith and trust in the institution.
> even the appearance of impropriety removes faith and trust in the institution.
This seems like a nuanced and reasonable take, but a rather generous interpretation of the GP comment. I think it’s reasonable for the parent comment to push back against a definitive statement laying an accusation with no evidence.
It’s a reasonable take meant to explain GPs statement and sentiment regardless of the underlying truth of his statement and pushing back on what I found to be unfounded sarcasm that added nothing to the conversation.
To me, it doesn't feel extreme at all, relative to former antitrust regulations or to what's needed for a functioning market. I would have felt bad about these about two decades ago, but Google has not been a good player in recent years.
Maybe it's like what the FBI does, when they go for you it doesn't matter if they win for the original primary reason because they'll find something to get you with and you'll negotiate down to some form of them winning.
Hope this gets nixed. It might be a relevant case back in 2020, but no longer a valid case now. From the wikipedia case:
"The suit alleges that Google has violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by illegally monopolizing the search engine and search advertising markets, most notably on Android devices, as well as with Apple and mobile carriers."
Where will be the search monopoly by Google in 2025? If search monopoly slowly evaporates, where will be the advertising monopoly?
Google's entire argument against being regulated has been 'We're not monopolizing search, people choose to use us!'
The latter part also happens to conveniently be true when you buy all the available space that a competitor would need -- default placement in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Android.
You don't get to rig the game and then claim the results actually demonstrate everyone naturally loves you.
On the flip side, if default placement was eliminated and browsers asked users which search engine they'd like on first launch...I still believe most users would pick Google anyway and the main loser would be Firefox as search engine placement is the majority of their revenue.
Furthermore, ChatGPT reaching 100m users in 2 months also suggests that browser placement isn't the biggest factor into where users send their queries.
The success of the Chrome browser on desktop proves otherwise, no?
It's interesting that the argument is "nobody can compete with defaults" when one of the proposed remedies is to break off the part of the company that was too successful at competing with defaults.
Chrome organic growth was powered by a special confluence of historical events:
- IE was bloated and lazy from being dominant
- Google controlled one of the most visited websites in the world (pre-mobile appification)
- V8 performance boosted the web's then-cutting-edge js features
Those are huge tailwinds.
In contrast to now, where Chrome spends more time trying to deprecate mv2, link user browing to a Google identity, and find a way to recreate tracking cookies.
When's the last time Chrome shipped innovation that made users' lives measurably better? Per tab processes?
The completion is a click away. If you can't deliver enough value for people to change the defaults or go to your site are you really doing a better job?
It really feels like they've got some weird vendetta against Google and are just trying to kill it. Which really sucks because Google is the only big tech company that I haven't had negative interactions with. Using Apple and MS products feels like constant friction to try "force" me into their ecosystem. Whereas with Google you can just use a product, have it work with any device, any OS, across devices and you're never forced into anything else.
The DOJ also seems to be going way beyond their mandate in saying Google monopolizes search and ads. If the Microsoft precedent is anything to go by, just require Android users to choose a browser and search engine, allow other ad companies to bid on showing ads on search results or something, that seems fair.
But forcing them to sell Chrome, open proprietary algorithms to competitors and divest from business parnerships is way over the top and really, really feels like the government is doing a favour to Microsoft and Apple. Maybe Google didn't cooperate enough on something classified?
Maybe you are too young to remember when they did exactly this to Microsoft. The antitrust thing is a slow moving ship, both to start and stop.
MS and Apple both make hardware and control your OS. It is a fundamentally more in-your-face relationship with many more points of contact for an average consumer. That doesn't mean Google has been any less ruthless in pursuit of their almighty quarterly gains.
No, I remember the Microsoft anti-trust trial. It was barely a slap on the wrist.
If we were to try draw equivalence: they'd ask Google to stop paying to be the default search provider on platforms and to offer a choice of search provider on Android. That would be the same as what they required of MS (simply to not bundle Internet Explorer and to open up APIs). What the EU is currently asking of Apple is maybe equivalent.
What the DOJ is currently seeking from Google is way over the top given the MS precedent.
There was one ruling that was a lot more harsh but wound up getting overturned on appeal.
On June 7, 2000, the District Court ordered a breakup of Microsoft as its remedy. According to that judgment, Microsoft would have to be split into two separate units, one to produce the operating system and one to produce other software components. Microsoft immediately appealed the judgment to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. [1]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C....
I suspect this will happen here. We seem to be a long ways off from an actual enforcement.
I also assume part of this sudden and intense recommendation is in part due to the upcoming change in power. While the case has been going on for a while, this admittedly feels like an ill-timed overreaction.
Search is an essential utility used by basically everyone on the planet with an internet connection. Google has a lock on 96% of that traffic and has increasingly made business decisions with respect to search that hurt the quality of the results and hurt both consumers and the people who get indexed by search. Google can unilaterally destroy your business with small opaque algorithm tweaks. They also increasingly have a monopoly on the browser, making decisions like deprecating support for ad blocking because it hurts the business.
Google makes about 16-22 billion dollars a quarter in profit but they still do layoffs and they still make decisions that harm consumers but help their own short term growth. Search is a basic utility that is essential to the function of the internet. It's like water and electricity. There are huge structural barriers to being able to compete in that market, so if we care at all about basic economic theory, Google probably ought to at least be operated as a non-profit, and realistically be subject to massive anti-trust enforcement considering they are the modern robber barons on top of our communication networks.
Also you can be heavily invested in Google apps and then one day suddenly google cuts you off and all you are ever going to get to talk is some email/chat bot who does not care to elevate a situation for you. Imagine having all your business docs, customer docs, and processes in google app suite and then just suddenly be cut off. It won’t happen with me since I avoid that situation, but what happens when google glitches and your small business folds because you can’t get to its data?
There's search engines other than Google and there's very, very minimal barriers to using a different search engine; literally just type in Bing.com instead of Google.com. Hell, if you're on MS Windows which has a similar monopoly on desktop devices, Bing will be shoved in your face over, over and over again and using Google actually requires more effort...
Most of them use Bing's indexes on the backend and some competition does not mean that Google doesn't have monopoly power over the market. Firefox exists but Chrome still has a much larger share of the market.
Just because something has monopoly because of being better shouldn't result in antitrust. Even in the browser case, Google is very active in standardisation, and also pays Firefox. Though I think we should definitely ban things like Google search engine advertising Google Chrome for free.
But it's active in standardization in a way that helps Google's business specifically, not the market as a whole.
On the other hand, search is not a commodity that can be dispensed in interchangable units.
Those opaque tweaks that tank your business are the same ones that keep spam and SEO garbage down.
I agree that Google has an obligation to keep search results high quality but they're failing at that while also screwing over legitimate businesses.
The only reason in many cases other search engines are 'better' at spam is the lack of attention given to it for SEO optimization. It is in many ways akin to saying Macs don't get viruses; rest assured, there are, and as Macs become more prevalent in the business sector for office use, there will be a huge incentive to accelerate it even more.
It seems like high-quality search is a very difficult task, largely due to their adversarial relationship with ‘spammers’. If someone else can do a better job, I’m sure their service will quickly capture the market.
The problem with monopolistic markets is that the new service won't quickly capture the market lol. That's why the DoJ is going after them, there are meaningful barriers to competition that creates incentives for Google to choose value for their business over maintaining a high quality service.
I am not sure that web search is a monopolistic market, though it seems that Google is the dominant player. Google itself wasn't the first player, and managed to capture a large market share from established incumbents. Why do you think that competitors couldn't quickly capture the market? You seem to think this is an obvious fact, but I don't see why, as switching costs are very low.
It seems to me that the important market is online ads (which is where other companies focus), and that Google is the only company willing to invest in web search.
Building a web index and search service to compete with Google requires huge capital expenditures and going up against a network effect that Google exerts on the market (often by paying other companies to be the default). The only company to marginally succeed is Microsoft, and virtually every other search service uses Bing's index on their backend. The cost of switching is low but the barriers to participating meaningfully in the market are high.
How is search a network effects business? It seems to me that each additional user would contribute less than the previous one, as opposed to Metcalfe's law (where each additional user adds more value than the last). How would paying to be a default be a network effect? Perhaps the capital cost to competing with Google is high, but if it were worth it, there are a number of firms which could afford it; it seems like it's just not worth it.
Maybe network effect isn't the right way to describe it but clearly Google has a ton of inertia here since their company is literally the verb for search.
I agree that Google has a lot of inertia in both search and search advertising. That still doesn’t answer why there aren’t more well-capitalized companies trying to win the search market. I suspect (but am not sure that) the answer is the market is more visible than it is worthwhile (somewhat akin to media and entertainment businesses).
It's not at all correct. Duckduckgo had 100 million searches a day[1], and its selling point was privacy friendly search, which has lot lot smaller market than better results. If someone develops better ranking, people would switch very fast.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221118045948/https://duckduckg...
> Those opaque tweaks that tank your business are the same ones that keep spam and SEO garbage down.
Um, except that they don't? We had entire articles detailing how "Forbes" dominates search rankings with SEO garbage.
Keeping SEO garbage down appears to be very straightforward. It's just incompatible with an ad-driven business model.
Not a good example anymore: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/11/google-cracks-down-o...
And those results contaminated Google for almost 5 years before Google got enough bad press that they finally had to do something.
Yeah, Google is a monopoly.
holy sh*t what a comment!!! why stop here though, lets make ecommerce an essential utility and turn over amazon to the government too! and of course we all need to go somewhere so we should turn over tesla and all the other car companies to the government too! heck now that I re-read your comment I think we should forbid profit altogether and make sure all businesses in America are non-profit, utility-for-all!
Amazon does have an oligopoly over utility computing along with ms and Google. They run like 60% of the internet on AWS.
Tesla obviously does not have a monopoly on cars or even electric vehicles.
You can believe whatever you like but it's simple economics that big tech companies have monopoly power over their markets. Denying that is pretty baffling but this is Hackernews so I'm not sure what I expected.
I don’t think that you can make the case that the existence of aws has made access to cloud services more expensive.
There is a ton of vendors who are competing on price. Although to be fair once you pick a vendor you are locked in their ecosystem. There is definitely friction in the market.
you may want to move to another country though mate… free market, we all have alternatives (kagi, bing, chapgpt for search, temu, target, walmart… for ecomm, azure/google/oracle/ali for cloud…) … if every successful business was eventually treated by the likes of you as “utility” it’d be a hoot of a society
The US has been enforcing anti-trust law for over a century including against tech companies like Microsoft.
Hi dismalaf. Do you think it will be possible for googlers to decide if you want to stay a googler or become a chromer? That's going to be fun.
> Maybe Google didn't cooperate enough on something classified?
Yeah, sure. Google protects us.
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Lurking for awhile and this particular case is interesting in it's absurdity. Everyone comments on something as their first post, eh?
And doesn't HN look down on ad hominem? Anyhow, I don't work for Google if that's what you're implying. Just use their services, like the majority of normal people.
the majority (if not all) normal people would never agree with this:
but the cherry on top is this gem:Yeah that’s exactly what my intuition was telling me about their post that felt off.
This proposal seems like a powerful subsidy for Microsoft and OpenAI. Why can they partner while Google and Anthropic can't? It is strange to penalize a non-monopoly partnership like this.
The two companies are not the same; their dominant positions are in different markets which means the anti-trust implications of them extending into a specific market have to be judged separately.
As an extreme example, Oracle had a dominant position in the enterprise database market in the late '90s, but it wouldn't have been an abuse of that position if they'd integrated a web browser into Oracle 8.
I disagree somewhat regarding markets, segmentation, and offering. Both have a Web search function as a headline offering. Both have ad enabled platforms. Both are integrating their AI into office and productivity platforms. Both are running integration APIs for their LLMs. Both are actively engaged in research. Both are large market players.
Breaking one will absolutely give the other an unfair advantage and entrench a market leader, which is against the principles of antitrust.
Because realistically only open ai / Microsoft stand a chance to compete with Google search / ad stack
http://archive.today/Hm8f6
does anyone else think that trump is going to nix this thing as soon as he takes office?
No. This case was launched by Trump's DOJ in 2020 [0], in conjunction with the Republican Attorneys General representing a bunch of states that Trump won handily this election. Trump's Attorney General Barr released a statement when they announced the lawsuit [1]:
> Today, millions of Americans rely on the Internet and online platforms for their daily lives. For years, there have been broad, bipartisan concerns about business practices leading to massive concentrations of economic power in our digital economy. Hearing those concerns, I have made it a primary commitment of my tenure as Attorney General for the Department of Justice to examine whether technology markets have been deprived of free, fair, and open competition.
This case has never has been a partisan issue. It was opened by a Republican DOJ and pushed through by a Democratic DOJ, and there's no reason to believe that the Republicans won't see through what they started.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-an...
There is no way that Google won’t be able to ummm “influence” Trump into not dropping this. 2016 was different, Trump was a neophyte and pulled in people who were actually competent and not necessarily sycophants, this time around he is -only- selecting sycophants. There won’t be delegations any longer other than small details, overriding detail will come only from Trump himself, he will not cede any major decisions this time. Those he doesn’t care about the details on you can refer to Project 2025 for likely policies. I consider busting up Google not being a “small item”. Trump has said that the justice department serves him and his needs/desires, and will not be an independent entity. This will go for all departments that he has the slightest bit of interest in.
Thanks, I’ve sort of assumed that all these things they’ve been announcing during the lame duck period were things Biden wanted to rush through that Trump has a high probability of nixing as tends to happen during the lame duck period when party control switches. I appreciate your insight on this specific issue.
Yeah, in this case the lame duck timing is purely coincidental, the government is acting to provide their proposal before a December deadline set by the federal judge.
>and pushed through by a Democratic DOJ,
Suggesting that Merrick Garland is somehow a "Democratic DOJ" is kind of laughable at this point. He's a Republican. He's been dragging his feet going after the biggest Republican crook in history. Appointing Merrick Garland is one of the biggest mistakes Biden ever made.
He Was Obamas nominee for SCOTUS, Bidens selection for AG, and has been held in contempt by the republican House.
He was Obama's nominee because Obama knew the Senate would only approve a conservative nominee.
He was also previously recommended by Mitch McConnell.
Strange that the Republican house didn't nominate him given that he's such a fervent Republican.
Senate, and he isn't fervent and maybe that was the issue. Or perhaps it was just about the principal of the matter.
It sounds like the main reason to call him effectively a Republican is that he hasn't chosen to prosecute Trump, which is a lousy argument. Plenty of rational Democrats have been saying all along that prosecuting him would be counterproductive, as it turned out it was in the event. "I'm voting for the felon" was a rallying cry in the Midwest.
At least the fact that he got a state-level conviction means the felony will stick. Had he been convicted of a felony at the federal level he'd have won anyway and just pardoned himself.
> At least the fact that he got a state-level conviction means the felony will stick.
That’s far from guaranteed. He has multiple grounds to appeal that conviction both through the New York state courts - and if they don’t overturn it, then the federal courts. If it makes it to SCOTUS, odds are high the conservative majority will be looking for some federal law grounds to overturn it. But it might not ever make it that far. Legal commentators all along have been saying the prosecution’s legal theory is rather novel, and maybe the state appellate courts decide it is a novelty they don’t like. Plus, the way it uses allegations of uncharged federal crimes to upgrade a state misdemeanour to a state felony gives the federal courts an easy way to overturn it, by deciding the state courts have misconstrued the scope of those uncharged federal crimes.
Adorable how HN's in absolute denial over this comment and downvoting you.
Garland is a donator to the Federalist Society. Garland was a gift from Obama to the Republicans, trying to put someone who's right wing enough at the Supreme Court to appease the Rs. (And it didn't even work).
oh wow, TIL. I assumed Trump would be against any government control of Big Tech
That's a weird thing to say. Trump has always been critical of big tech and favours breaking them up.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tech-factbox/fa...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/10/18659748/t...
Trump is critical of big tech that doesn't help him - I'm happy to bet he will oppose breaking up X as long as Musk is in his cabinet.
Trying to describe Trump on a coherent ideological level is a fool's errand, like most strongmen he's just an opportunist.
Why would X be broken up? When I think of Big Tech I certainly don’t think of companies like Twitter or Snapchat.
The defining feature of the privilege is that it's arbitrary. If it was governed by a set of consistent rules, then it would be less effective at making him feel like he had power - the system, rather, would have power instead.
Twitter is very small compared to the likes of Google though, so not very big. It doesn't make sense to break up such a small company that basically just does one thing.
The point is that even if X was a dominating monopoly, it would be fine because Elon is on Trumps nice list.
Trump is a typical power whore who praises and protects those that kiss his feet, and admonishes and punishes those who don't.
This is the same game that all these self-interested power hungry people play.
More informatively: Trump was in favor of eliminating Section 230 protections for Twitter after they fact-checked one of his lies about election security.
Presumably he will now want to revoke Section 230 for non-Twitter companies.
Why would you break up X?
To get two fabulous new companies, > and <. Or maybe ^ and v ? Or / and \ ?
I'm much more on board with this plan now. I want to see how many stock exchanges crash when I buy shares in <
Trump supports people who make him feel good and hates people who make him feel bad. He isn't pointing the DoJ at big tech. He is pointing the DoJ at people who make him feel bad. Trump thinks that YouTube (and Google more broadly) is unfair to conservatives and is full of whiney liberals.
You won't see consistent application of Trump's DoJ. It'll just be a hammer that he can swing at things he doesn't like.
It could even be the case that many of the things that he swings the hammer at will deserve it. But there will be similarly deserving people, groups, and organizations who get off scot free because Trump isn't personally angry at them.
Trump is not particularly in favor of anti-trust policy in general, but he (and the GOP more generally, though Trump’s personal angle that of the GOP more broadly are slightly different though in general alignment) are very much for punishment of anyone in the information space that isn’t actively tilting in the direction he prefers, and is absolutely in favor of using antitrust law as a lever for that.
Trump is against things that oppose him, and for things that favor him.
He perceives Big Tech as being an enemy, so he will use whatever tools available to punish.
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No. They’ll change the settlement terms, however, to probably include their priorities.
I hope not. An important part of encouraging innovation in tech is to take power away from the megacorps that will otherwise use their capital and distribution channels and illegitimate practices (like bundling) to control everything and take all the gains. These actions from Lina Khan, the DOJ, the EU commissions, etc are crucial to creating a fair landscape for competition.
Trump took net neutrality off the table, he only wanted to punish big tech for perceived slights or not supporting him enough, he's famous for putting people with no knowledge of the problems or experience with them in power managing them.
What exactly would be driving your hopes here?
Maybe the fact that Trump's DOJ started this lawsuit, backed by the Republican Attorneys General for 11 states that Trump won this year?
What exactly is driving you to think that he'd abort a mission that he and his allies started?
Everything else is for sale in his administration, so I don't see why this wouldn't be.
Well the other posters answered, but in a nutshell because his record on consistency is non-existent.
Tax Reform, Immigration, Syria, TikTok, most of his original cabinet picks, he wanted to hang his vice president, Wikileaks and government leaks in general, the list goes on, his positions are about as fluid as any person I know.
Well he started the drive to ban TikTok, but did a 180 after a single meeting with a billionaire who owns part of it.
I have no idea what Trump's DOJ will do with this case; I doubt he knows or cares about the case himself. I won't be surprised either way they go with it.
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I had to create an account to ask you this point blank.
Why are you acting like taking Net Neutrality rules off the table is a bad thing? Have you read what is in the Net Neutrality rules? Or are you just regurgitating what the news and your favorite tubers of the time were telling you to do?
I read through 100 of the 400 pages, that was enough to make me sick. I was disgusted at the crap in there. A full 2/3rds of the rules I viewed were terrible. Many of those rules clearly existed only to enshrine the largest of players from ever being challenged or having any competition. I'm convinced anybody who speaks in favor of Net Neutrality is ignorant and hasn't bothered to read any of the guidelines contained therein. I can't be convinced that any intelligent free thinking consumer would ever want that drek to exist and am appalled that it has any defenders at all.
> I read through 100 of the 400 pages ...
Is this the 400 page PDF you're meaning?
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-15-24A1.pdf
That's the "Order on Remand" PDF link from this page: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-releases-open-internet-orde...
Which in turn is the "2015: FCC adopts rules..." link on this page: https://www.fcc.gov/net-neutrality
---
There's a more recent 512 page thing too, though I'm not real sure where it fits in:
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-52A1.pdf
Go ahead and vote me down for abdicating for your better treatment. You can have true, real net neutrality without keeping competition out of it. But every vote down just tells me you love the colluding Comcast's and AT&T's customer service and prices.
I have a small internet company near me. Excellent service, lightning fast internet, a decent price. They have a limited number of available static IP numbers that can be granted to customers, I pay for one because I host a server for my needs, few customers actually need this feature. Under one of the first 20 rules (2015), they would have to provide total and equal service across the board to all customers. Innocent looking on paper, but impossible for the this small company to do realistically.
Another rule I recall (9 years ago, may be off a bit on this one) required a method for any government body or customer to call up and view a full summery of data usage at whim by logging into their account. This requires an incredibly costly and unrealistic implementation for a burgeoning company.
The point is that, taken alone, these rules seem altruistic and with good intent but when you imagine the requirements of hundreds of them, it is IMPOSSIBLE for new competitors to break into the field. The big boys already collecting your fees monthly can easily afford any thing being arbitrarily required.
That company of mine got bought out by the way. One of the big 4 bought them, it was a good 5 years. But we are going back to one choice of ISP in my area again. I fully expect the customers service to go to absolute shit and the cost monthly to slowly begin to rise.
I didn't vote you down, but having specific examples of problems with legislation you had is a much stronger argument, and is completely normal. The big boys are already creating a lot of negative competition and you are right that regulatory capture is really bad, more money = more influence in legislation.
However, the world of data caps and shitty service abounds very much because of the lack of SOME of these rules, and so the middle ground in my mind isn't destroy it all, it's fixing legislation.
Laws often have unintended consequences and trample on minority viewpoints, but while in the "destroy it all" framework we do get to reject some onerous rules, the vast majority of us get bent over a barrel, get more expensive service, and have no choice.
Net neutrality ensures equal access, protects consumers from conspicuous data caps while no investment is put into infrastructure, prevents ISPs from throttling things they don't like, and increases competition.
You didn't actually say what rules are bad, and we'd probably agree "hey this rule in this law is BS" - that's very different than "net neutrality is BS"
Feel free to go into detail about why NN is bad for consumers, I think you will find many ardent defenders here.
If Sundar flatters him enough.
We can hope, his DOJ might amend their demands or the judges he appoints will overturn it on appeal if needed.
So it's hard to say, Trump hates Google, Gaetz hated Google, I assume any Trumpist (I guess it's Bondi now) thinks Google is "unfair to conservatives". So it's easy to imagine letting Google reap the penalties of the existing case being an easy choice for them.
On the other hand, he's promised to remove Khan, Kanter, etc, and end antitrust enforcement. So someone may have to actively decide to continue as is, or change tack a bit.
The third concern of course is that Trump is a crook. He might not like Google but I'm sure neither him nor Sundar would have any qualms with figuring out how to slide a billion dollars in Trump's pocket to make the case go away.
It also does not help that Google is often seen together with various left leaning initiatives - like Google is one of the big proponents. Plus there was some backlash on Twitter over Youtube hiding Joe Rogan video and so on.
Musk took over Twitter and then started xAI. Trump Social should announce they are going to be adding AI and resell Anthropic. They can take their 20% and everyone is happy.
> does anyone else think that trump is going to nix this thing as soon as he takes office?
Depends on how much Google is willing to scratch Trump's back. Remember, Trump is a corrupt quid pro quo President. All he needs is something valuable in exchange for his corrupt powers.
Google just needs to deposit a few million into an offshore account and this will disappear into the ether.
Then administration will throw so much “anti woke” shit and the average American will forget about it.
The case started under Trump so probably not
Not really. He and his backers actually want this to happen to GOOG.
It really feels like the DOJ has it out for Google here. Apple's behavior is far more monopolistic, and Microsoft is no saint either.
I remain utterly confused how apple's rule that you can't link to a purchase page, and can't mention the 30% tax in-app, hasn't had its day in court yet.
Like, you can have a free app in the store, with a website where you can purchase premium, and then in the app have an "upgrade" button that just displays the error "You cannot upgrade to premium in the app" and hope users find your website.
You aren't allowed to have "You can upgrade to premium using our site, at https://site.com" message because if you can pay money on site.com, having that error message is seen as evading the app store tax.
In both of those cases though, apple did the same amount of work, so the justification you sometimes hear, that "30% is fair because you're paying for app store resources and apple to advertise your app", seems like it doesn't really apply.
Like, spotify is a perfect example of this. They don't let you upgrade on iOS because paying 30% to apple would mean they'd lose money on every sell (music has very thin margins), and spotify isn't even allowed to display a good error message because linking to their webpage, or mentioning the app store tax, would be against app store ToS.
And then apple music also exists, and ignores the 30% tax. It seems so blindingly obviously harmful to consumers.
This all applies to the google play app store too, but at least on the google play app store, there's no "thought crime" of informing your users they can go punch in a credit card on the web.
All of these things did have their day in court in Epic vs Apple. Apple won on most counts but lost on the anti-steering provisions:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple
> lost on the anti-steering provisions
Also from that article:
> Apple allowed developers to include [information about other payment methods] but required that developers give Apple 27% of all sales made within seven days of being directed to these sites
That doesn't really sound like losing, a 27% penalty if you "steer users" is effectively the same as steering not being allowed.
That's not a penalty for steering users, that's Apple's commission for running the store. Their position has always been that the 30% is not a payment processing fee, it's an App Store fee, and the court agreed with them that that is acceptable.
So steer away, but pay your dues manually if you do so.
I'm honestly shocked how many people thought that the outcome would have been anything else. Apple has been very consistent in emphasizing that the 30% is not the payment processing fee, so the idea that getting paid with your own payment processor would bypass the fee was always absurd.
The best developers can hope for is for US regulators to follow the EU and force Apple to allow alternative stores with lower fees. There was never a chance that the government would ban Apple from charging its fee.
Apple is happy to take 0% of offsite payments if you don’t link to them though, so clearly apple is fine with an app store fee of 0, ie for spotify.
The only difference is if the app error says “You can’t pay in-app” or if it says “You can’t pay in app, you can pay on our site”
Restricting apps from informing users still seems like obvious harm to users, like if a retail store made a rule that “the manual that comes with your product can’t contain your homepage because you have an online shop that might have better prices than us”
If it were the cost of running the store, truly, it would charge based on app downloads or such. Not based on if users click a link to amazon.com in the kindle app and then buy 2 books or 3.
> it's an App Store fee
I think Apple said something like SDK fee, which should even apply outside app store.
I'm honestly shocked at how many people seem to ignore Apple's developer fee. The Core Technology fee is a hackneyed attempt at trying to preserve the same broken system, and it too will be removed in time. It was only allowed to exist unchallenged when Apple created a minuscule loophole for nonprofits, and even then it was the cause of a second EU probe: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/24/apple-app-store-rules-are-in...
You keep showing up in these threads to repeat the same "this is how it is" shtick, but you're seemingly terrified of the "what could be" aspect. Apple's abuse of their coalesced power is still illegal in Europe and Apple is still in the process of designing their remediation. If the US wasn't fundamentally corrupt Apple would have been put on trial years ago - citing America's preliminary rulings is less of a feather in Apple's cap and more an example of how far consumer protections have fallen in the West.
> You keep showing up in these threads to repeat the same "this is how it is" shtick, but you're seemingly terrified of the "what could be" aspect.
You have to understand the way that things are in order to effectively advocate for the way that things should be. If you approach the world with a broken mental model and try to use that broken mental model to advocate that the world needs changing, you'll accomplish nothing.
We have spent years with people thinking that if they could just charge for their apps outside of the App Store that they'd magically be able to avoid the fee. That was never the case, it was never going to be the case, and I'm just here to clear that up. If you want to abolish the 30% fee, you need to ask for something besides abolishing the anti-steering provisions because the fee was never about the payment method.
People can advocate for whatever changes they want, I'm sincerely just here to try to make sure we're all talking about the way things really are, because otherwise it's just hot air.
> It really feels like the DOJ has it out for Google here. Apple's behavior is far more monopolistic, and Microsoft is no saint either.
As others have mentioned, the government can do more than one thing at a time. Here is a list: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/business/antitrust-.... Perhaps Google's case had just progressed faster, and perhaps it was more clear-cut or easier to prove.
Google's records retention policies were also over the top and perhaps hurt it: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/technology/google-antitru...:
> But Google has faced the broadest criticism for its actions, with the judges in all three antitrust cases chastising the company for its communications practices.
And they engaged in some pretty sketchy practices:
> If using the right words and deleting messages did not keep Google out of the courthouse, the company concluded, invoking the lawyers would....
> A message surfaced in the Epic trial in which a Google lawyer identified the practice of copying lawyers on documents as “fake privilege” and seemed rather amused by it. Mr. Walker said he was “disappointed” and “surprised” to hear that term....
> Last month, three advocacy groups, led by the American Economic Liberties Project, asked for Mr. Walker to be investigated by the California State Bar for coaching Google to “engage in widespread and illegal destruction” of documents relevant to federal trials.
<--- This. And specifically:
> Google's records retention policies were also over the top and perhaps hurt it: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/technology/google-antitru...:
If you're intentionally hiding things from government investigators, the legal presumption is there's a good reason. Judges are allowed to impute things from destroyed evidence. Otherwise, everyone would destroy evidence.
The DOJ can go after more than one company at a time. And they are, in fact, doing so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_(2024)
The DoJ does not have unlimited resources, nor does it have unlimited time - see imminent regime and policy change.
Priority matters, and picking Google as the first high profile target is bizarre.
Why is it bizarre? Google has near-monopoly market share in search and in ads and Apple is the only thing standing between them and a monopoly on the browser. Furthermore, they've demonstrated anti-competitive behavior in all three markets.
The only market where Apple has a monopoly is the marketplace that they created for themselves, and a high profile case already tried and failed to use that definition of the market to argue antitrust. The DOJ is trying again anyway, but it made perfect sense for them to wait until Epic vs Apple was decided before starting work—why waste time on something that could be moot by the time they finish?
That's why they're also suing apple
But there is an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and Microsoft is getting probed by the FTC regarding their cloud business.
Maybe? Any regulation is very welcomed in this area
Actually not. Punishing the smaller company while allowing big company to run amok is essentially making things even worse.
> smaller company
That's a weirdly specific way to label the 5th largest public company on the planet, by market cap.
... yes, it is smaller than the 2nd largest public company.
2nd one has screwed over consumers in the past and continues to screw over consumers. Can you even buy MS office any more or do you have to rent it now? What’s with putting ads in the software you purchased?
It's not just apple, basically every company that is bigger than google is going to benefit from this. Apple, Microsoft, even Nvidia is getting their only real competitor and the biggest company that isn't dependent on them (google TPUs) kneecapped.
I look forward to running my searches through Saudi Aramco.
You joke, yet a Saudi PIF company will probably try to buy Chrome if Google is forced to sell it.
It does make one wonder if "sell Chrome" is the opening offer and "place Chrome in a multi-party foundation" might be the eventual compromise.
Weirdly selective regulation that punishes one company arbitrarily while ignoring others feels like a step in the wrong direction. We need actual laws about this, not various capricious enforcement of haphazard existing regulations.
They need wins, and once the ball starts rolling, they can shift their focus. Government departments are restricted by budget. Going after 4 behemoths at the same time is not practical.
If google gets restrictions, then it makes apple look even more monopolistic. Like a trimming the hedges
In order to say Apple is a monopoly you need to define a very narrow market. The search market is obviously relevant and very dominated by Google.
Google claims their in the ad market. Not the search market.
Facebook is on a similar scale in the ad market, Facebook makes even larger share of their money on ads and aren't making that much less money.
The former Microsoft lawyer leading this prosecution is doing Microsoft's bidding.
Wouldn't Microsoft be scared to suffer the same faith, if this were to really happen?
Microsoft doesn't want Google to control the codebase Edge is based on and doesn't want anyone to counter the MSFT + OpenAI partnership, and the DOJ is trying to hand them their wishes. Hopefully the judge rejects this overreach and rules on lawsuit scope.
preferable would be preventing google+anthropic but also breaking up ms + openai
Doubt that’s on the table unless Microsoft is also sued. Without a joint ruling this wouldn’t be balanced
Doesn't mean we
a) can't hope
b) shouldn't hope
Ideally the feds would stay out of it and let the market do its thing.
As someone who remembers a time before Google, no.
Letting "the market do its thing" only works until a few companies accumulate enough power to monopolize the market.
The last two decades have seen being the next Google transformed into being acquired by Google, which has been to the detriment of everyone.
I remember the time before google. We were all stuck IE with no competitive browsers and everyone was using Windows machines. Now we have three browsers and multiple platforms. I just bought a Chromebook plus, that can run linux apps but is easy enough for my kid to use. My wife uses windows laptop and I use a mac. We have Amazon Echos through out the house. We have 4 major players in the tech space instead of one. Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
Netscape? IE didn't become dominant until 2000+.
And those four players are more of a cartel than competitors, having agreed to mostly stay out of each other's ways.
The primary overlapping markets between them are consumptive devices and cloud services -- which I presume they're all in because they consider it strategically important enough to their other businesses to incinerate money.
Apple and Google makes phones. All of them make tablets. Microsoft and Apple make laptops. All but Apple sell cloud computing. Google, Apple and Microsoft have office suites. Apple, Amazon and Google offer paid streaming platforms. Amazon, Apple and Google All offer smart assistants. I can keep going with things like game platforms, consumer storage,streaming music. Failing to see how they stay out of each other's way or have agreements with each other. Apple and Google literally give away their office apps which is the bread butter of Microsoft,
Apple and Google don't compete on phones, because they've each intentionally built incompatible ecosystems.
See earlier comment about consumer devices.
Office suites have Google sharing an MS Office-compatible suite they purchased. Apple has MS Office on its platform. But no real competition or innovation.
Who aside from Microsoft runs a gaming platform?
What looks like open competition gets a lot narrower in overlap once you look at the details.
Which is exactly what you'd expect, if you allowed companies to get too big and too dominant: they're not dumb, so they strategically rig the game in their favor to disadvantage new entrants, while carteling with similarly sized peers to ensure everyone mostly stays out of each other's pools.
The status quo is bad for Microsoft, anything with the potential to shake it up is worth doing. And they'd get a head start.
I'm sorry, you're alleging that someone who used to work for Microsoft, but doesn't anymore, is ... well, still secretly working for Microsoft? Like, he's a spy inside the DOJ, but you've figured out his clever game? I don't understand.
A common argument is that former corporate insiders remain loyal to their former employers once in positions of authority in the government so as to obtain lucrative positions once their time in government ends. It’s also possible there are corrupt private contracts in place to entice those actions.
I’m not sure why you’re being so sarcastic as it’s not a novel idea and it’s less “figured out the clever game” and more that even the appearance of impropriety removes faith and trust in the institution.
> even the appearance of impropriety removes faith and trust in the institution.
This seems like a nuanced and reasonable take, but a rather generous interpretation of the GP comment. I think it’s reasonable for the parent comment to push back against a definitive statement laying an accusation with no evidence.
It’s a reasonable take meant to explain GPs statement and sentiment regardless of the underlying truth of his statement and pushing back on what I found to be unfounded sarcasm that added nothing to the conversation.
Interestingly, that same argument was made for Nokia and in the end seems like it was probably true in that specific case.
I think with Trump's administration Google will have a tough time.
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> Instead, they decided to make an existential bet and risk of creating enemies.
What are you talking about?
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Why? Genuine question.
To me, it doesn't feel extreme at all, relative to former antitrust regulations or to what's needed for a functioning market. I would have felt bad about these about two decades ago, but Google has not been a good player in recent years.
Geopolitically, it feels off.
Maybe it's like what the FBI does, when they go for you it doesn't matter if they win for the original primary reason because they'll find something to get you with and you'll negotiate down to some form of them winning.
Sometimes it ends up with US government splitting businesses - like Bell being split into AT&T and the others 50 years ago
The chart on the wiki page showing the subsequent consolidation of the Baby Bells is pretty fascinating though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Bell_Operating_Compan...
Hope this gets nixed. It might be a relevant case back in 2020, but no longer a valid case now. From the wikipedia case:
"The suit alleges that Google has violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by illegally monopolizing the search engine and search advertising markets, most notably on Android devices, as well as with Apple and mobile carriers."
Where will be the search monopoly by Google in 2025? If search monopoly slowly evaporates, where will be the advertising monopoly?
Google's entire argument against being regulated has been 'We're not monopolizing search, people choose to use us!'
The latter part also happens to conveniently be true when you buy all the available space that a competitor would need -- default placement in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Android.
You don't get to rig the game and then claim the results actually demonstrate everyone naturally loves you.
On the flip side, if default placement was eliminated and browsers asked users which search engine they'd like on first launch...I still believe most users would pick Google anyway and the main loser would be Firefox as search engine placement is the majority of their revenue.
Furthermore, ChatGPT reaching 100m users in 2 months also suggests that browser placement isn't the biggest factor into where users send their queries.
"Most" isn't relevant here, if share goes down from 90% to 51% - monopoly problem solved.
Same with the factors- ok, let it be the second-biggest factor, so?
You are being extremely optimistic with that number. I would put it around 80-85%.
Google search usage is not going to drop 50% just because it's not the default.
> just because it's not the default
On HN, we probably drastically overestimate the number of people who change any default.
Chrome is only the default browser on Pixel devices which are what, 1% of devices worldwide? Less than 5% in the US anyway.
On desktop Edge or Safari are defaults, iOS is Safari, on Samsung phones it's Samsung Internet.
People have to go out of their way to install Chrome, and yet it's got a majority of market share.
The success of the Chrome browser on desktop proves otherwise, no?
It's interesting that the argument is "nobody can compete with defaults" when one of the proposed remedies is to break off the part of the company that was too successful at competing with defaults.
Chrome organic growth was powered by a special confluence of historical events:
- IE was bloated and lazy from being dominant
- Google controlled one of the most visited websites in the world (pre-mobile appification)
- V8 performance boosted the web's then-cutting-edge js features
Those are huge tailwinds.
In contrast to now, where Chrome spends more time trying to deprecate mv2, link user browing to a Google identity, and find a way to recreate tracking cookies.
When's the last time Chrome shipped innovation that made users' lives measurably better? Per tab processes?
You misunderstand the meaning of that number, it wasn't a forecast
That is not "on the flip side" but "now that the damage is done".
The completion is a click away. If you can't deliver enough value for people to change the defaults or go to your site are you really doing a better job?