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Comment by lcw | Hacker News Reader

How would you go about applying antitrust laws to companies like facebook, google, uber, and airbnb?

I think this would be a difficult fight because they all can claim serious competition. For instance, probably your best case could be against Google and their search engine advertising, but they could easily say that they are competing against all advertising mediums in the world. Airbnb could say they are competing against hotel chains. Uber says they are competing against taxi's. Facebook is competing against 100's of social networks. While I agree something should be done to help business compete in these new mediums they are not defined enough to draw a line in the sand.

To your point though you look at a situation where a single company, Google, could shutter a businesses website on a whim... that seems like a valid antitrust case. I'm just not sure how you would make the case though.

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>How would you go about applying antitrust laws to companies like facebook, google, uber, and airbnb? I think this would be a difficult fight because they all can claim serious competition.

It depends how you define the market, right? If we allow substitutes then Standard Oil was not a monopolist because it was competing against the electric utilities for illumination etc. If we define it by "similar business model" it's hard to see how Google doesn't dominate search engine advertising, Facebook social network advertising, Uber the space of apps used to call transportation etc. Doctrines such as product tying [1] and essential facilities [2] seem ready-made for Google and Facebook respectively.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)#Tying_of_Micr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_facilities_doctrine

The EU case that's spinning up seems interesting in relation to product tying. It seems like they are going to get them for some minor stuff around email installation on Android and some pretty egregious advertising decisions. If Google loses I think it will still have little affect on it's monopoly.

While Google's products do work together I would argue they also work with competitors. Google is pretty open in this way. If you want to move over to MS Office you can export all your stuff to office files. That's unlike what Microsoft was doing. They were making it difficult for competitors. I think Google was very purposeful in this strategy to at least seem open to competition.

> While Google's products do work together I would argue they also work with competitors.

I think there are two ways in which it can be argued that Google's auxiliary products destroy competition. On the one hand Google uses its domination in one market (search engines) to subsidize products that end up dominating other markets (online maps, web email etc.). On the other hand these auxiliary products are making it difficult for other search engines to compete with Google. If your search engine has similar (or even slightly better) results to Google, you still have to break into its being the default search engine on the most used web browser and mobile OS, and integrated with maps and other products. If Altavista had been similarly entrenched in 2000, Page and Brin would have likely hit a brick wall despite having a better algorithm. Even Microsoft with all its resources has failed to make a dent in the search space now.

> antitrust laws to companies like facebook, google, uber, and airbnb

IDK about the others, but Google is an obvious one.

Google Search, Gmail, Google Docs, Chrome, and Android. Each connects with another and has incredible market share. They are horizontally integrated, just like Windows and IE of the 90s.

If Uber and AirBnb were to claim taxis and hotels as their competitors, would that invite more scrutiny as to why they escape the regulatory burdens of their primary competitors/comparatives?

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