Hacker News Reader

Comment by amsilprotag | Hacker News Reader

Is this true? Wasn't Microsoft brought down for harming incipient businesses by bundling competing software into the OS? Wasn't standard oil fragmented in part for receiving anti-competitive freight fares?

Couldn't it be argued that Google's featured snippets and accelerated mobile pages will lower the revenue of content creators and thus decrease consumer surplus in the long term?

View on HN

I'm not a lawyer but I think what ultimately bit Microsoft was the fact that they were trying to contractually restrict OEMs from including alternatives (arguably harming consumers) and trying to argue that IE was part of the OS when there was evidence it was not. Certainly the settlement remedies after appeal primarily seem to focus on not restricting OEMs from installing alternatives.

Google lawyers have undoubtedly analysed the case with a fine toothed comb and would likely use the permissive open source licenses under which it provides Android and Chrome sources (and allows manufacturers to roll their own versions) to argue they don't restrict anyone.

Could also be argued that Google AMP (Accelerated mobile pages) enables publishers to get SOME ad revenue in spite of rise of ad blockers. Thus mitigating, and dare I say using monopoly for some-what good-ish intentions?

Yes, what GP said is true, at least since the 80s. Before that, too powerful monopolies were considered bad for society; that's why Standard Oil was broken up. However, understanding of US antitrust law underwent a shift in the 80s - now a monopoly has to actively hurt the end consumer for it to be prosecuted under the Sherman antitrust act.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com