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Comment by isolli | Hacker News Reader

This article makes the case for government intervention [0]. The central thesis is that, had Microsoft not been sued for antitrust in the 90s and wary of yet another lawsuit, they would have killed Google in its infancy. Apparently anonymous sources in both companies confirmed this would have been a distinct possibility.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against...

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Hypotheticals don't work in law. You don't punish someone who hasn't commited a crime.thats common law. Now if it were Europe style civil law, it would be different. Also if Google had died in its infancy, there's nothing that guarantees that another search engine would not not prop up. All great ideas come to fruition when the time is right. 'Search' was ready in 1999. Similarly many falsely believe that the internet wouldn't exist without DARPA. Note that packet switching etc had already found private profitability and without govt regulation would have expanded to become the foundation of the internet

The NYC article isn't really about a hypothetical. It's about foundem.com's battle with Google over maybe being lowered in Google's rankings because they are a rival search engine.

Whether Google should be punished for that, assuming it's true, or left to rank things as they like is more the debate.

Perhaps they should be free to do as they choose, but make what they are doing very explicit. In the early days Google heavily promoted the idea that their rankings were independent and free of commercial biases, and we now implicitly assume that's true. If that's not the case, then perhaps we enforce explicitness about that - somehow.

Isn't hypotheticals the entire basis of civil asset forfeiture? Civil forfeiture as practiced in the United States is based entirely on the supposition that all property is subject to seizure without any burden of proof on law enforcement and that the owner has to prove they bought the property with legal means. Hypothetically everything someone owns was bought illicitly. Any law enforcement agency can just claim it, though it's in practice they like to take cash because there's a low chance of a paper trail and dispute resolution in favor of owners with that. Property is always assumed guilty in 42 states and federal court. https://www.splcenter.org/20180116/civil-asset-forfeiture-fo...

> Now if it were Europe style civil law, it would be different.

We don't punish anyone for crimes that have not yet been committed either :-).

Microsoft weren't punished because they were going to be killed Google. They were punished for anti-competitive practices (specifically, for abusing their monopoly position), and they had to stop some of them. It's very likely that they would have killed Google in its infancy if they could have continued to implement these practices.

Civil law is one thing, and has btw nothing to do with crime and punishment - that would be criminal law.

Protecting a market from becoming a monopoly is another thing entirely; punishment isn't a category here but the overwhelming interest to enable everybody to participate in a market within reason. Shielding individuals from the law of the strong (as in the jungle) and the natural tendency for monopolies is the entire point for a society to begin with.

There's two things called civil law:

1. The legal system [1], based on Roman law, that is common in former French colonies across the world (e.g. Quebec, Louisiana, France).

2. In common law legal systems, the branch of the law that deal with non-criminal matters [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(common_law)

IANAL, but this definition leaves a bit to be desired. I thought the term "civil law" is almost universally synonymous with the law other than the criminal, constitutional/non-law-of-nations law even in non Common Law countries. Specifically, it is used for law with roots in the Code civil (as opposed to Code pénal etc.) in those parts of Europe having Napoleonic law traditions, with connotations of Enlightenment and positive right theories.

>Hypotheticals don't work in law. You don't punish someone who hasn't committed a crime.thats common law.

As much as I don't agree with it in certain cases hypothetical very much apply. All sort so things that have a small but nonzero chance of a bad outcome are violations of civil and or criminal law (e.g a speeding ticket).

Minor nitpick. Garden-variety speeding and most other traffic offenses are "strict liability" infractions that aren't crimes in most states. The differences include the severity of the offense and the absence of the mental state (mens rea) element for strict liability offenses vs. crimes.

>Minor nitpick. Garden-variety speeding and most other traffic offenses are "strict liability" infractions that aren't crimes in most states.

There's usually a speed threshold (15 or 20 over in most states) that make it an automatic misdemeanor. No mental state required.

I would call 20+ over garden variety speeding. There's several interstate and state highways in the Boston area where 20+ over is normal traffic speed. The traffic flows at 70-75 because that's the speed that everyone deems safe and reasonable and the highway is posted at 45-55.

I'm not arguing for government intervention, but it wasn't hypothetical.

Microsoft explicitly detected DR-DOS and pretended that the DOS crashed instead of starting Windows, which worked just fine on DR-DOS before then. This was ruled an illegal practice even though Microsoft had been far smaller at the time.

Scott Galloway explained this point perfectly in his talk at Ignition 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ebKI4x_k8A. It's time to break up the big tech companies to allow competition (and capitalism) to flourish.

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