It's not really their fault they're head and shoulders above the competition/the de-facto provider for most of the content people search for every day (well, maybe it is their fault, but it's not a bad thing).
Having a monopoly in a market due to the fact that your product is just that good isn't a bad thing, and punishing companies for being successful sets an awful precedent (which is why breaking up Google isn't going to happen). From search, maps, email, YouTube, and to photos, Google products are widely used because they're completely free (aside from the data collection portion) and they're best in class.
Please don't lie to us and act like Google's monopoly position is hurting the market. I'm sure Google is doing some shady stuff on the edges, but nothing so egregious to warrant antitrust action.
I think your confusing googles monopoly not hurting the market with not hurting their consumers. But to suggest that they don't make it near impossible for anyone to compete against them is absolutely them hurting the market. Namely, the equity value of google would be more balanced with other smaller firms, and in turn we'd see more very rich people rather than fewer people with net worths well over 10 billion.
I have no doubts why I do this; YouTube provides a far better experience. It's incredibly bandwidth efficient even when my connection is slow, it's very responsive when seeking, and their time-to-first-video-frame is really good. And perhaps most importantly, it's consistently good. I don't get UI or playback issues every 10th video.
I cannot say the same for any other video host I've come across in my life. It's ridiculous how far ahead YouTube is on technology alone, and I still haven't found any site that can match it.
They tend to release great products, their problem is that they just don't always do it first.
Why would that be a good thing? Or rather, a better thing than the current situation? Why would that even be desirable?
Again, antitrust laws exist for one reason: to protect consumers. Not to implement someone's idea of an ideal society or market.
If you believe e.g. that company equity should be more uniformly distributed, go talk to your congressman, have him draft a law to that effect and get congress to vote on it.
Because wealth inequality is massively harmful for society. It's the sort of thing that leads to revolution.
> If you believe e.g. that company equity should be more uniformly distributed, go talk to your congressman, have him draft a law to that effect and get congress to vote on it.
and then Google writes him a check and the whole thing goes away. Biggest lobbyist around.
Nope.
Hunger, poverty, lack of education, lack of access to medical care, etc.. is harmful to society and leads to revolutions and whatever root cause leads to those is to be fought against.
Except that wealth inequality isn't such a root cause.
Wealth inequality isn't and has never been a problem except in the minds of utopian ideologues, collectivists or people with a basic jealousy problem.
So USA has a high median income, so we have high education outcomes, high healthcare outcomes, right? We certainly have the best schools and the best hospitals. But only the top few percentile can afford the best schools and best hospitals, everyone else gets left behind.
But we have higher infant mortality than many countries with lower incomes, and we don't compete so well when it comes to average assessment scores.
Naturally I was exposed to this thinking via a TED talk years ago, from this guy:
https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson
Maybe you want to offer a rebuttal, or maybe you just want to insist he's jealous.
"Let them eat cake"
> Hunger, poverty, lack of education, lack of access to medical care, etc...
All of these woes were in play at that time.
Unlike the poster above who showed a source that tries (and fails imo) to show causation between wealth inequality and said woes, you provided exactly zero value to the conversation.
Good job.
And when they do do stuff that is so egregious but they are too big ($$$) how are you going to stop them from abuse? Isn't this why, for example, people absolutely loathe telecom/ISPs? Sure they were great when the internet first came out ("it was just that good"), but now look how abusive they are since only a few co's own the copper that runs into your house.
Also, being a multibillion dollar company and using your billions in one product line to either prop up or build another product isn't illegal. It's just business.
The competition sucked and they have yet to make something better.
Part of it is the fact that they had historically been able to subsidize the monetization potential of their other services in order to out compete those who needed their services to make money.
The other half is more speculation, but certainly very possible, that they've been able to play this game for a long enough time that they have been able to use search to build these brands in such a way that makes us think of them first for all of these services. Brand power is a very powerful thing, and considering the fact that they have a subsidized ability to advertise to us (both through promoting things in search, and by not needing to pay themselves for adsense/adwords) is what has made these the more high quality services over time since we have given our data to them.
This said, I agree with you on everything else you've said.
I'd argue that having a single entity have such power over something so critical as being bad by nature. Concentrated power is the root of evil.
Google has too much power. They should be broken up for hte good of society.
Every major US tech company is being fined in the EU nowadays. Poor EU regulation shouldn't dictate US policy.
And what exactly would "US policy" be in this context?