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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

This sounds much more like illegal antitrust behavior as reported by independent media: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/6/18252561/waymo-sell-lidar-...

"Select partners" can mean "those who won't compete with us".

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Don't really understand how this is anti-trust behavior. Is a company not allowed to choose whom it's selling its products to?

Generally, no. Usually the right of first sale ensures anyone can buy a product, if not from the original manufacturer, than from a reseller. Extremely tight distribution chains designed to prevent a competitor from getting a hold of your product is pretty darn rare.

And when it's a monopoly that's already repeatedly demonstrated monopolist behavior, it's even less permissible. So they have a patent monopoly on the hardware, already shown they'll fight in court to protect it (re: Uber), and will prevent anyone from buying that hardware if it's a potential competitor to their service-based business. Their choice to sell the hardware makes it a separate market than their ride-sharing service, and one could argue a violation of antitrust law if they're blocking competitors from one market from buying their product in another.

There's no such thing as a "patent monopoly", and there are multiple competitors in this space (4? mentioned in the article). The idea that there's a meaningful monopoly here is strange, to say the least.

Unless you're actually trying to argue that "warehouse lidar produced by Google" is a meaningfully different market than "warehouse lidar", which completely contravenes both written law and precedent.

Also the right of first sale is trademark/copyright law, not contract law. Companies are absolutely allowed to create non-trademark agreements, and they do all the time. Think software licenses.

> Also the right of first sale is trademark/copyright law, not contract law.

And apparently patent law, you can't use your patents to force someone who legally acquired a device to not do something with it.

So, if one legally got their hands on one of these things there's not a thing waymo could do to them if they were "misusing" it.

The blog post itself says they will sell only to "select partners." The Verge's article doesn't add anything, and it doesn't claim it's illegal.

It's a safety-critical component. All they have to do to prevent competitors from using it would be to only certify its use in limited contexts.

Calling The Verge “independent” is a bit missleading.

Why is that?

True, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt, since they're being critical of Google here, despite their incredibly cozy relationship with Google. Numerous Google executives have done exclusive interviews particularly with The Verge, all the way up to Sundar Pichai, so there's definitely some question whenever they praise Google if there's a conflict of interest or incentive for them to give Google a positive spin.

I assume, of course, you were likely trying to make some sort of "iVerge" claim here, but the reality is, The Verge gives Google incredibly favorable press coverage as well. At the end of the day, The Verge is a business that's in it for clicks, and exclusive interviews and insider access equals clicks. So The Verge will shill for just about any company that can give them scoops, including both Apple and Google. Both companies are notoriously brutal to sites that write critically about them, and The Verge avoids heavily criticizing either in most cases, as to not jeopardize their access.

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