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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Your reply almost immediately says you think a jury could be swayed by argument, sentiment or both. Does that not mean an antitrust suit may actually be reasonable, judged by a potently prosecutor?

I think you meant "I don't want them found guilty" which is a different thing. If you really think there is no case to answer I don't think you understand what an antitrust case is about. It's about market dominance and anti competitive behaviour. Something alphabet has already demonstrated they are capable of doing, as in when google, Facebook and apple agreed not to poach Staff and altered the pay rates accordingly, something of which they have already been found guilty.

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Any antitrust theory against Google would be pretty abstract given that they don’t charge for either search or Chrome. But the pop up trying to get you to switch to Chrome when you go to Google search is pretty much what you’d put in a textbook to illustrate leveraging a monopoly in one sector to gain market share in another. It’s extremely concrete and intuitive. That doesn’t mean it makes the case, of course. But it’s a great starting point for building the overall case.

Can you post a screenshot of this popup? Never seen it in years of Firefox use and lots of Google searching. Maybe one of my plugins blocks it.

It was an annoying popup for years. I don't see it now when I search, but I've seen it recently.

It looks like they also make other browsers pay for ads while they post their own ads for "Google's Official Browser" at no cost:

https://imgur.com/a/exzor1l

Here's a screenshot from Edge.

https://i.imgur.com/iwymopx.png

Sometimes it's in a new top bar on the page but cannot remember if that's only on Gmail.

> Hide annoying ads and protect against malware on the web

Damn, that is some duplicitous ad copy, especially in light of recent events.

This is all the more frustrating because there’s no way to have google remember “no thanks.”

Every time I see that pop up, I think “does it block pop ups like this?”

On that note, even Internet Explorer (IE) was bundled freely, Microsoft never charged a dime for it. Why was anti-trust pursued against Microsoft then?

Honestly, I see no difference between that scenario and this. If anything, Google has been a lot more guilty than for just monopolizing on a browser here.

Competitors did. Netscape charges for Communicator Suite for example. There was a monetization model that involves eventually charging for the product once they had a monopoly in browsers. That’s easier to explain than how browsers are monetized today.

The initial release of IE was sold as a separate product in retail stores. Microsoft only added it to Windows later. If IE had been just another Windows feature from the start then it would have been more difficult to make an antitrust case against them.

What rulings can you point to to support this legal theory? The Sharman Act relates to monopolising any market, it doesn’t make any distinction between markets that are monetised in different ways.

Microsoft specifically targeted Netscape, and there was documentation that that was the goal in the form of emails and the like.

Chrome wasn't seemingly to target anyone. Google generally makes more money if people use the internet more, so spending to make browsers better has some obvious benefits.

> Why was anti-trust pursued against Microsoft then?

One example among the many things the court found they did was to tell OEMs that they wouldn't license Windows to them if they _also_ included Netscape preinstalled in their computers.

The stated purpose, from internal emails, was to prevent Java from becoming the de-facto API for writing applications, which at the time was win32. This was a gigantic barrier of entry that protected Windows' monopoly and they did all those shady things to keep it raised.

What is your operant model of monopoly and antitrust?

But doesn’t using the profits from one part of the business to subsidize giving away a product in a tangential business amount to dumping?

You don’t have to charge for your service to be within the scope of the Sherman Act.

> The Sherman Act broadly prohibits (1) anticompetitive agreements and (2) unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the relevant market.

You don’t have to get very abstract at all to see how Google may violating it. Microsoft lost their antitrust case in regards to how they distributed Internet Explorer, another free product.

>Your reply almost immediately says you think a jury could be swayed by argument, sentiment or both...

If this goes to a jury, Google will definitely get off. I seriously hope that doesn't happen.

I wouldn't be so sure. Juries can be convinced of anything if you look at past judgements against Monsanto.

I'm not saying that I think Google is innocent but often the evidence is very difficult for the lay person to interpret (especially when it is absent).

>Juries can be convinced of anything...

Which is exactly why they'd get off.

How can you be so sure about the outcome of a jury trial when the investigation hasn't even reached the point of a specific allegation, let alone one that Google wants to defend at trial?

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