A new round of antitrust questions can’t go well for Google

1. It is nearly impossible to "choose to just no use Google". Tell me how long you can go without getting through reCaptcha or AMP for example (with AMP, often you don't even realise you're using it).

2. From what I hear, it seems that in the US many ISPs operate mostly in a situation of monopoly but this is rare in many other countries (with the exception of remote/rural areas). I know it's just anecdotal but I used to move frequently for work and I lived in many different countries in Europe/Asia/South America/Oceania and it never happened that I couldn't choose from at least a couple different broadband providers, except in one single case (village in a rural area in a South East Asian country).

The "last mile" should be owned and controlled by the government, for similar reasons why roads and power lines are. Then handfuls of ISPs would compete for the business of your household. Here in New Zealand that's exactly how it works. I can choose from at least 20 ISPs and net neutrality is a non-issue because free market competition drives the providers to give us what we want.

Thus my stance on net-neutrality is neither for nor against. I think both stances are equally bad, and the root of the problem is ISP monopoly.

I still can't entirely opt out of Google.

And certainly can't opt out of their tracking.

They are inescapable.

No. The ISPs’ argument for breaking neutrality is the tech giants’ capturing of the majority of the profit pie. With competition, those margins should decrease. That, in turn, makes fighting net neutrality less lucrative.

Add on the fact that ISPs are more regulated, federally and at the state level (California can regulate Comcast in a way it can’t Google) and the more-imminent threat is revealed.

This is too narrow understanding of monopoly power. Market failures happen even when there are multiple suppliers

If some corporation gets into position where customer 'Can always choose' a option that provides less value for them and it's the monopoly power that provides the advantage (size and network effects) markets are not efficient anymore.

A customer can, a company cannot. Similarly to how a customer can choose another ISP, but Google cannot choose to just not to business with ISPs: if a business cannot be connected to their customers, that business cannot live.

"You" are not Google's real customers, the advertisers are, and most of them most definitely cannot opt out of Google and remain viable.

I don't know how that would play out with a federal anti trust setup.

Probably not for the Department of Justice. Some problems with that approach:

1. If you are trying to address the issue of limited choice in ISPs, I don't see how breaking them up addresses that. If you split an ISP that has a monopoly in a state, say, into separate ISPs for, say, each county...you've just gone from having one monopoly to having several monopolies. The limited choice is because there is only one cable coming into my house, and splitting up the company that owns that cable doesn't change that.

Addressing that probably requires something like making the last mile data transport a regulated utility that ISPs operate on top of. That would probably require Congressional action and a new President to do nationwide or to allow states to do individually.

2. Competition among ISPs in a region can vary dramatically city to city, and even neighborhood to neighborhood. I've not extensively researched this so maybe this is wrong, but the impression I've gotten is that an ISP's prices in a region tend to be pretty similar between those places within the region where they are the only choice, and those places within the region where there are alternatives with similar performing alternatives. That could make it hard to show that the ISP is abusing its monopoly in those parts of its territory where it does not have competition.

3. Aside from rural areas that only have DSL via the phone company, in most places there are multiple ISPs available. It's pretty common to have both cable and DSL, and in many cities there is also a fiber option. There's also wireless options, ranging from the regular consumer service of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and the various MVNOs that are built on those networks, and many places also have wireless available that is not based on the cellular networks.

You might argue that, say, cellular wireless is not really a viable option to Comcast or Charter or whoever the cable company is in a given area, due to the vast difference in speed. But you will have to actually make the argument. You won't be able to just say that they speed difference makes them different markets. You'll have to actually look at how people are using these various services and show that they really are not comparable.

I think that the factors in #2 and #3 make it almost impossible to win an antitrust case against a major ISP as a whole. The DoJ would have to bring smaller cases alleging monopolization in specific regions, tailored to the specific way the factors in #2 and #3 play out in that region.

Having to do this region by region, or even city by city in some regions, would make this a very long, expensive pursuit. (And where they win, there is still the question of whether or not there is an effective remedy they can apply).

Thus, it is probably better for the DoJ to leave this issue to Congress to deal with via legislation.

Are ISPs favoring Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. ? If so, I agree with you. If not, then...

>>Plus, you can always choose to just not use Google.

Not as simple as you make it. Google for one is hurting competition and using their platform, mainly search, to do so. Different rules apply to companies with a certain market share. No one forced people to use Microsoft Windows either: Apple, Linux, or new companies could have invented many new OS-es.

Reduced choice and human nature tend to result in harm. The novelty, with Facebook and Google, will require measuring harm without explicit prices.

Such an antitrust argument around privacy was recently made against Facebook:

“This sort of thing happened regularly for years. Facebook would try something sneaky, users would object and Facebook would back off.

But then Facebook’s competition began to disappear. Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Later in 2014, Google announced that it would fold its social network Orkut. Emboldened by the decline of market threats, Facebook revoked its users’ ability to vote on changes to its privacy policies and then (almost simultaneously with Google’s exit from the social media market) changed its privacy pact with users.

This is how Facebook usurped our privacy: with the help of its market dominance. The price of using Facebook has stayed the same over the years (it’s free to join and use), but the cost of using it, calculated in terms of the amount of data that users now must provide, is an order of magnitude above what it was when Facebook faced real competition.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...

Does the harm have to be obvious and categorised as emotional/physical or similar?

The linked article there does not clarify the matter, to the point of the certainty of the position being vague at best.

"Digital Monopolies" are barely similar to the heavy industry or commodity monopolies if days past. If you're trying to gauge the impact of google's market share via and prices...

A big part of the space they monopolize is free. No prices. If your fundamentals are based on prices and proxies for prices.. it's not going to work.

Both the reasons for a business to seek monopoly and the rationale for preventing it are estranged from the law, at this point.

You could argue that freedom requires private property and only a market economy is compatible with private property. But "A planned economy is more efficient but I don't support it because I support private property rights" is a pretty uncommon stance.

The best software people I know work in their own companies, and/or doing more meaningful things than selling ads.

And the business is easy: Ads, ads, ads.. plus maybe Google Apps / Compute. Using android unfairly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

That doesn't require exceptional "intelligence", but it does require a tenacity in finding information and the integrity to relentlessly ask questions till you understand what's going (without prejudice regarding the outcome), without being prematurely satisfied that it's "too complex".

And of course, it will be a when team of people, who would have developed a similar understanding of other comes situations, and they will have significant help, and the authority to ask questions.

If you want a more explicit and hands on understanding of the process, look up narratives of major investigations, eg: the Challenger disaster investigation, or the investigation that led to the breaking up of AT&T.

And there are certainly business people out there with more knowledge than those in Google - see NY.

That assumption doesn't hold. Google's business model isn't that complicated. Industry experts and competitors understand perfectly well how Google makes money. Any investigation will focus on a handful areas that are well known and often discussed.

And when it comes to understanding who at Google has done what, why and when, there's prisoner's dilemma to the rescue. If investigators question a couple of managers under penalties of perjury, they will put their own personal interests (i.e staying out of prison) over Google's interests and just tell the truth or at least say something that isn't provably false.

given what you said, it's not difficult to conclude there is no one in the world actually understand google's business, and/or engineering, including googlers. therefore, who is going to be hold accountable, which person we need to push if anything goes horribly wrong?

Google, facebook and amazon have been way too powerful financially, technologically, politically and culturally. install armies they will be superpowers. it's better to do something before it's too late.

Being too buddy-buddy with conservatives has resulted in pushback for Facebook[0] and Uber[1] (Apple[2] too, but a little less so).

Personally I believe that Google, Amazon, and Facebook( a little bit less so) should all be broken up. When you look at Google and Amazon they have their fingers in every pie, it's mind boggling.

I am more left than right, and I am very skeptical of what the Trump administration would do about this. It feels like, with Facebook especially, conservatives are not exactly mad that the companies are big. They are mad that the companies are big and not entirely right-wing mouth pieces. There's a lot of anger about "biased" Google results[3] and "censorship" from Facebook[4].

If you look at the business landscape in US, most very large businesses are culturally conservative. Most tech companies prefer to project a younger, liberal image partially for recruiting reasons. I don't think the Trump administration would be interested in pursuing this if Google looked and acted a bit more like Procter and Gamble.

This seems like a winning position for Trump and a losing position for Google no matter how it shakes out.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/technology/facebook-kavan...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/technology/uber-ceo-travi...

[2] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/8/18256467/ti...

[3] https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-sear...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/09/facebook-...

Monopolies are the fact of absence of competition by definition, but not necessarily anti-competitive by design.

But the absence of competition in a market isn't always bad for consumers.

First, a market may not be a consumer market, and more importantly monopolies may be bad for customers because they may improve the product that can be offered. (Netflix acquiring competition had made each streaming services worse, with smaller and less stable libraries and rising prices; it's been a bonanza for content owners, but not consumers.) One factor in why monopolies can be better for consumers is that they tend also to be monopsonies.