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Comment by raven105x | Hacker News Reader

For clarification: Monopolies can result from anti-competitive practices, or an overwhelming competitive advantage. Talking about the latter here

The 'anti-trust' and 'monopoly' arguments strike me as hypocritical and self-contradictory in the context of capitalism. We encourage businesses to compete and succeed, yet when they do so disproportionally, everyone suddenly feels entitled to intervene in their structure, policies & processes - and best of all, we have no objective guidelines or criteria for when this should happen.

The question then becomes: who gets to decide when to bring forth these concerns, and what's their agenda? Food for thought.

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I remember reading about an anti-trust case against Microsoft in the 90s since they included Microsoft Explorer with the OS. They were forced to separate the two, but Chromebook does the same thing without consequences. The rules for Antitrust keep changing and companies are integrating vertically and horizontally quickly before the law catches up.

This is an argument that doesn't feel to be in good faith, but to just stir reactions.

I can see why it seems that way but no one has been able to explain to me why Microsoft was pursued for antitrust litigation and Google was not for doing the exact same thing. Maybe instead of accusing someone of stirring up reactions, explain the double standard.

The core problem here is that you see the “thing” as “bundling a browser”, so your logical conclusion it that it is the “exact same thing”.

In reality, Microsoft was accused of several different acts - monopolisation, unlawful tying arrangements, unlawful exclusive dealing arrangements. It was not merely the fact that Microsoft bundled a browser, but the whole ecosystem and market position around that action. It is perfectly possible for two people or companies to perform the same action, and for it to be unlawful for one of them, because of the other circumstances surrounding the action.

It n a modern context, Google is not in the same position as Microsoft of the 90s. Microsoft, as the only viable provider of consumer operating systems, was in a unique market position. This alone is reason enough to scrutinise decisions to bundle products.

“The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Windows operating system. Bundling them is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of IE. It was further alleged that this restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera), since it typically took a while to download or purchase such software at a store.”

That’s straight from the wiki. It was mainly about bundling. Yes market dominance was a factor but Google has dominance in the search market and they were never forced to unbundle any of their services in the US. They also “bundle” search with Chrome so how is that any different?

No – the issue is not bundling. Bundling in general is not a problem. Companies bundle things all the time, and it should be immediately obvious that this isn't a problem.

But bundling can become a problem when the company doing the bundling has an outsized effect on the market generally. This means that when a company (e.g. Microsoft) has total market dominance in a category, then bundling software for which there is already a third-party market, using privileged access to your own APIs—particularly when you talk about wanting to "extinguish" and "smother" rivals–it can become a problem where it otherwise wouldn't be.

Note that Google has had several antitrust investigations launched against it, including the ongoing US one.

Chromebook doesn't have the market share that Windows had in the 90s. In the context of antitrust cases, market share matters.

Also note that Google's market share in search isn't relevant. Chromebook's market share in OSes is what matters for this particular case.

But Google has a way bigger search market share than Microsoft had browser market share at the time. And Google leverages Chrome to build and maintain search market dominance by making Google the default search engine on Chrome. Microsoft wasn’t doing that with IE. It’s not like Microsoft was stopping Netscape on Windows. All things considered, Google is showing more signs of being a monopoly than Microsoft was at the time.

Getting a monopoly isn't necessarily an antitrust issue. The primary issue is if you have a monopoly on X, and you use that monopoly to try to gain market share in Y. So, Microsoft had a monopoly on PC operating systems, and they were using that to try to increase their dominance in web browsers. That's using your X to try to extend control of Y. (They weren't stopping Netscape on Windows, but they were trying very hard to reduce their market share as much as possible - to the point that they were paying websites to introduce Netscape-incompatible features. Internally, they said, "Try to make using Netscape a jarring experience".)

Google, arguably, has an effective monopoly on search. That's their X. They do not have a monopoly on PC operating systems, or portable operating systems. They are using their Y to try to maintain their X, which, so far as I know (but IANAL) is not an antitrust issue.

>Chromebook does the same thing without consequences

It's not the same at all. Microsoft were forced to unbundle IE from Windows because they were using their market dominance in one area (operating systems) to give themselves an artificial advantage in another area (web browsers). This bundling shielded IE from competition and squeezed other players out of the web browser market. Apple are within their rights to bundle Safari with MacOS, because MacOS only has a minority market share; same goes for ChromeOS. You can't be sanctioned for exploiting a dominant market position if you don't have a dominant market position.

https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/273591/eu_microsoft...

Ok so dominating the market is an important factor for anti-trust litigation. Google is dominating the search market and used this to push Chrome (searching from the url address bar was one of the main reasons people switched). Is that not the same as what Microsoft did? Now they dominate both markets and leveraged both to grow the other.

C'mon.

Microsoft controlled Windows, an operating system. A browser is a thing that can be included in an operating system. Google controls google.com, a website. A browser is not something that can be included in a website.

Yes but is Google search not the default search engine for Chrome? Just like IE was the default search browser for Windows.

They are not using their browser monopoly (which doesn't exist) to force people to use their search product. That would be the corollary to the Windows -> Internet Explorer case.

How about using Android dominance to push their search or other services? They were forced to unbundle in the EU but no action from the US. If they were held to the same anti trust standard Microsoft faced, they would’ve had anti trust cases against them already.

They're nowhere near a monopoly in the U.S. (and, I would imagine, Western Europe) and Google doesn't even work in China. I'm just not seeing it.

They are arguably using their browser dominance to prop up their search engine dominance.

Google were sanctioned in 2017 for exploiting their dominance in the search market to promote their other services.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15872354/google-eu-fine-a...

This is the EU. What has the US done to limit or sanction Google? Why was Microsoft pursued and Google not? Both were using one market dominance to push another.

IIRC, the US hasn't done much at all, until pretty recently. I think recent actions of Google/YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are catching a lot of regulatory attention at this point.

Google wasn't a dominant search engine at the time of the Microsoft litigation, and different people were in charge of the Justice Department by the time that it became one. Not every potential crime is or can be prosecuted – especially when there is a lot of room for legal debate as to whether the conduct was criminal, and the defendant is well-resourced.

This is the EU, and a failure of technically understanding how internet search works. The google shopping carousel is basically search ads with pictures. Every listing is paid to be there, and is even set up in the same place that you set up Google search ads.

Once Microsoft unbundled the browser they started using their monopoly position to force OEM's to include the browser or facing increased costs for the Windows OS, and since and OEM couldn't sell a computer if it didn't have windows installed it left the OEM no option but to add the browser the OS.

Microsoft's grip was so tight that they prevented IBM from bundled OS/2 on IBM pc's, windows was alwasys installed and OS/2 needed to be a separate line item.

It is not as simple as you make it out to be.

United States v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001),[1] was a noted American antitrust law case in which the U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally maintaining its monopoly position in the PC market primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

How is different than what Chromebook does? Or what Google does bundling Google search with Chrome as the default search engine?

>How is different than what Chromebook does? Or what Google does bundling Google search with Chrome as the default search engine?

ChromeOS doesn't have a dominant position in the operating systems market, so there's no case to answer - you can't exploit dominance that you don't have. Android does have a dominant position in the mobile OS market, so Google are being forced to unbundle Chrome and Google Search from Android.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/technology/google-eu-andr...

The EU forced them to unbundle, not the US. We’re discussing US anti-trust cases which Google has not faced after years on dominance. And regardless, it’s too late. Google has already established dominance so unbundling now won’t stop people from downloading Chrome on Android. And how are they unbundling google search when it’s built into their voice search and google assistant?

There is substantial prior research into those questions, some of which made it all the way to law.

It's an interesting topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Law

In the 2000s, the US federal government used anti-trust to keep local and state governments from passing laws banning internet sales of products. If they hadn’t done this Amazon would have never has the success it has. It’s only fair that the government stops Amazon’s anti-competitive behavior as well. Big companies should compete with small companies and customers should choose the winner.

This is a strange take. Monopolies are decidedly anti-capitalist, stifling growth and competition. I'd recommend reading up on antitrust law origins as consumer abuse is common as well.

Don’t confuse capitalism with competitive markets. Capitalism love monopolies as soon as they have the lead.

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