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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

It is fairly amazing that this action would come against a player with a minority and shrinking share of a market where prices are rapidly falling. Antitrust actions under US doctrine are supposed to benefit consumers, but how can this action do anything other than increase profits for Facebook and Amazon?

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> Antitrust actions under US doctrine are supposed to benefit consumers

Note that the viewpoint that antitrust is SOLELY about benefit to consumers, and not also about restricting corporate power, is relatively new in US antitrust jurisprudence (around the 80s I think), and there are currently many scholars reassessing this viewpoint.

Edit: Some more info about current reassessment of the Chicago School of Antitrust: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/reassessing-chicago-school...

It’s a very complicated issue but I thought one of the justifications behind that doctrine was that consumer benefits/prices was a very objective way to measure corporate power (because with lots of power they would be able to raise prices freely to hurt consumers and benefit themselves)

Chicago School antitrust doctrine has been the direction of US jurisprudence throughout the existence of the online advertising industry and predates all of the market participants. Even if we throw it out, what's _any_ ethical, moral, or legal reason to break up Google's business? Surely it can't be that the government has an interest in boosting Verizon's market share.

There used to be a pretty strong belief in the separation of media production and distribution, originating in the break up of the studio system. I'm not a historian or legal expert here by any stretch, but at some of the arguments supporting this were about ensuring the limited platforms (movie studios and broadcasters at the time) would have to allow competitive access for distribution of content.

Google is in a position similar to being a major broadcaster- it is a gatekeeper of content, whether through search, YouTube, or ads. While Google started off with a pretty radical view of free speech that resulted on a pretty content, that has waned in the last 5-10 years.

The most obvious of this is the de-monetization of YouTube channels. While I hardly disagree with their choice to distance themselves from many vitriolic personalities, I've also seen them demonetize science channels for doing experiments involving explosives and smaller channels they just didn't want to bother monitoring. The theoretical reason for this- their ad partners don't want their ads accidently running on offensive content.*

There isn't any real alternative to YouTube. Searching for how to videos on google often results in a page of only YouTube videos. Content producers cannot directly negotiate interstitial ad content. The old-time concerns about a single broadcaster dominating the marketplace of ideas is absolutely applicable here. Breaking up Content, Search, and Ads would go a long way to ensure access to the platform.

*As well they should, and I actually kind of LIKE that its become harder for offensive crazies to make money, but I'm providing the argument for breaking up the content, search, and ads.

Wouldn’t an independent YouTube have the same problem? They would still be beholden to the companies purchasing the ad space and demonetize channels that risk upsetting those advertisers.

Not if they were required to allow content creators to utilize alternate ad platforms to inject ads before or after the run. Sure they'd still have the option to kick the creators out of search or off the platform entirely, but that potentially enables alternative hosting platforms.

There used to be (and might still be) limits on how much national advertising national networks could require local stations to carry, on the theory this made local stations more independent (and in tune with local needs). This is my 21st century version of that regulation.

Like I said, I'm not even sure I'm in favor of such a break up, but I can see the historical parallels.

This is pointing to the crux of the issue. Anti-trust action against software companies is a sticky issue especially when the market exists entirely because of their innovation in the first place. I have no love for Google but I also don't see how customers' perception of the ad market won't change over time.

Commodity monopolies on the other hand seem to have much more obvious detrimental effects longterm.

What does Google have a shrinking share of? This article is specifically referencing ad tech, of which DFP has near 100% market share, while AdX is greatly outperforming it's rival (Facebook audience network pulled support for mobile web in April while Amazon's much-ballyhooed A9 platform turned into a big Whataburger).

"Facebook, Google Digital Ad Market Share Drops as Amazon Climbs" - June 2019 [1]

"Amazon is eating into Google's most important business: Search advertising" - October 2019 [2]

There are dozens and dozens of articles about this. The market as a whole is growing, and Google's market share is large, but shrinking as a percentage of the pie.

[1] - https://www.investopedia.com/news/facebook-google-digital-ad...

[2] - https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/amazon-is-eating-into-google...

Hopefully they are broken up next.

Is there a precedent for breaking up the top three players in a marketplace? By what means would that give relief to ad buyers?

If you were to impair the ad business of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, wouldn't that simply shift profits to Verizon, Microsoft, Snap, ByteDance, etc?

I think it's a huge mistake to group Google, Facebook and Amazon all in the same bucket and say "look, they don't have a monopoly because they each only have X% of 'total digital ad spend'".

If I want to advertise my vacation house for rent, I sure as hell am not going to do it on Amazon, and FB would hardly make any sense (maybe if I had a whole network of houses for rent to do brand marketing, but not if I just had one). Google is pretty much the only option that makes sense here.

I mean, just ask a digital marketer. While there are some potential areas of overlap they all view Adwords, FB ads and Amazon ads very differently and not much in 'competition'.

Weird example because I am sure Facebook is a major outlet for vacation rental marketing. Here's the Vacation Rental Management Association's advice on using Facebook: https://www.vrma.org/p/bl/et/blogaid=1253

I imagine other large players in vacation rental marketing are VRBO, TripAdvisor, and AirBnB.

Anyway if you redefine the online advertising market to include only the things that Google dominates, such as search ads on Google itself, then sure you can make it look anyway you want.

I'm not "redefining" the online advertising market. If anything, practically every single digital marketer in existence considers, for example, FB ads to be very different from Google ads and serve very different purposes. It's you who have (oddly, IMO) redefined the the market by lumping everything together.

And look at your "other large players in the vacation rental market". Perhaps unsurprisingly some of those travel brands are among the largest spenders on AdWords. See Expedia (parent co of VRBO) Chairman Barry Diller's comments on this exact topic: https://skift.com/2018/10/16/expedias-barry-diller-calls-on-...

If you look at search marketing, which is unique in its ability to target users at the moment of intent, let's look at the players. Google is at over 90% and everyone else is peanuts. I would agree with you that there is overlap with Amazon here, but only in a subset of products (i.e. primarily physical, deliverable products, not services).

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