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Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

Can someone help me understand what the problem is here? I, like billions of other people, am a heavy Google user: I use gmail, Google search, Google maps, Youtube, etc. I don't pay a cent and the quality of the service is impeccable. Competition is good to benefit the consumer at the cost of the producer. But in this case, I, as the consumer, pay nothing for my services and am happy with the quality of those free services. What is the antitrust trying to achieve? "When you don't pay, the product is you", they say. Ok, fine, so maybe the "true" consumer is the advertisers. Is the antitrust here designed to benefit the advertisers? Who is Congress trying to help here? Are they simply punishing success for the sake of punishing success?

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Ultimately trust busting comes down to the impact on the consumer. A monopoly is defined as having market power, exclusionary conduct and business justification (1). In theory, if consumers are happy, nothing happens.

As you state with Google, you're pretty happy with the services they provide. At some point, Google stops trying to compete with better products and simply uses its dominate position to takeover markets. For example, Google Flights. Is Google Flights a better product? Does it save me money or provide more options? I honestly have no clue but the fact that Google can just integrate with the top of search, pushing down the market tested existing companies is bad for consumers. Google can just singularly introduce worse products and instantly gain significant market share by putting them at the top of search. Similarly, they have an infinite adwords budget.

As for punishing success, I wouldn't frame it that way. In general, if the companies split, it will make way more money for the existing equity holders. They get shares in all the new companies and they tend to do well.

1) https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

You're right that big companies should only be broken up if it would benefit consumers. The point I'd raise is first that you may be unaware of better alternatives because of anticompetitive behaviour by Google and second by Google's very nature they could limit the discoverability of competitors.

(I have no idea whether better competitors exist or whether Google could, let alone does, hide them.)

Antitrust cases are hard to generalize I believe. If an airline lowers prices on a route following the entrance of a (smaller) competitor, it's hard to know whether that is or should be illegal without knowing a whole lot of specifics.

> you may be unaware of better alternatives because of anticompetitive behaviour by Google

google provides all of the best services in each of its major consumer categories unless you value privacy, except when there's a major competitor. there's no hidden gem better than youtube that would scale as well.

>you may be unaware of better alternatives

Better is in the eye of the beholder.

> the quality of the service is impeccable

Well I disagree with that, and perhaps that is the foundation of the problem. When something is easy to use, and free, you will miss the other stuff that is out there, or you might stifle the progress and competition of the other stuff that is out there.

There are much better platforms out there for email, documents, video, and more, but you may not know they exist so you are satisfied by something that is honestly fairly mediocre at this point.

And, how do you find Google's competitors? Are you going to use Google's own service, Google.com, to look for alternatives to Google? Well there's a problem right there.

>There are much better platforms out there...

Your argument is stop liking what I don't like.

>how do you find Google's competitors?

Google search provides pages and pages of alternatives to Google services.

I’d use bing? Or DuckDuckGo? I’d use one of those on Firefox on a Mac.

Those free users are the product. Just because you’re not paying money doesn’t mean there’s not value.

“Are they simply punishing success”

You could have said the same about Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel. The problem is when these companies get to a size and market position that enables extremely anticompetitive behavior like what we’re seeing with app stores and all the purchasing of other successful companies/engineers in the space.

Here are the problems

A) Google pushing its own services over better services owned by others

Example: Yelp was the best reviews service for quite a while

Google was stealing their data and putting Google Reviews first in results

This was an obvious negative for customers as instead of getting more reviews and better reviews at Yelp they were getting lower reviews and lower quality reviews at Google Reviews

B) Google doing secret investments (such as in RetailMeNot) and sending customers to RetailMe Not instead of other discount sites by putting RetailMeNot #1 in every search result

3 to 4 years later REtailMe Not was sold and only then did it become public knowledge that Google Ventures had invested in it

Google was not looking at who had the best deals for each retailer and putting that first. It was putting the company it had a personal stake in, first

C) Companies that were growing very fast, such as Vroom and were considered dangerous

Google was inundating search results with negative reviews and negative posts about such companies

This was inaccurate and misleading. That particular company ended up IPO'ing

However many other that were offering customers a great deal/better service got hurt by Google search engine manipulations and were not able to survive

D) Google miscategorizing and manipulating results for potential competitors

This is the law suit and the European fine that Google got

There were companies like Findem that had to close down because Google 'disappeared' them from search, as they were potential competitors

So instead of what is best for customers - multiple search engine options - Google was hiding what it considered dangerous competitors

E) Pushing Chrome and taking market share and building a second monopoly (in browsers)

Microsoft had an anti trust law suit and was almost broken up for pushing IE using Windows

Google is doing EXACTLY the same thing

Google Search Google Docs all google properties are constantly pushing Google Chrome

not based on any criteria other than Google owns Chrome and sets Google Search as default browser on Chrome

Basically, the list is super long

Google is using the defence that users pay nothing

HOWEVER, it is taking user data and monetizing it and another company can share that monetized money with users OR can provide a better service

We don't see it clearly because it is being done in almost every area

any promising company that might do well, is attacked or hidden

In China we have lots of new companies come up

However, no such rise in US

US look at companies going IPO. It is almost all Enterprise

Why?

Because Google, Amazon, Facebook are doing a very effective job of stifling innovation and killing off any fast rising company via various illegal means

If not for the Apple App Store we would see even fewer customer side/consumer side startups

Google is using control of Google Search, Android, and Chrome to keep out ANY company that competes in any way with Google (and google does lots of things)

Amazon is using control of marketplace to make sure no 3rd party sellers can become very big

Facebook is using its monopoly in social media and understanding of what is growing fast to buy up anything that it considers dangerous, and limit those that might become dangerous

These are all well documented

Your questions are postured like Big Tech talking points

This claim is downright laughable -> the quality of the service is impeccable

For many Google properties there are much better options

We can see many things such as Google+ closing down

However, other very good upcoming products are never given a fair chance

We should completely remove 'advertiser' angle. That's a false direction

The right direction is

What is best for customers?

Is Google interfering with that?

If so, then it is abuse of their monopoly position

As simple as that

Just because you offer a free service, does not mean you can do anything illegal you want and claim 'customer is not paying anything' so it is not an abuse of monopoly power

Basically what Google is doing, or trying to do

-> Screw over EVERYONE who is on the customer facing side

If you run ANY company that is growing fast and adding lots of customers, then Google wants to stop your growth/kill you

because they consider every fast growing customer/consumer side company a threat

-> Most startups don't realize this fully. The large tech companies are attacking EVERYONE with a divide and conquer strategy

They know that tech is very fluid and things can change very quickly

So they basically have a list of 1,000 to 10,000 consumer-facing companies they consider dangerous (possible rivals)

and they are manipulating search results, hiding organic traffic, and doing other attacks against ALL of these companies

When it becomes too big, or too late, then you see things like the Attacks against Tik Tok

While it's nice that your needs are met, others do exist in this world. It's not terribly difficult to listen to them. Why do you feign ignorance?

US companies can no longer innovative in these areas and Chinese began to take over. TikTok is a prime example, if nothing changes the USA will have to use muscles(like Trump is trying to do) to keep their internet companies relevant or have its citizens use Chinese networks. Both options are bad for the consumer in the long run.

TikTok is only one example but soon others will come. The quality of Gmail and Google Search is not what it used to be, Huawei are aiming for Apple-like integration on their platforms(and on Android, there's no one else doing it) and so on. Google And Facebook are simply printing ad money, I don't even remember what was the last "Wow moment" with them.

I think we give too much credit to an application that plays videos on a phone. Just because its popular and used by millions doesn't make the app and the idea impressive. Vine was excellent and it was killed. You can talk about neat UX/UI ideas in Tiktok, but it's not that groundbreaking. If anything else, its the infrastructure that allows them to scale it is impressive. Both FB and Google are masters at scaling so its a non issue.

Innovation in China will continue, no doubt. But let's put things into perspective. You're comparing a $40b app, that is Tiktok (similar to Airbnb valuation) to completely different monsters - Some trillions in valuation (1.5T Microsoft, 2T Apple, 1T Google, 700B FB).

>I think we give too much credit to an application that plays videos on a phone

And what Youtube or Instagram does? Doing laundry on a phone?

If it was a simple UX tweak situation the USA wouldn't be using it's muscles to force a take over by an US company. Unless of course there are no designers left in SV due to high rents. How much was that to take over TikTok USA operations? 50 billion? I am sure that you can hire designers for that money.

And any argument over a strong current situation reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U

Exactly my point - it is the scaling that makes it impressive as I stated. And Google/FB are experts at doing just that. Lol at the video!

I am not defending US Gov. All I am saying is getting traction is extremely valuable and those are the numbers you hear (ARPU, etc) in quarter conference calls. $40 billion dollars is for the users not for the stupid UX/UI.

> the USA wouldn't be using it's muscles to force a take over by an US company

This is almost entirely Trump and his stupidity. Don't think he truly represents the USA, once he is out we will almost certainly have to wash our collective hands of him

And TikTok has yet to prove itself as more than a passing fad. Someone will add a new twist on TikTok's/Vine's formula and the kids will be off to obsessing over something else. They've already done so with Instagram, Snapchat, Vine...

>Don't think he truly represents the USA, once he is out we will almost certainly have to wash our collective hands of him

You can't wash your hands of him, He is democratically elected as a representative of you.

But I agree that TikTok is yet to prove itself. That said, I think it is an example what is about to come if the USA doesn't close off its market(which will lead to others close off their markets to foreigners and the internet will become balkanised) or break up its current Internet companies situation. Sure, FB and Google will continue to earn an enormous amount of ad money in the years to come just like Nokia continued to sell it's phones until it couldn't anymore.

> You can't wash your hands of him, He is democratically elected as a representative of you.

What I mean by that is that his actions do not represent the American public at large. The nature of his victory is highly suspicious and he did not secure a majority vote. I don't know how much you know about our politics but there is a lot of nuance that you are glossing over.

Additionally, his popular support is at an all-time low. Election polls for 2020 show him lagging considerably behind Biden. At this point he is very likely to be one of the few presidents that will not be elected to a second-term; the first in 28 years.

Whatever propaganda you are reading or seeing or hearing about us, you would do well to question it

>He [Trump] is democratically elected...

False. The election of the President and Vice President is fundamentally undemocratic (by design). Only Congress is democratically elected.

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