Comment by glenstein | Hacker News Reader

Comment by glenstein | Hacker News Reader

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>And why didn't Facebook get sued too? >And what about Amazon?

I completely agree, and this has been my main headscratcher since we first heard about a possible anti-trust case.

For starters, I still think things like banks, telecom, and probably oil, and defense industry companies probably need to be broken up, and that they should be much higher priorities. To say nothing of the obscure industries we wouldn't normally think of (Luxxotica with glasses) that are monopolized. There's probably others for obscure things I'm not even thinking of.

And even within tech, I wouldn't even rank Google ahead of Amazon, and I'm not 100% that I would rank them ahead of Facebook either.

And, if that's not all, I think Google at least serves as a check on the other Frightful Five, and subtracting Google will serve to further consolidate tech. And if that's not enough, I feel that the tech industry has served as a useful check against other entrenched industries. Their clash with cable, and occasional work to protect an open internet are a healthy counterbalance to voices of other monopolized industries.

Monopolies are not illegal in the U.S.

Leveraging your monopoly in one market to constrain business in another market is.

Microsoft wasn't prosecuted because Windows was a monopoly, Microsoft was prosecuted because it leveraged that monopoly to block out other competitors (you could not buy a PC without a Windows license, even if you wanted to put another O/S on it).

IBM wasn't investigated because it dominated mainframes, but because it leveraged that domination to control other markets.

AT&T wasn't prosecuted for antitrust because of its monopoly on phone service in the US…the US government had effectively granted AT&T that monopoly in the first place. It was prosecuted and broken up because it leveraged that monopoly to box out competitors across multiple markets that intersected with the telephone system.

Google’s weak spots are not their monopolies in search nor ads. It’s having leveraged those monopolies in the browser and mobile phone markets. If I had to guess, they will offer to separate ad spots on search results into a separate market place, offer to spin off Chrome and Android to foundations funded initially by Google but expected to stand on their own (ala Mozilla/Firefox) after some time period, offer to separate ad placement from ad serving, and generally rearrange the chairs and org chart with a series of consent decrees requiring regular reporting to Congress or the DOJ.

fingers crossed it's that and not another stupid settlement!

Settlements and consent decrees are not the worst thing in the world. IBM was never prosecuted but the fear induced by the 1970s antitrust investigation likely caused the series of missteps IBM made in the 1980s that allowed the personal computer industry to bloom (if there was no antitrust investigation, IBM would likely have written an operating system for PCs in–house, not call on Gary Kildall or Bill Gates).

Big question mark in my mind is if there’s hard evidence that Google employees required customers of one service (say, Cloud) to utilize another Google service (ads, G Suite/Workplace, etc.) in order to get a discount or some other preference. That's a slam dunk. My suspicion is that there'll be a lot of activities that hew extremely closely to that line without crossing it.

> Microsoft wasn't prosecuted because Windows was a monopoly, Microsoft was prosecuted because it leveraged that monopoly to block out other competitors (you could not buy a PC without a Windows license, even if you wanted to put another O/S on it).

That's what the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit should have been primarily about. The central issue in the lawsuit was including IE with Windows. Now 20 years later, the idea that they shouldn't include a web browser with their OS just seems silly.

Late reply, but I understand that monopolies aren't per se illegal. I said that the companies listed need to be broken up, not that they fall into the category of "monopoly that's technically not illegal and not leveraging its monopoly to constrain business in another market." There's an awful lot of projection there and I'm not sure how that ended up being the takeaway from what I said.

The vertical integration and domination in the eyeglasses space has been a blind spot for anti-trust regulators.

I see what you did there. Have an upvote.

> banks, telecom, and probably oil, and defense industry companies

None of these, with the possible exception of telecom, are monopolies or engaging in specific anti-competitive behavior. I agree that the pattern of consolidation there is bad, but I fail to see

a. how this announcement precludes any other lawsuits against the companies you're mentioning b. why the fact that other industries also ought to be broken up has any bearing on whether Google has engaged in anti-competitive behavior?

There’s limited staffing and the government will only be able to put its best lawyers on some cases.

Trying to bag multiple tech companies seems like a recipe for failure.

I don't see how this disagrees with my comment.

> the government will only be able to put its best lawyers on some cases.

Also, I think you really underestimate how many competent prosecutors the government has - they can handle more than one anti-trust case at a time.

How is Cisco a monopoly?

>a. how this announcement precludes any other lawsuits against the companies you're mentioning

I feel like the answer to this is pretty obvious, but to state the obvious, Google exists in the same timeline as the companies in other industries that I listed, and in most cases have arrived later on the timelines and engaged in less egregious offenses than a number of other companies, yet Google were prioritized for anti-trust action ahead of those other companies.

>why the fact that other industries also ought to be broken up has any bearing on whether Google has engaged in anti-competitive behavior?

I think if you read my comment and heard "Google is not engaging in anti-competitive behavior", you heard something I did not write. I think a wide range of companies ought to be challenged for anti-competitive behavior, including Google, and many of them have engaged in much more egregious offenses than Google, yet Google is targeted while others haven't been. Whatever impetus would have lead to prosecuting Google out to have lead to targeting a number of other companies before getting to Google.

The hypothetical possibility that worse companies that ought to have been higher priorities might possibly be prosecuted in the future is not something that I feel is responsive the to point here.

Sports in USA have a lot of monopolies which affect it's captive users much greater than google/fb/amazon prob

From MMA/WWE to Varsity/Gimnastics

The NBA, MLB, NFL, and MLS have limited exemptions from antitrust law. The MLB has a complete statutory exemption from antitrust law. (See https://sportslaw.uslegal.com/antitrust-and-labor-law-issues...) However, their monopoly status doesn't prevent competing leagues from forming; indeed the modern NBA and NFL are the results of the merger of smaller leagues. The MLS itself is the third iteration of professional soccer in the US, the first two having failed quite miserably, and multiple professional football leagues have launched and failed in just the past decade despite healthy ticket sales due to mismanaged spending.

UFC is not a monopoly but does engage in anticompetitive behavior, including for example restricting its fighters from competing for other promotions, controlling the sponsorships they can receive, and even the sponsors they may promote in the ring. Their practices affect their fighters, but have no discernable effect on their audience. You can easily choose to watch one of the other promotions, like Bellator.

WWE is the oldest and most successful wrestling promotion, but it has a dozen or so major competitors, and there are hundreds of wrestling promotions at the local and regional levels.

Gymnastics and the other Olympic sports don't have monopolies, why do you think they do? Track athletes compete in multiple professional events over the course of the year (most of which aren't televised in the US due to lack of audience but many of which are broadcast globally), and most olympic sports, gymnastics included, are not commercial draws outside of national championships and olympic qualifiers.

> Gymnastics and the other Olympic sports don't have monopolies, why do you think they do? Track athletes compete in multiple professional events over the course of the year (most of which aren't televised in the US due to lack of audience but many of which are broadcast globally), and most olympic sports, gymnastics included, are not commercial draws outside of national championships and olympic qualifiers.

Gymnastics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24769576

As for I was thinking cheerleading but didn't got the words right. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24638896

Also cant find it on hn algolia but the young runner and Nike Oregon Project came to mind.

It looks like cheerleading is a monopoly in the US based on related articles due to the governing bodies being controlled by the same commercial entity and that entity blocking the formation of competing events.

However, USA Gymnastics is not a monopoly, and there are other entities that organize gymnastics competitions (and most gymnastics competitions are not USA Gymnastics competitions). USA Gymnastics is simply the organization that is tasked with overseeing the national championship and Olympic qualifiers.

There is absolutely no monopoly in running. There are literally thousands of different races around the world, and nearly as many race organizers. Each of the big major marathons is organized by a different company. Each of the major track events is put on by a different company. There are dozens of running shoe and apparel brands. There are hundreds of running clubs like Nike's Oregon Project, many of which were just as, or even more successful, as NOP (see, e.g. North Arizona Elite).

An announcement on one does not mean announcements and cases aren't coming against the others.

In the book, The Age Surveillance Capitalism, the case is made the Google is actually worse than FB but lesser known for many of the things people complain about.

Google may be the easier monopoly case to go after given the Doubleclick merger, the way Chrome is used, etc.

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