Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

I think, as with all anti-trust/anti-competitive questions, if you define the scope wrong then of course the entity claiming unfair practices can be positioned to win. "A deal that controls the internet" is really a pretty sweeping claim!

Is the question whether this deal prevents companies from developing and selling their search solution? If so, then is Google paying Apple, who has what, 40% market share of mobile phones, really able to stifle the development of search engines? With search on mobile phones being a further x% fraction of all (general, browser-opening) search being done on the internet? I.e. when placed with desktop, tablet, browser window search as well.

If we're down to perhaps low double digit % of all search, how it that unfairly preventing competition?

And yes, if you then go to the opposite extreme and say that the market is search on Safari on iPhones, then the market is cornered and controlled by Google. But is that reasonable to define as the market in question? Where you're entitled to not have anti-competitive behavior? That's Peter Thiel's example of having cornered the market for British food in downtown Palo Alto and prevented competitors from moving into your rented space.

It may be a sweetheart deal for Apple, and Google making sure that it gets preferred treatment in this one corner of the internet, but it seems to me hard to claim that this has stifled competition for the development of search engines in general?

> If so, then is Google paying Apple, who has what, 40% market share of mobile phones, really able to stifle the development of search engines?

Isn't the other 60% basically just (Google's) Android?

And I think these days, search engines aren't just developed by someone coding up a clever algorithm in their garage; they improve based on data from being used a lot. So yes, it would be an obstacle to competitors.

Then why didn't they go after that instead? That's even more blatant if so.

> And I think these days, search engines aren't just developed by someone coding up a clever algorithm in their garage; they improve based on data from being used a lot. So yes, it would be an obstacle to competitors.

Wait, now we need to make sure others can develop a good search engine? That's what fairness in competition is?

That's a whole new level of argument. I cannot imagine a court wanting to step into that territory.

I was just answering your question. What did you have in mind when you asked if this could "stifle the development of search engines"?

I take "stifling the development of search engines" to mean Google using its position to prevent someone from engaging in the software development of code, trying to sell any alternative to its offering, preventing market entry at all.

I just think it's a whole other level of argument to say that someone not having access to the same data and only being able to develop an inferior search technology = anticompetitive. (where the "not having as good data" part is not done by denying other competitors access to some resource that they should have a right to, or could equally gather on their own)

It's pretty much a definitional requirement for fair competition that competitors must be good enough to be competitive.

A monopoly does not mean literally zero competition; it need only mean no competitors that are good enough to be viable.

Wait, I am very interested to know this condition.

Not only does a Google or Intel or whoever need to not artificially prevent competition, it has to ensure that its competitors offer actually good alternatives? How can you put a responsibility on a party for the capabilities of someone else?

Google doesn't have to ensure, the government does.

Legally, no. Monopolies do not generally need to aid their competitors to the point that they produce viable products. At times, however, monopolies do provide token support to competitors to reduce the risk of anti-trust enforcement. See, for example, Microsoft supporting Apple in the 1990s and Google supporting Mozilla.

Definitionally, companies without viable competitors are monopolies. Microsoft still has a defacto monopoly on PC operating systems as Linux isn't a viable choice for 95%+ of PC users. This market situation is extremely detrimental to consumers but isn't illegal.

Well here then is yet another layer of complication.

Linux has many more features than Windows, gives the user more control, respects privacy better, and is free even, yet consumers choose not to use it.

How far must a company or government go to create competition where the behavior of both the suppliers and consumers indicate otherwise?

Having a monopoly isn’t illegal. Using a monopoly to give you market power in another area is illegal. Windows can have a monopoly perfectly legally, they just can’t use that monopoly to give themselves a monopoly on, say, web browsers.

Indeed, and by defining the market as search, which people don’t pay for, rather than internet advertising, which people do, you can obscure what’s going on still further.

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