Comment by random5634 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by random5634 | Hacker News Reader

One issue is that anti-trust has moved from being concerned about harm to consumers (great!) to being focused on harm to other businesses (not so great).

For example, a TON of issues especially in EU around Google de-prioritizing some of the scam "Review" and shopping network sites that were just total trash and clutter. Yes, this hurt those businesses, but as someone who was absolutely sick of them in search results it was WONDERFUL to see them go down in flames.

To be clear, places like nextag were paid "comparison" shopping engines. To have enough margin to win the "comparison" you often had just total trash products advertising impossible claims.

Anti-trust seems focused on the harm shutting these folks did to these businesses, but no one asks if users actually liked these folks (or the auto review sites that someone generated just boilerplate but clearly never actually had product in hand). Again, SO glad they pushed some of these down, lots of complaints.

If you think people want this trash, just start your own search engine that emphasizes this junk.

Hasn’t “harm to other businesses” been traditionally understood to be harm to consumers in that consumer choice is reduced?

No, a monopoly that consistently provides extremely low prices due to economies of scale helps consumers while harming competitors. Unfortunately, while that’s perfectly acceptable it’s very much the exception not the rule.

Chicago School vs the EU. We need the EU model, the Chicago School is Gilded Facism.

>> Hasn’t “harm to other businesses” been traditionally understood to be harm to consumers in that consumer choice is reduced?

Yes, unless the battle is just between businesses spending money on lobbying vs businesses not spending money on lobbying.

Consider telco and how they are upset with Facebook/etc.

Traditional telco is being harmed because their raw deal to customers {sign up for 2yr contract where you dont even get the full monthly price upfront and then pay a boatload per SMS etc; oh and they also sell out your privacy} has been replaced with more competitive offerrings {exchange your privacy for free unlimited communication including free international communications, no contract, no 2yr agreements, no mysterious regulatory recovery fee}.

As a consumer, I honestly dont care about the traditional telco deal. It was a completely raw deal. The addition of WhatsApp/Messenger/Jitsi/FaceTime/Duo/Allo/etc has not reduced options. In fact, I'd give up anything not to go back to $0.20/sms.

I think much of the "harm" narrative is driven by lobbying, not actual harm. They both have harm, different types, some more than others. One has better lobbyists.

>One issue is that anti-trust has moved from being concerned about harm to consumers (great!) to being focused on harm to other businesses (not so great).

The first thing listed in the Federal Trade Commission Act from 1914 is empowering the FTC to "prevent unfair methods of competition". This is a business protection to ensure that businesses fairly compete with each other.

To me the problem isn't that Google de-prioritized these sites, it's that they did so while running their own shopping service. It's the same problem I have with Apple's work to ban game streaming services from their site- it would be a lot more convincing that they are acting in the users best interest of they weren't also selling Apple arcade. We really should be concerned about gatekeepers prioritizing their own services over the competition. I'm not saying that these sites should be restored to a place of prominence (they shouldn't) but that the underlying idea that a monopoly like Google search should be restricted in its ability to branch out or self promote its services is valid.

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