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Comment by beachy | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a lose lose situation for Google to me.

If the Aussies call their bluff, then 90% of the population will switch to Bing/ddg and will be fine.

More discerning Aussie searchers - like people googling for why their spring boot app won't work behind an nginx proxy - will just use a vpn to get to Google US - and they'll be fine too.

Google's dam will be broken open and the emperor's clothes will be left a little raggedy.

There's more at stake here for Google than Australia, and Aussies play hard and ruthless at the best of times (can confirm, am kiwi).

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What if they take it further and also pull other google products like gmail, chrome, maps? That would cause some serious trouble.

That would likely be an antitrust suit waiting to happen

It's just a hypothetical I don't think it will come to it, but wondering why that would that lead to antitrust case? My knowledge of law is non-existent. I thought antitrust suits are because of getting into a monopoly position. Are you arguing that such an action would leave them open to claims of monopoly? Forfeiting services might be seen as a form of abuse, but isn't it sort of opposite of an antitrust by forfeiting your monopoly / strong market position?

You're leveraging your dominance in some sectors in order to gain advantage in another sector. That's what they got Microsoft for. Also can't imagine countries bowing down to these kinds of tactics anyway.

Deciding that it's no longer worthwhile to provide services to everyone in a country is not leveraging your dominance. It's giving up. They can't force Google to operate in Australia.

There are more countries in the world that believe the people should be in charge not venture capital.

Europe would close ranks pretty much immediately. As would New Zealand. Not so sure about UK though, but that's not a surprise to anyone, is it?

That's a terrible option for Google, because it's a clear statement that they see themselves as above national governments.

The large tech companies have been doing everything in their PR power for the last 30 years to pretend we aren't in the opening decades of a cyberpunk future.

Why break the kayfabe now, when they have the most to lose, and before their dominance is generationally cemented?

Won't the same regulations then apply to whatever search engine fills the gap though?

Not as yet. The law will apply to Facebook and Google, at least initially. A rational implementation would set a bar for market share or market capitalization before the laws kicked in.

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