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Comment by atlasunshrugged | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this will trigger any antitrust lawsuits. I know Microsoft isn't that of the 90's but it seems like the political situation is ripe for politicians to go after "big tech" and this is a pretty major acquisition that will help Xbox be the dominant player in terms of content.

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I doubt it. There are much bigger monopolies in the webspace / ecommerce space than the gaming space.

I know there are but I've been doing research on a ton of gov officials (starting a new gig in DC in tech policy) and wow, so many of them are taking a hardline stance on anything "big tech" now, so the political calculus may have changed since previous acquisitions went through.

Nothing will happen as we live in the post-Disney/Fox merger.

TBF the mood music has changed on mergers and I'm not sure that would have gone through today.

In which way? As far as I can see, the size of M&A activity is only increasing

As is regulatory scrutiny.

On the other hand, UK regulators blocked FB/Giphy and Nvidia/ARM mergers.

The UK sees a strategic interest in ARM

FB/Giphy tho?

Privacy concerns

Anti-Trust is not magic, its no longer a tool politicans can wield like a club against things they don't like. The courts have a definition and you actually have to prove abuse for those law-suits to do anything. Doing so if you can do it at all takes decades.

Unless politicians make major changes to the anti-trust law its unlikely to be effective. And doing so would require major action in congress.

The president could use non anti-trust actions as well of course. But rather unlikely.

Sure, but sometimes the threat of doing something and having an acquisition mired in a lawsuit or the Prez using the bully pulpit against your co can be a serious deterrent from engaging in an acquisition as well.

Yeah look how well that worked out for the previous administration vis a vis AT&T and Time Warner.

Given the insider hiring of Michael Cohen by AT&T I'd say there were other factors at play in that one

Abuse must be proven to break up an existing company. Nobody has to prove abuse to prevent mergers among major market members.

Of course, other countries besides the US could also block the merger...

It's not magic but it can block a deal.

You don't need Congressional action - the laws never changed, the definition of the courts did. Biden is appointing federal judges faster than even Trump did, so the opinion of the courts may be shifting very quickly.

the article say Microsoft will be the third largest gaming company behind Tenecent and Sony. how antitrust going to trigger if Microsoft doesn't have the entire market. if antitrust didn't take down Apple just force Apple to allows third party payment option. i don't see how this will trigger antitrust

Neither Tencent nor Sony are based in the US (although Sony does have a US subsidiary). AT&T and T-Mobile together wouldn't have been the whole cell phone market either, although consolidation in physical-presence utilities are seen somewhat differently from more easily distributed products.

> Neither Tencent nor Sony are based in the US (although Sony does have a US subsidiary)

Sony Interactive Entertainment actually relocated to California a few years ago and literally everything PlayStation is under them so I'd probably call them a US company at this point.

It's still only a part of the larger Sony, though, with other subsidiaries doing completely other things. They're not leveraging TVs from a US company into the Sony Pictures studios into game development into game publishing into tying the games to the PS5. Microsoft is all one company with divisions working more closely, in theory anyway, than Sony's subsidiary companies.

If moderate democratic senators could be bought with handouts to toe the party line (anyone remember those times?), perhaps closely examining mergers like this would be a higher priority. There are bills moving through congress though, and eventually with more authority, perhaps the FTC could make meaningful market changes. Like: making MS offer games on other platforms, or at-least not actively stopping them from running by offering good anti-cheat support on all platforms.

No way. The politicians are also bagholders now.

They always were. Worth noting the bags are larger now and there are fewer options to hold.

Politicians need something meatier than gaming content. I'd expect google or FB under that lens.

Seems like the social and commerce aspects are drawing scrutiny. I think MS will escape unscathed here

ahah very appropriate comment given your nickname mention of Atlas Shrugged!

Ironically, I made that some years after a serious libertarian phase and the "Un" is supposed to be the operative part of that as while I am a big fan of individuality, hard work, and limited (albeit ideally very effective) government I very much appreciate now the importance of other parts of society and that life is far more complex than many libertarians (and even myself still) would like it to be and requires a lot of nuance

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