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Comment by HWR_14 | Hacker News Reader

I tried rewriting your comment as it could have been written a few decades ago:

> On the other hand, the case that Microsoft is going to make (and which I think is going to be really hard for the government to overcome) is this: we (Microsoft) give our product away for free and so do our competitors. What’s more, the cost of switching browsers is literally zero: just download Netscape instead of Internet Explorer.

> If customers are choosing our browser among two free options, then our product is better. It’s going to be very difficult to establish that there’s an abuse of dominant position in that case. (There is other behavior by Microsoft which is more questionable, but in browsers they are on firm ground.)

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Bundling IE was anticompetitive for the same reason bundling Teams now is anticompetitive. They (= Microsoft) deserved to lose that case (as they deserve to lose a similar case about Teams). This is not the same.

Notably the claim is being made that the search market is being monopolized, not that there is a bundle at issue. If the government thinks there’s a bundle here they can make that claim.

It's legal in the US to have an awesome product that monopolizes the market as long as it wins on it's own merits.

The government is claiming that the search market is being monopolized, not by having the best results, but by paying $45 billion dollars/year to various browser suppliers to make Google the default browser. That's the illegal act.

> "Essentially, Google has bought up all of the shelf space where search is placed in front of consumers, which is to say browsers and phones. This behavior is very similar to what Microsoft did in the 1990s, when it bundled its browser with its operating system, and signed deals with ISPs to block its browser rival Netscape from getting access to customers. The analogy isn’t a coincidence, as the Microsoft case is controlling precedent. "

>> The government is claiming that the search market is being monopolized, not by having the best results, but by paying $45 billion dollars/year to various browser suppliers to make Google the default browser. That's the illegal act.

And google is going to say correctly that consumers are free to switch search engines. They are free to enter “bing.com” in google chrome and it will take them right where they want to go: to another search engine!

I note above that I am not sure google’s payments are pro-competitive. They probably aren’t. It’s fair to be uncomfortable with them. But to make an antitrust case on monopolization of search you are going to need more evidence than those payments.

I don't see the distinction you think is very obvious. Google is paying 3rd parties to bundle GoogleSearch as the default in their browser. That's what the government objects to. I'm fairly sure that violates antitrust rules just as much as bundling a browser with your OS does.

> They are free to enter “bing.com”

And people were free to download Netscape.

But the thing is that people don't type "bing.com" nor "google.com" because they just use the browser search bar and don't bother with what search engine is being used.

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