If this is the most embarrassing document as part of this case then I don’t think anything is happening to Google.
The point of antitrust isn't so much to punish bad people as to make for efficient markets.
Under mainstream economic theory, Google ought to be regulated. That's good for everyone, Google employees and most Google investors included (by numbers and not dollars; most Google investors hold diverse portfolios).
If the industry and economy as a whole grow, at the expense of Google, both my overall investments and my job options improve.
Corporations aren't human beings with moral rights, and laws are there to keep them beneficial and efficient, but to preserve some abstract corporate freedom.
The government rarely understands technology and pays no thought to unintended consequences
Just like the asinine browser choice in the EU made absolutely no difference in the market share between browsers.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/12/windo...
I know, people on HN will counter argument that there are tons of other options, but most people I know that use Google, are not aware.
In fact that is where this lawsuit at its core is about.
And it’s not like Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook who all tried to enter the smart phone market and failed were some poor underfunded startups.
That doesn't mean that people today are choosing chrome and google search, as they come by default on their smartphones. Most smartphone users don't even know that the browser and search engine can be changed rather easily.
It’s only the default on Android.
Search engine is a different story but people like Google enough they’ll change to Google anyways no matter what the default is.
In the US, only 40% of buyers are buying Android phones. On desktops, Chrome also has a majority market share and 97% of desktops don’t come with Chrome as the default.
This lawsuit is set to determine whether that is case. You can argue for or against that, but arguing against the ability of the people to have a lawsuit to determine that is nonsensical.
Exactly. When the government has done this, it has made things worse, not better. See my reference to Alcoa Aluminum upthread, for example.
> The free market only works with regulation
A free market even with no government regulation still is regulated: it's regulated by the voluntary choices of all the market participants. In a free market, nobody can be forced to trade with anybody else; so if you want to make money, you have to offer something other people want and will voluntarily pay you for.
If you are the only one offering what they need then they have no choice, do they?
Have you figured out the answer to that?
I don't know where you're getting that from. Monopolies are almost always created by governments; indeed, the original meaning of the word "monopoly" was an exclusive privilege granted by the king to sell a particular product. Cartels in free markets don't last because there is a strong incentive for cartel members to defect, since they can increase their profits by doing so; it takes governmental agreements (such as the Middle Eastern oil cartel upheld by the governments of the countries involved) to prevent such defection.
> Why compete when you can merge or buy the startup before they get big enough to bother you?
If the startup is a real competitor, in a free market its owners will be able to realize more upside by competing with you than by being bought by you.
> If you are the only one offering what they need then they have no choice, do they?
In a free market this won't happen: if there is enough demand, it is always in someone's interest to start a competing producer.
> Have you figured out the answer to that?
Historically, the reason the obvious free market things I describe don't always happen is that governments mess with markets, making them not free. So the obvious answer is to not do that.
And then prosecuted them under US antitrust legislation?
Standard Oil Company and the American Tobacco Company were also US Government monopolies?
That sound a little off.
Perhaps your use of "almost always" needs to be dialed back a notch .. or a lot.
"Free market" isn't a particularly well defined concept given the broad range of its interpretation and use, eg: Churchill's "Land is the mother of all monopoly" comment wrt land ownership dragging down a truly 'free' market., etc.
Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly either. There were other oil companies in the business. But Standard Oil was selling oil, at a profit, at lower prices and in greater quantities than any of its competitors. The competitors didn't like that and got the government to break up Standard Oil under antitrust law. Which, as I've said, made things worse for customers.
In other words, if the competition simply doesn't compete very well, or makes bonehead decisions, a company can get a large market share, yes. But "large market share" is not the same as "monopoly".
If you want a better example of government created monopoly, look at ISPs in many areas of the US, where for many years state and local governments gave one company exclusive rights to sell Internet access in particular areas. With the expected result that Internet access sucked as compared to areas where there was competition. Much of that has gone away now, and Internet access as a result is much improved in those areas.
Some goods are more and the mix of regulation, property right, …
There is no rule here.
Government granted monopoly.
> Historically, the reason the obvious free market things I describe don't always happen is that governments mess with markets, making them not free. So the obvious answer is to not do that.
We tried that in the 1800s. Have you read any history?
Really? Governments did nothing to interfere with markets in the 1800s? Have you read any history?
Fun fact: the first tactical bombing from an airplane was on striking mine workers in the USA.
That's the story those who favor antitrust want you to believe, but it's not true. Antitrust actions historically have made markets less efficient, not more. A classic case is the breakup of Alcoa aluminum, whose "offense" was to supply aluminum to its customers at lower prices and larger quantities than any of its competitors. The breakup both raised prices and reduced quantities, making things worse for customers.
> Under mainstream economic theory, Google ought to be regulated.
Even leaving aside the concerns above, Google is not a monopoly in the sense of antitrust law. The real economic problem with Google is that its users are not its customers; users are just a resource to be exploited to maximize profits due to ads. If the government were to do anything to "fix" this, the obvious thing would be to outlaw that business model.
Much the same story with Standard Oil. What young people learn in school from left-leaning economics professors often diverges quite radically from what actually happened.
When I read this, I see a company effectively gloating about establishing such a firm monopoly, in part through "marketing/distribution investments", that they could effectively ignore their customers, and focus instead on entirely exploiting them. The document voluntarily choosing to parallel their level of control over their users as something normally only obtained by illicit industries, like drug dealers is, to me, just one of those 'wow I can't believe you were stupid enough to put this into text' type things.
In your mind, what would be reasonably viable smoking gun for a monopoly pursuing corporation to write down? The Sherman Antitrust Act is described by Wiki [1] as prohibiting "1) anticompetitive agreements and 2) unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the relevant market." It goes on to mention that "[a] monopoly achieved solely by merit, is legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve that status, or nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not."
Google's users are not customers. Google is exploiting their users precisely because they are not customers, so their only value to Google is as a resource for maximizing their profits due to ads. Which actually makes them worse than, say, cigarette manufacturers, since at least their users were their customers, choosing to purchase a product.
Google needs to keep all members of that eco system content and treat them respectfully, labeled customer or not.
No, it isn't, it's a huge difference. If Google's users were paying customers, Google's incentives for how to treat its users would be very different.
> They are part of the eco system
"Customer" does not mean "part of the eco system". It means something much more specific.
> Google needs to keep all members of that eco system content and treat them respectfully, labeled customer or not.
If you think Google is actually doing this, you're delusional. And to the extent Google's leadership thinks they are doing this, they are delusional as well.
By this logic everyone is a customer of everyone else, since we all buy goods and services part of the payment for which ends up going to all of us. That makes "customer" a useless term. It's much better to stick to the actual economic definition, which is the one I've been using.
> Google operates an eco system that offers value.
Sure, but that doesn't mean everyone who makes use of some of that value is Google's customer. That's a big part of what makes the ad supported business model so dysfunctional.
> A lot of users might have a sort of search or buy addiction, but they are not all addicts that can be / are treated as disposable resources.
Whether or not a particular user is an addict of Google products, as far as Google is concerned, they are a disposable resource. That's a necessary consequence of the ad-supported business model that Google has chosen. And while Google is not going to drop search as a service, Google has certainly discontinued plenty of other services in the past that were providing lots of value to users--but Google didn't care because those services weren't making enough ad revenues. So Google's actual behavior makes clear that, whether or not Google wants to admit it, its users are disposable resources.
Conversely, evidence that is far too dry to make a good embarrassing meme could be the conclusive proof the court needs to take action.
She has been slapped down repeatedly by judges.