Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

You can't scare google with antitrust.

The game is structured. If Google lose, they face an affordable fine or mandated adjustment to a single business practice. In this case, the business practice is "OEM Search Deals" which has been litigated before. The practices is profitable and strategic enough to take the heat.

IMO, antitrust was entirely declawed by the "US vs MSFT" settlement in 2001. It's a similar case. An operating system with 90% market share using their position to dominate key parts of the application market. We now know this as the "platform strategy." Something that investors demand from CEOs, as opposed to a legal risk to avoid.

For the young.... "US vs MSFT" was the high profile case(s) of the 90s. Software was known to be monopoly prone and the case was expected to reveal what was and wasn't allowed.

MSFT litigated similar antitrust cases in the early 90s, and settled. The key term of this era was "bundling." MSFT concluded that antitrust was a cost of doing business. MSFT continued bundling to reserve key application markets for itself. Gates rubbed it in. DOJ took offence and went on a warpath.

DOJ pursued real antitrust. MSFT was found guilty of monopolism and the court actually ordered a "breakup." Seems far fetched today. The model for monopoly "breakups" was the 80s breakup of Bell (telcom). Shock! Insanely aggressive by today's standards. We can't even conceptualise how a breakup of a big tech today would work.

Anyway... doj flinched. They settled the appeal. OEMs were freed from MSFT exclusivity. Real antimonopolism was off the table, and never returned.

I don't really blame them. Breaking the monopoly of a tech giant could, and likely would, decimate their value. Bell was a telcom. Physical and concrete. WTF does "breaking up Google" actually mean? How can a judge do this task.

> Breaking the monopoly of a tech giant could, and likely would, decimate their value.

And to that end… so? Why is the government so afraid to slap down excessively profiteering, monopolizing conglomerates? Because primarily rich people would lose a small amount of their vast wealth? Because some poorer investors who foolishly hoped to capitalize by investing heavily in a single company might lose a lot of money, having knowingly taken such a risk? It certainly isn’t because of the significant taxes they pay, or that a 190k jobs, which wouldn’t necessarily be lost, would be such a significant addition to the 6.4 million people already unemployed.

As for how? Google has quite a number of differing product lines and “businesses”, so, rather easily I’d say? Search, apps, hosting, ads… it really wouldn’t be that difficult to define those lines.

> WTF does "breaking up Google" actually mean?

Well for one, the ad business could be separated into the auction system and the use of the auction system on their different services.

A few more off the top of my head

Android could be spun off.

The whole pixel phone business as well.

GSuite could be its own thing.

I think google is still an ISP in some parts.

They’re research sections too.

Is android viable outside of its role ass asset to search/ads.

Google's money comes from adwords. Adwords has two key assets. One is Google search. The other is Google's systemic ability to gather ad-useful data using android, maps, etc.

Everything else is stuff that exists to support the search/ads/data money maker or it is ways of spending the enormous profits generated by this monopoly. EG Waymo.

The first group can't be separated and retain value, unless the post break up shards contract to operate like they did before. That is basically a trust. The second group just aren't viable businesses, or aren't big.

I'm not saying it's impossible, just saying it gets real squishy and there aren't many guiding principles.

That's the whole point.

Google is able to prop up otherwise-nonviable businesses with the revenue from their cash cows. This means they are able to undercut any possible competitors in those spaces by operating those businesses at a loss.

That's the very definition of using monopoly power to push into and dominate another market.

It's not a reason to say, "Welp, we can't break that up! Then those businesses would just flounder and die!" It's one of the primary reasons to say, "We must break that up."

If the otherwise-unprofitable businesses that get spun off want to continue to exist, they'll need to find ways to raise prices and/or cut costs. In other words, they'll need to compete on a level playing field.

Sure... maybe. Do you really think a court process could make those decisions well?

I'm not even sure if that would work. Does Google search now have to use adwords? Will the court mandate the revenue split? Most of both entities' revenue will come from this revenue split. It's almost like spinning off the cash register in a convenience store.

It's just a lot for a court to actually do.

Meanwhile, there's a tension between eliminating monopolism and eliminating market value. A judge's decision could blast $1trn off of Google's value, and cause a general market shock.

Meanwhile, what are consumers getting out of this? Advertisers are not going to have more choice. There will be no competition induced price reductions. What's the goal here? Justice?

This stuff is basically industrial policy. To have industrial policy, we need to do industrial policy. Can't just let courts handle the whole thing.

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