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Comment by cowsup | Hacker News Reader

IANAL but this paragraph is completely wrong:

> As we’ve noted, a key part of the ongoing case was just how much Google was paying for these defaults (over $26.3 billion in 2021). But that seems to actually argue against an abuse of a monopoly position argument. Because if Google were such a monopoly, then it wouldn’t need to pay as much to get those deals. There just wouldn’t be other offerings to compete.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes a monopoly. It is not just "Google is the only usable search engine, therefore it's a monopoly, therefore it must be fined." A monopoly is typically someone who is already a leader in an industry, using their vast resources to make it incredibly difficult or even nearly impossible for competition. A judge may very well find that what Google is doing with Apple constitutes monopolistic practices.

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The example from the article shows yahoo forking over much more money than Google, but it still being a disaster:

"Indeed, the article notes that Yahoo agreed to pay nearly $100 million more than Google, which was important revenue for Mozilla.... 'I felt strongly that Yahoo was not delivering the search experience we needed and had contracted for.'"

Yahoo paid nine-figures more than Google to be mozilla's default search engine, but the quality just wasn't good enough. This is a strong hint that quality in this space matters more than just money. How much more would yahoo have had to pay for Mozilla to put up with the decreased quality?

Sure, quality is required to maintain a monopoly. But the presence of quality doesn't negate anti-competitive practices, which can prevent other providers of quality from gaining a reasonable foothold.

>> incredibly difficult or even nearly impossible

This is pure hyperbole. Changing (default) search engines is incredibly easy. Using a different one is as easy as typing bing.com instead of Google.com in the address bar. Ta da.

It’s easy once, it’s incredibly difficult to do every time. As evidenced by the very few people who change their default search engine.

Not smoking a cigarette is also as easy as not buying or lighting.

Setting aside the issue of Google being the default search engine as a result of these payments, this is missing a major effect of these payments that is even more significant.

While what Google is paying companies like Apple for is technically just to make Google the default search engine, it's actually having the effect of making these companies (and particularly Apple) not bother to develop their own search engine because it's so profitable for them to just take the money from Google.

Apple is a company that usually prefers to develop its own services rather than use third party services (e.g. see maps), so it's highly likely that it would have created its own search engine by now if it wasn't getting so much money from Google.

If in effect Google is paying companies not to develop search engines (even if they aren't specifically agreeing not to do so), that seems like a pretty big issue when search engines are such an essential part of the internet.

Yes this is the crux of the argument.

The argument essentially is that Apple and Google are collaborating to collectively wall off the market and share the profits.

Because the Google search result experience is so bad, I do this to find better information more and more (already every other day). It's not a lot better, but better.

Seems to me that this is more of a monopolistic practice by Apple to be able to extract $26 billion for a default setting.

Under what law are apple's actions prosecutable?

The problem with this whole mess is that monopoly, monopolization, and monopolistic practices were not defined by legislation. Legislation in fact provides no definitions whatsoever. The entirety of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act is comprised of a single run on sentence.

It's all well and good to be all "it's Mabo, it's justice, it's the vibe" over this, but congress hasn't provided legislation required to regulate competitive markets.

The issue with the Sherman Act is that it is broad and sweeping and leaves discretion up to the government.

So the answer to your question is: monopolization is illegal according to the the Sherman Act, and the power to regulate markets is well within the (extremely broad) scope of existing laws (including the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Act).

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Exactly, I had the same issue with this. If Google isn't some form of a monopoly with Chrome, their search engine and advertising... then literally nothing qualifies at that point.

Is Chrome the default browser on any major desktop platform (Mac, PC or major Linux distros)?

If it's still not: Users must actively take the step of downloading and installing it. Is this step less difficult than changing the default search engine in Firefox or Safari?

It is the default on android which is the most used OS in the world. And part of the reason why people install chrome is the heavy advertisement and annoyances that Google put on using it services on something other than chrome. That's the textbook case of monopolistic actions.

And Google guide people to how to install chrome and majority of people can download some exe and run it with next next while keeping the defaults. And many of them will not change any of the settings. And chrome will take every chance to let you revert back to google search if you happen to change it.

Literally nothing qualifies, that's the crux. Nothing is monopolization as defined by legislation because congress didn't do the work to define anything.

The entire antitrust regime from it's inception, all of the caselaw, is a mixture of judicial activism, chest thumping, and executive branch blackmail. It should all be struct down. Start again.

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