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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't the fact that Google has to pay so much to be the default mean that Google isn't wielding monopoly power? Apple can command such a high price point is because being the default on Safari is that valuable and folks will happily pay billions for the privilege bidding the price up.

Of all the things to go after this seems like one of the weaker instances you could argue is anti-competitive. Like all this effort to get almost the same ruling as the EU Internet Explorer case which won't put a dent in anything.

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By that logic, price fixing is okay, because you yourself don't have the power to price fix, you need to coordinate with others to do so!

The fact that they spend money in order to abuse market power, rather than already having all of that market power (without paying another party) and misusing it shouldn't be relevant.

It bears mentioning that a monopoly in and by itself is actually fine. If you provide a product or service so legitimately good that noone else can compete with you, that's fine.

What's not fine is suppressing your competitors in some form or another to achieve that monopoly, that is to say not achieving that monopoly by the sheer quality and value of your product or service.

If Apple is selling their "default search" slot to prospective buyers and Google outbids everyone else, what are you gonna do? Force Google to not bid so high? Tell Apple to not accept bids so high? That sounds worse than the supposed bad monopoly being supposedly prevented.

I guess the argument is that they can maintain their dominance being able to buy all the defaults for that are for sale but this presumes that Google is the only one who can capitalize on being the default to the degree that they do. Either that or Google is taking a huge loss on them and making it up other ways that can only happen with market dominance but that's also pretty sus.

Paying other companies to achieve a monopoly is no less unlawful or anticompetitive than any other form of achieving a monopoly. Even monopolies achieved primarily on merit can, and have been, broken up. AT&T being the typical example there. There's a really great article on their rise and fall. [1] Ask basically anybody who was around during their heyday and most were quite happy with AT&T, but nonetheless their monopolistic level of control of telephony created poor market conditions, and so they were broken up.

[1] - https://www.wired.com/2011/09/att-conquered-20th-century/

> It bears mentioning that a monopoly in and by itself is actually fine. If you provide a product or service so legitimately good that noone else can compete with you, that's fine.

This is a more modern interpretation of anti-trust. And IMO a shit one, because the monopolist can never be seriously challenged by competitors. It's a sign of a broken and unhealthy market. Even if the monopolist completed fairly to ascend, once they are effectively the only choice then the product or service will eventually degrade. How will consumers even know there could be alternatives if the competition is bullied, bought, or intimidated out of the market?

Consumers need choice to have power.

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