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Comment by TZubiri | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced this will go anywhere.

For one, the entry to compete is very low with something like Google Search, same with web browsers. I will admit that Operating Systems are winner take all monopolies and as any other such monopoly should be regulated.

But everyone has the freedom to download another browser, it's open protocols which anyone can implement. And search? You literally Ctrl+L and type bing.com from a user perspective. From a competitor's perspective you just write a web crawler and run it, it's a CompSci year 1 project.

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> I will admit that Operating Systems are winner take all monopolies and as any other such monopoly should be regulated.

Not sure I follow, could you explain how this is the case when the OS market has been much more competitive than the browser market for many years?

It's easier to build a browser than to build a OS.

OS: Mac, Windows, Linux

Browsers: Netscape, internet explorer, safari, opera, firefox, chrome, brave, samsung explorer, whatever smart tvs use, whatever the wii or the playstation used, etc...

High cost of entry is a core property of monopolies.

Most of those browsers are Chrome based or no longer being actively developed. Your only browser options are Chromium, Firefox and WebKit (Safari).

This isn't about browsers. It's about Display Ads, aka the images and videos you see on the side of blogs and at the start of shitty mobile games.

Article mentions google has monopoly trifecta but doesn't clarify what that it is exactly.

From the body I assumed it refers to the monopolies of: Operating System, Browser, and Search Engine.

I don't see ads as being a monopoly, that's just the monetization system, of the core products. It's like saying they have a monopoly on money?

That's a great guess, partially because they're indeed involved in antitrust suits for all three of those at the moment! Plus the "attorney-client privelege" action as the metacherry on top. That said, I think they're talking about three monopolies within Display Ads: publisher network, ad exchange, and advertiser network. AKA "sellside", "the auction", and "buyside".

I see what you're saying with monetization, but this is slightly different than what you're thinking of: this is "Display Ads", which is indeed a product (or, again, 3+ products) that they sell to others. A name you might know is "AdSense". The whole search part of their business is completely separate, and you're absolutely correct that they're a natural+benign monopoly over Google Search ads, just like Microsoft has a monopoly on Bing Search ads. But, again, this lawsuit is more about the little images and videos you see on blogs, news sites, forums, etc.

I think complain actually about monopoly for segment of large high traffic sites which use "Publisher Ad Server", specifically newspapers and such.

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