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Comment by gerash | Hacker News Reader

No, Epic vs Apple and Epic vs Google ruling shows how inconsistent the ruling are on such a common sense situation.

So I don't want Google to be broken up and lose business only for MS, Apple, Amazon and Facebook to gobble up its business

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big breakups don’t make sense in a globalized economy because it empowers foreign companies. i don’t think MS, Apple, amazon, fb would be the only benefactors. i think we entered the age of “too big to fail” about 10 years ago. breaking up very big companies like google is now a national security risk

If you truly believe that tech monopolists are critical to national security then the only safe option would be to nationalize them. Incidentally, that would also remove the profit motive for bad behavior, solving one of the largest problems with allowing a monopoly to exist. But apparently that would be anti-free. Because nothing says Free Country like letting a handful of the most rich and powerful people on the planet hamstring your democratic government.

Fully agree.

And for the people who think nationalizing businesses leads to socialist/communist hell, at the very least, if you've decided that a business is critical to national security, it should be funded at least in part by the government (with the government having a real, if not controlling, stake in it), and heavily, heavily regulated.

I don't believe in nationalizing anything and there just needs to be competition.

Even if we do want to nationalize anything for security reasons, defense contractors should be at the top on the list but they have already bought the US government so DOJ is after those who haven't paid their dues

> If you truly believe that tech monopolists are critical to national security then the only safe option would be to nationalize them.

They are critical to national security because of their ability to perform. Nationalizing them would complete distort their incentives and destroy the company so thoroughly we might as well have just broken them up.

What are their incentives currently causing them to do? Lobby the government, spy on private citizens, sell influence, make products increasingly user-hostile... why do we pretend that a profit motive results in good behavior even in the face of evidence that it does not, at least in this one case we're talking about taking action on?

A lot of people think it's common sense, but plenty of them disagree on what that common sense approach actually is.

I think it should be common sense that both Google and Apple should be treated equally on this issue, regardless of what you think about the actual issue. Instead, we have two virtually identical cases, and they were decided in completely opposite fashions.

Google chose a jury trial, rather than a bench trial. The judge maid their ruling based on evidence presented, and largely ruled in Apple’s favour based on evidence provided by both Epic and Apple. No two cases are ever the same, there are always nuances. Throw a jury in to that mix, it’s even more of a crap-shoot.

The fact that the justice system can come up with obviously contradictory conclusions in nearly-identical cases is a bug, not a feature.

No. That is indication that it is working as designed. The key word that you used is nearly. So, not the same. They were heard differently too. The truth is that you’re upset because it’s Google and not Apple.

That I agree with in general, though they have different enough business practices that the remedy re:antitrust action could look much different. Perhaps for apple it's allowing multiple storefronts or payment vendors, similar (I know not identical) to MS being required to allow other browsers with parity of access to the OS. For Google maybe some sort of splitup. I'm just throwing these out there though I don't claim to know the best option.

What's common sense about the App Store rulings?

IMO Apple and Google app store are the same thing.

It'd be ridiculous if Epic sued Pepsi and Coca Cola for something about their Soda and the same court ruled against Pepsi but for Coca Cola.

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