DOJ proposal would require Google to divest from AI partnerships with Anthropic
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The DOJ also seems to be going way beyond their mandate in saying Google monopolizes search and ads. If the Microsoft precedent is anything to go by, just require Android users to choose a browser and search engine, allow other ad companies to bid on showing ads on search results or something, that seems fair.
But forcing them to sell Chrome, open proprietary algorithms to competitors and divest from business parnerships is way over the top and really, really feels like the government is doing a favour to Microsoft and Apple. Maybe Google didn't cooperate enough on something classified?
Google makes about 16-22 billion dollars a quarter in profit but they still do layoffs and they still make decisions that harm consumers but help their own short term growth. Search is a basic utility that is essential to the function of the internet. It's like water and electricity. There are huge structural barriers to being able to compete in that market, so if we care at all about basic economic theory, Google probably ought to at least be operated as a non-profit, and realistically be subject to massive anti-trust enforcement considering they are the modern robber barons on top of our communication networks.
Those opaque tweaks that tank your business are the same ones that keep spam and SEO garbage down.
It seems to me that the important market is online ads (which is where other companies focus), and that Google is the only company willing to invest in web search.
Also ad networks
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221118045948/https://duckduckg...
Um, except that they don't? We had entire articles detailing how "Forbes" dominates search rankings with SEO garbage.
Keeping SEO garbage down appears to be very straightforward. It's just incompatible with an ad-driven business model.
Yeah, Google is a monopoly.
Tesla obviously does not have a monopoly on cars or even electric vehicles.
You can believe whatever you like but it's simple economics that big tech companies have monopoly power over their markets. Denying that is pretty baffling but this is Hackernews so I'm not sure what I expected.
There is a ton of vendors who are competing on price. Although to be fair once you pick a vendor you are locked in their ecosystem. There is definitely friction in the market.
> Maybe Google didn't cooperate enough on something classified?
Yeah, sure. Google protects us.
MS and Apple both make hardware and control your OS. It is a fundamentally more in-your-face relationship with many more points of contact for an average consumer. That doesn't mean Google has been any less ruthless in pursuit of their almighty quarterly gains.
If we were to try draw equivalence: they'd ask Google to stop paying to be the default search provider on platforms and to offer a choice of search provider on Android. That would be the same as what they required of MS (simply to not bundle Internet Explorer and to open up APIs). What the EU is currently asking of Apple is maybe equivalent.
What the DOJ is currently seeking from Google is way over the top given the MS precedent.
On June 7, 2000, the District Court ordered a breakup of Microsoft as its remedy. According to that judgment, Microsoft would have to be split into two separate units, one to produce the operating system and one to produce other software components. Microsoft immediately appealed the judgment to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. [1]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C....
I also assume part of this sudden and intense recommendation is in part due to the upcoming change in power. While the case has been going on for a while, this admittedly feels like an ill-timed overreaction.
As an extreme example, Oracle had a dominant position in the enterprise database market in the late '90s, but it wouldn't have been an abuse of that position if they'd integrated a web browser into Oracle 8.
Breaking one will absolutely give the other an unfair advantage and entrench a market leader, which is against the principles of antitrust.
On the other hand, he's promised to remove Khan, Kanter, etc, and end antitrust enforcement. So someone may have to actively decide to continue as is, or change tack a bit.
The third concern of course is that Trump is a crook. He might not like Google but I'm sure neither him nor Sundar would have any qualms with figuring out how to slide a billion dollars in Trump's pocket to make the case go away.
What exactly would be driving your hopes here?
What exactly is driving you to think that he'd abort a mission that he and his allies started?
I have no idea what Trump's DOJ will do with this case; I doubt he knows or cares about the case himself. I won't be surprised either way they go with it.
Tax Reform, Immigration, Syria, TikTok, most of his original cabinet picks, he wanted to hang his vice president, Wikileaks and government leaks in general, the list goes on, his positions are about as fluid as any person I know.
Why are you acting like taking Net Neutrality rules off the table is a bad thing? Have you read what is in the Net Neutrality rules? Or are you just regurgitating what the news and your favorite tubers of the time were telling you to do?
I read through 100 of the 400 pages, that was enough to make me sick. I was disgusted at the crap in there. A full 2/3rds of the rules I viewed were terrible. Many of those rules clearly existed only to enshrine the largest of players from ever being challenged or having any competition. I'm convinced anybody who speaks in favor of Net Neutrality is ignorant and hasn't bothered to read any of the guidelines contained therein. I can't be convinced that any intelligent free thinking consumer would ever want that drek to exist and am appalled that it has any defenders at all.
Is this the 400 page PDF you're meaning?
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-15-24A1.pdf
That's the "Order on Remand" PDF link from this page: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-releases-open-internet-orde...
Which in turn is the "2015: FCC adopts rules..." link on this page: https://www.fcc.gov/net-neutrality
---
There's a more recent 512 page thing too, though I'm not real sure where it fits in:
You didn't actually say what rules are bad, and we'd probably agree "hey this rule in this law is BS" - that's very different than "net neutrality is BS"
Feel free to go into detail about why NN is bad for consumers, I think you will find many ardent defenders here.
I have a small internet company near me. Excellent service, lightning fast internet, a decent price. They have a limited number of available static IP numbers that can be granted to customers, I pay for one because I host a server for my needs, few customers actually need this feature. Under one of the first 20 rules (2015), they would have to provide total and equal service across the board to all customers. Innocent looking on paper, but impossible for the this small company to do realistically.
Another rule I recall (9 years ago, may be off a bit on this one) required a method for any government body or customer to call up and view a full summery of data usage at whim by logging into their account. This requires an incredibly costly and unrealistic implementation for a burgeoning company.
The point is that, taken alone, these rules seem altruistic and with good intent but when you imagine the requirements of hundreds of them, it is IMPOSSIBLE for new competitors to break into the field. The big boys already collecting your fees monthly can easily afford any thing being arbitrarily required.
That company of mine got bought out by the way. One of the big 4 bought them, it was a good 5 years. But we are going back to one choice of ISP in my area again. I fully expect the customers service to go to absolute shit and the cost monthly to slowly begin to rise.
However, the world of data caps and shitty service abounds very much because of the lack of SOME of these rules, and so the middle ground in my mind isn't destroy it all, it's fixing legislation.
Laws often have unintended consequences and trample on minority viewpoints, but while in the "destroy it all" framework we do get to reject some onerous rules, the vast majority of us get bent over a barrel, get more expensive service, and have no choice.
> Today, millions of Americans rely on the Internet and online platforms for their daily lives. For years, there have been broad, bipartisan concerns about business practices leading to massive concentrations of economic power in our digital economy. Hearing those concerns, I have made it a primary commitment of my tenure as Attorney General for the Department of Justice to examine whether technology markets have been deprived of free, fair, and open competition.
This case has never has been a partisan issue. It was opened by a Republican DOJ and pushed through by a Democratic DOJ, and there's no reason to believe that the Republicans won't see through what they started.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-an...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tech-factbox/fa...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/10/18659748/t...
Trying to describe Trump on a coherent ideological level is a fool's errand, like most strongmen he's just an opportunist.
Trump is a typical power whore who praises and protects those that kiss his feet, and admonishes and punishes those who don't.
This is the same game that all these self-interested power hungry people play.
Presumably he will now want to revoke Section 230 for non-Twitter companies.
You won't see consistent application of Trump's DoJ. It'll just be a hammer that he can swing at things he doesn't like.
It could even be the case that many of the things that he swings the hammer at will deserve it. But there will be similarly deserving people, groups, and organizations who get off scot free because Trump isn't personally angry at them.
He perceives Big Tech as being an enemy, so he will use whatever tools available to punish.
Suggesting that Merrick Garland is somehow a "Democratic DOJ" is kind of laughable at this point. He's a Republican. He's been dragging his feet going after the biggest Republican crook in history. Appointing Merrick Garland is one of the biggest mistakes Biden ever made.
Garland is a donator to the Federalist Society. Garland was a gift from Obama to the Republicans, trying to put someone who's right wing enough at the Supreme Court to appease the Rs. (And it didn't even work).
At least the fact that he got a state-level conviction means the felony will stick. Had he been convicted of a felony at the federal level he'd have won anyway and just pardoned himself.
That’s far from guaranteed. He has multiple grounds to appeal that conviction both through the New York state courts - and if they don’t overturn it, then the federal courts. If it makes it to SCOTUS, odds are high the conservative majority will be looking for some federal law grounds to overturn it. But it might not ever make it that far. Legal commentators all along have been saying the prosecution’s legal theory is rather novel, and maybe the state appellate courts decide it is a novelty they don’t like. Plus, the way it uses allegations of uncharged federal crimes to upgrade a state misdemeanour to a state felony gives the federal courts an easy way to overturn it, by deciding the state courts have misconstrued the scope of those uncharged federal crimes.
Then administration will throw so much “anti woke” shit and the average American will forget about it.
Depends on how much Google is willing to scratch Trump's back. Remember, Trump is a corrupt quid pro quo President. All he needs is something valuable in exchange for his corrupt powers.
If google gets restrictions, then it makes apple look even more monopolistic. Like a trimming the hedges
That's a weirdly specific way to label the 5th largest public company on the planet, by market cap.
... yes, it is smaller than the 2nd largest public company.
Priority matters, and picking Google as the first high profile target is bizarre.
The only market where Apple has a monopoly is the marketplace that they created for themselves, and a high profile case already tried and failed to use that definition of the market to argue antitrust. The DOJ is trying again anyway, but it made perfect sense for them to wait until Epic vs Apple was decided before starting work—why waste time on something that could be moot by the time they finish?
Like, you can have a free app in the store, with a website where you can purchase premium, and then in the app have an "upgrade" button that just displays the error "You cannot upgrade to premium in the app" and hope users find your website.
You aren't allowed to have "You can upgrade to premium using our site, at https://site.com" message because if you can pay money on site.com, having that error message is seen as evading the app store tax.
In both of those cases though, apple did the same amount of work, so the justification you sometimes hear, that "30% is fair because you're paying for app store resources and apple to advertise your app", seems like it doesn't really apply.
Like, spotify is a perfect example of this. They don't let you upgrade on iOS because paying 30% to apple would mean they'd lose money on every sell (music has very thin margins), and spotify isn't even allowed to display a good error message because linking to their webpage, or mentioning the app store tax, would be against app store ToS.
And then apple music also exists, and ignores the 30% tax. It seems so blindingly obviously harmful to consumers.
This all applies to the google play app store too, but at least on the google play app store, there's no "thought crime" of informing your users they can go punch in a credit card on the web.
Also from that article:
> Apple allowed developers to include [information about other payment methods] but required that developers give Apple 27% of all sales made within seven days of being directed to these sites
That doesn't really sound like losing, a 27% penalty if you "steer users" is effectively the same as steering not being allowed.
So steer away, but pay your dues manually if you do so.
I'm honestly shocked how many people thought that the outcome would have been anything else. Apple has been very consistent in emphasizing that the 30% is not the payment processing fee, so the idea that getting paid with your own payment processor would bypass the fee was always absurd.
The best developers can hope for is for US regulators to follow the EU and force Apple to allow alternative stores with lower fees. There was never a chance that the government would ban Apple from charging its fee.
You keep showing up in these threads to repeat the same "this is how it is" shtick, but you're seemingly terrified of the "what could be" aspect. Apple's abuse of their coalesced power is still illegal in Europe and Apple is still in the process of designing their remediation. If the US wasn't fundamentally corrupt Apple would have been put on trial years ago - citing America's preliminary rulings is less of a feather in Apple's cap and more an example of how far consumer protections have fallen in the West.
You have to understand the way that things are in order to effectively advocate for the way that things should be. If you approach the world with a broken mental model and try to use that broken mental model to advocate that the world needs changing, you'll accomplish nothing.
We have spent years with people thinking that if they could just charge for their apps outside of the App Store that they'd magically be able to avoid the fee. That was never the case, it was never going to be the case, and I'm just here to clear that up. If you want to abolish the 30% fee, you need to ask for something besides abolishing the anti-steering provisions because the fee was never about the payment method.
People can advocate for whatever changes they want, I'm sincerely just here to try to make sure we're all talking about the way things really are, because otherwise it's just hot air.
The only difference is if the app error says “You can’t pay in-app” or if it says “You can’t pay in app, you can pay on our site”
Restricting apps from informing users still seems like obvious harm to users, like if a retail store made a rule that “the manual that comes with your product can’t contain your homepage because you have an online shop that might have better prices than us”
If it were the cost of running the store, truly, it would charge based on app downloads or such. Not based on if users click a link to amazon.com in the kindle app and then buy 2 books or 3.
I think Apple said something like SDK fee, which should even apply outside app store.
As others have mentioned, the government can do more than one thing at a time. Here is a list: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/business/antitrust-.... Perhaps Google's case had just progressed faster, and perhaps it was more clear-cut or easier to prove.
Google's records retention policies were also over the top and perhaps hurt it: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/technology/google-antitru...:
> But Google has faced the broadest criticism for its actions, with the judges in all three antitrust cases chastising the company for its communications practices.
And they engaged in some pretty sketchy practices:
> If using the right words and deleting messages did not keep Google out of the courthouse, the company concluded, invoking the lawyers would....
> A message surfaced in the Epic trial in which a Google lawyer identified the practice of copying lawyers on documents as “fake privilege” and seemed rather amused by it. Mr. Walker said he was “disappointed” and “surprised” to hear that term....
> Last month, three advocacy groups, led by the American Economic Liberties Project, asked for Mr. Walker to be investigated by the California State Bar for coaching Google to “engage in widespread and illegal destruction” of documents relevant to federal trials.
> Google's records retention policies were also over the top and perhaps hurt it: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/technology/google-antitru...:
If you're intentionally hiding things from government investigators, the legal presumption is there's a good reason. Judges are allowed to impute things from destroyed evidence. Otherwise, everyone would destroy evidence.
Letting "the market do its thing" only works until a few companies accumulate enough power to monopolize the market.
The last two decades have seen being the next Google transformed into being acquired by Google, which has been to the detriment of everyone.
And those four players are more of a cartel than competitors, having agreed to mostly stay out of each other's ways.
The primary overlapping markets between them are consumptive devices and cloud services -- which I presume they're all in because they consider it strategically important enough to their other businesses to incinerate money.
See earlier comment about consumer devices.
Office suites have Google sharing an MS Office-compatible suite they purchased. Apple has MS Office on its platform. But no real competition or innovation.
Who aside from Microsoft runs a gaming platform?
What looks like open competition gets a lot narrower in overlap once you look at the details.
Which is exactly what you'd expect, if you allowed companies to get too big and too dominant: they're not dumb, so they strategically rig the game in their favor to disadvantage new entrants, while carteling with similarly sized peers to ensure everyone mostly stays out of each other's pools.
a) can't hope
b) shouldn't hope
I’m not sure why you’re being so sarcastic as it’s not a novel idea and it’s less “figured out the clever game” and more that even the appearance of impropriety removes faith and trust in the institution.
This seems like a nuanced and reasonable take, but a rather generous interpretation of the GP comment. I think it’s reasonable for the parent comment to push back against a definitive statement laying an accusation with no evidence.
"The suit alleges that Google has violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by illegally monopolizing the search engine and search advertising markets, most notably on Android devices, as well as with Apple and mobile carriers."
Where will be the search monopoly by Google in 2025? If search monopoly slowly evaporates, where will be the advertising monopoly?
The latter part also happens to conveniently be true when you buy all the available space that a competitor would need -- default placement in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Android.
You don't get to rig the game and then claim the results actually demonstrate everyone naturally loves you.
Furthermore, ChatGPT reaching 100m users in 2 months also suggests that browser placement isn't the biggest factor into where users send their queries.
Same with the factors- ok, let it be the second-biggest factor, so?
Google search usage is not going to drop 50% just because it's not the default.
On HN, we probably drastically overestimate the number of people who change any default.
It's interesting that the argument is "nobody can compete with defaults" when one of the proposed remedies is to break off the part of the company that was too successful at competing with defaults.
- IE was bloated and lazy from being dominant
- Google controlled one of the most visited websites in the world (pre-mobile appification)
- V8 performance boosted the web's then-cutting-edge js features
Those are huge tailwinds.
In contrast to now, where Chrome spends more time trying to deprecate mv2, link user browing to a Google identity, and find a way to recreate tracking cookies.
When's the last time Chrome shipped innovation that made users' lives measurably better? Per tab processes?
On desktop Edge or Safari are defaults, iOS is Safari, on Samsung phones it's Samsung Internet.
People have to go out of their way to install Chrome, and yet it's got a majority of market share.