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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

I didn't use that word and no one in the chain above me did either. I specifically chose "anticompetitive behavior" to emphasize that a monopoly is not required to do damage to the free market or to trigger antitrust action.

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So out of the list, how has Google behaved “anti competitively” in any of these?

  - Google Maps
  - Google Mail
  - Google Drive
  - Google Docs
  - Google Groups
  - Google Forms
  - Google Cloud
  - Google OAuth
  - Google Analytics
  - Android
  - Android Auto
  - Fitbit
  - Google Fi
  - Google Fiber
  - Google Flights
  - Google Translate
  - Google Pay
  - Waymo

Maps/mail/drive/docs/flights/translate: provided for free using their dominance in ad tech to bankroll it and feeding the data back in to the ad platform. No one else can compete, and using dominance in one market to ensure dominance in others has historically been a clear trigger for antitrust.

Android: they lost a court case over this one that has lots of details if you care to look.

The rest are a weird mix of paid services that should be fine to stand up on their own or not even products at all (OAuth).

Docs and GSuite gets plenty of money from businesses abs school districts.

So those portions of the business will stand up fine on their own. The consumer-facing side is anticompetitive, though.

Which “consumer” products? Android is less than 40% of the market in the US. Every single desktop user and iOS user who uses Chrome made an affirmative choice to download it and use it over the browsers bundled with the platforms supported by trillion dollar companies. No one is forced to use Chrome and it’s not even the default.

Horizontal integration is a tried and true strategy of monopolies.

Standard Oil bought or bankrupt competitive refineries, pipeline companies, regional railroads, even mom&pop gas stations & groceries often at considerable costs to ensure no part of the oil supply chain was profitable for its competitors.

Are you saying Google controls the internet? Search? Mobile? gmail?

There is absolutely nothing that Google has that can’t be avoided - or that’s even best in breed. Even Google Search hasn’t been good in years. My default search engine is now ChatGPT with web search.

You can't have the Play app store on your Android phone unless you accept to install Youtube, Google Maps, Google Drive and Google Photos. This is clearly anti-competitive.

That line of reasoning didn’t work out to well against Microsoft. No there was no browser choice screen in the US and no forced unbundling.

If enough users choose Chrome willingly on the desktop to make it the majority, do you think unbundling is going to help some scrappy startup hosting video at scale with all of the associated cost is going to arise instead of everyone just downloading YouTube?

Google Drive has plenty of competition and it’s not even the majority.

Your two arguments contradict each other. Bundling YouTube is fine because there are no viable competitors. Bundling Google Drive is fine because there are plenty of viable competitors.

If Chrome was able to compete in a level playing field, then so should the other Google services. You seem to believe that Google makes an effort to tie together its services because they are stupid and don't realise they are not gaining anything from it.

There are no viable options for user distributed video? Ever heard of TikTok? Facebook? Instagram? Your own website?

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