This proposal seems like a powerful subsidy for Microsoft and OpenAI. Why can they partner while Google and Anthropic can't? It is strange to penalize a non-monopoly partnership like this.
It really feels like they've got some weird vendetta against Google and are just trying to kill it. Which really sucks because Google is the only big tech company that I haven't had negative interactions with. Using Apple and MS products feels like constant friction to try "force" me into their ecosystem. Whereas with Google you can just use a product, have it work with any device, any OS, across devices and you're never forced into anything else.
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?
Search is an essential utility used by basically everyone on the planet with an internet connection. Google has a lock on 96% of that traffic and has increasingly made business decisions with respect to search that hurt the quality of the results and hurt both consumers and the people who get indexed by search. Google can unilaterally destroy your business with small opaque algorithm tweaks. They also increasingly have a monopoly on the browser, making decisions like deprecating support for ad blocking because it hurts the business.
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.
There's search engines other than Google and there's very, very minimal barriers to using a different search engine; literally just type in Bing.com instead of Google.com. Hell, if you're on MS Windows which has a similar monopoly on desktop devices, Bing will be shoved in your face over, over and over again and using Google actually requires more effort...
No. This case was launched by Trump's DOJ in 2020 [0], in conjunction with the Republican Attorneys General representing a bunch of states that Trump won handily this election. Trump's Attorney General Barr released a statement when they announced the lawsuit [1]:
> 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.
Thanks, I’ve sort of assumed that all these things they’ve been announcing during the lame duck period were things Biden wanted to rush through that Trump has a high probability of nixing as tends to happen during the lame duck period when party control switches. I appreciate your insight on this specific issue.
Trump supports people who make him feel good and hates people who make him feel bad. He isn't pointing the DoJ at big tech. He is pointing the DoJ at people who make him feel bad. Trump thinks that YouTube (and Google more broadly) is unfair to conservatives and is full of whiney liberals.
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.
Trump is not particularly in favor of anti-trust policy in general, but he (and the GOP more generally, though Trump’s personal angle that of the GOP more broadly are slightly different though in general alignment) are very much for punishment of anyone in the information space that isn’t actively tilting in the direction he prefers, and is absolutely in favor of using antitrust law as a lever for that.
The defining feature of the privilege is that it's arbitrary. If it was governed by a set of consistent rules, then it would be less effective at making him feel like he had power - the system, rather, would have power instead.
More informatively: Trump was in favor of eliminating Section 230 protections for Twitter after they fact-checked one of his lies about election security.
Presumably he will now want to revoke Section 230 for non-Twitter companies.
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.
Adorable how HN's in absolute denial over this comment and downvoting you.
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).
I hope not. An important part of encouraging innovation in tech is to take power away from the megacorps that will otherwise use their capital and distribution channels and illegitimate practices (like bundling) to control everything and take all the gains. These actions from Lina Khan, the DOJ, the EU commissions, etc are crucial to creating a fair landscape for competition.
Trump took net neutrality off the table, he only wanted to punish big tech for perceived slights or not supporting him enough, he's famous for putting people with no knowledge of the problems or experience with them in power managing them.
Well the other posters answered, but in a nutshell because his record on consistency is non-existent.
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.
Well he started the drive to ban TikTok, but did a 180 after a single meeting with a billionaire who owns part of it.
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.
I had to create an account to ask you this point blank.
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.
Go ahead and vote me down for abdicating for your better treatment. You can have true, real net neutrality without keeping competition out of it. But every vote down just tells me you love the colluding Comcast's and AT&T's customer service and prices.
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.
I didn't vote you down, but having specific examples of problems with legislation you had is a much stronger argument, and is completely normal. The big boys are already creating a lot of negative competition and you are right that regulatory capture is really bad, more money = more influence in legislation.
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.
Net neutrality ensures equal access, protects consumers from conspicuous data caps while no investment is put into infrastructure, prevents ISPs from throttling things they don't like, and increases competition.
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.
> does anyone else think that trump is going to nix this thing as soon as he takes office?
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.
So it's hard to say, Trump hates Google, Gaetz hated Google, I assume any Trumpist (I guess it's Bondi now) thinks Google is "unfair to conservatives". So it's easy to imagine letting Google reap the penalties of the existing case being an easy choice for them.
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.
It also does not help that Google is often seen together with various left leaning initiatives - like Google is one of the big proponents. Plus there was some backlash on Twitter over Youtube hiding Joe Rogan video and so on.
Musk took over Twitter and then started xAI. Trump Social should announce they are going to be adding AI and resell Anthropic. They can take their 20% and everyone is happy.
Hope this gets nixed. It might be a relevant case back in 2020, but no longer a valid case now. From the wikipedia case:
"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?
Google's entire argument against being regulated has been 'We're not monopolizing search, people choose to use us!'
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.
The completion is a click away. If you can't deliver enough value for people to change the defaults or go to your site are you really doing a better job?
On the flip side, if default placement was eliminated and browsers asked users which search engine they'd like on first launch...I still believe most users would pick Google anyway and the main loser would be Firefox as search engine placement is the majority of their revenue.
Furthermore, ChatGPT reaching 100m users in 2 months also suggests that browser placement isn't the biggest factor into where users send their queries.
The success of the Chrome browser on desktop proves otherwise, no?
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.
I remain utterly confused how apple's rule that you can't link to a purchase page, and can't mention the 30% tax in-app, hasn't had its day in court yet.
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.
> 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.
Why is it bizarre? Google has near-monopoly market share in search and in ads and Apple is the only thing standing between them and a monopoly on the browser. Furthermore, they've demonstrated anti-competitive behavior in all three markets.
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?
> It really feels like the DOJ has it out for Google here. Apple's behavior is far more monopolistic, and Microsoft is no saint either.
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.
> 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.
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.
Weirdly selective regulation that punishes one company arbitrarily while ignoring others feels like a step in the wrong direction. We need actual laws about this, not various capricious enforcement of haphazard existing regulations.
They need wins, and once the ball starts rolling, they can shift their focus. Government departments are restricted by budget. Going after 4 behemoths at the same time is not practical.
If google gets restrictions, then it makes apple look even more monopolistic. Like a trimming the hedges
2nd one has screwed over consumers in the past and continues to screw over consumers. Can you even buy MS office any more or do you have to rent it now? What’s with putting ads in the software you purchased?
It's not just apple, basically every company that is bigger than google is going to benefit from this. Apple, Microsoft, even Nvidia is getting their only real competitor and the biggest company that isn't dependent on them (google TPUs) kneecapped.
Microsoft doesn't want Google to control the codebase Edge is based on and doesn't want anyone to counter the MSFT + OpenAI partnership, and the DOJ is trying to hand them their wishes.
Hopefully the judge rejects this overreach and rules on lawsuit scope.
I remember the time before google. We were all stuck IE with no competitive browsers and everyone was using Windows machines. Now we have three browsers and multiple platforms. I just bought a Chromebook plus, that can run linux apps but is easy enough for my kid to use. My wife uses windows laptop and I use a mac. We have Amazon Echos through out the house. We have 4 major players in the tech space instead of one. Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
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.
Apple and Google makes phones. All of them make tablets. Microsoft and Apple make laptops. All but Apple sell cloud computing. Google, Apple and Microsoft have office suites. Apple, Amazon and Google offer paid streaming platforms. Amazon, Apple and Google All offer smart assistants. I can keep going with things like game platforms, consumer storage,streaming music. Failing to see how they stay out of each other's way or have agreements with each other. Apple and Google literally give away their office apps which is the bread butter of Microsoft,
I'm sorry, you're alleging that someone who used to work for Microsoft, but doesn't anymore, is ... well, still secretly working for Microsoft? Like, he's a spy inside the DOJ, but you've figured out his clever game? I don't understand.
A common argument is that former corporate insiders remain loyal to their former employers once in positions of authority in the government so as to obtain lucrative positions once their time in government ends. It’s also possible there are corrupt private contracts in place to entice those actions.
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.
> 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.
It’s a reasonable take meant to explain GPs statement and sentiment regardless of the underlying truth of his statement and pushing back on what I found to be unfounded sarcasm that added nothing to the conversation.
To me, it doesn't feel extreme at all, relative to former antitrust regulations or to what's needed for a functioning market. I would have felt bad about these about two decades ago, but Google has not been a good player in recent years.
Maybe it's like what the FBI does, when they go for you it doesn't matter if they win for the original primary reason because they'll find something to get you with and you'll negotiate down to some form of them winning.
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