US Accuses Google of Protecting Illegal Monopoly (nytimes.com) 143
The Justice Department plans to accuse Google of maintaining an illegal monopoly over search and search advertising in a lawsuit to be filed on Tuesday, the government's most significant legal challenge to a tech company's market power in a generation, according to officials at the agency. From a report: In its suit, to be filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C., the agency will accuse Google, a unit of Alphabet, of illegally maintaining its monopoly over search through several exclusive business contracts and agreements that lock out competition, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak on the record. Such contracts include Google's payment of billions of dollars to Apple to place the Google search engine as the default for iPhones. The agency will argue that Google, which controls about 80 percent of search queries in the United States, struck agreements with phone makers using Alphabet's Android operating system to pre-load the search engine on their phones and make it hard for rival search engines to become a replacement. By using contracts to maintain its monopoly, competition and innovation has suffered, the suit with argue.
The suit reflects the pushback against the power of the nation's largest corporations, and especially technology giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Conservatives like President Trump and liberals like Senator Elizabeth Warren have been highly critical of the concentration of power in a handful of tech behemoths. Attorney General William P. Barr, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, has played an unusually active role in the investigation. He pushed career Justice Department attorneys to bring the case by the end of September, prompting pushback from lawyers who wanted more time and complained of political influence. Mr. Barr has spoken publicly about the inquiry for months and set tight deadlines for the prosecutors leading the effort. Update The Justice Department has filed the lawsuit.
The suit reflects the pushback against the power of the nation's largest corporations, and especially technology giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Conservatives like President Trump and liberals like Senator Elizabeth Warren have been highly critical of the concentration of power in a handful of tech behemoths. Attorney General William P. Barr, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, has played an unusually active role in the investigation. He pushed career Justice Department attorneys to bring the case by the end of September, prompting pushback from lawyers who wanted more time and complained of political influence. Mr. Barr has spoken publicly about the inquiry for months and set tight deadlines for the prosecutors leading the effort. Update The Justice Department has filed the lawsuit.
Is that the standard now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft paid not just to be first on PCs, but actually paid OEMs to NOT install other operating systems. Then they didn't actually get punished for their anticompetitive actions.
Now they want to punish Google for paying to be first, but NOT paying to be the only option, and not in the operating system itself which is way more important, but in search.
If this actually goes through it will be for completely partisan reasons, and have nothing to do with enforcing the law whatsoever.
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason was Google has been lagging in their protection money payment, aka campaign contributions, to the Republicans.
Microsoft learned their ways after their anti-trust investigation, and got a slap on the wrist after they paid up. Now Google need to learn the same lesson.
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine being a giant company and dutifully "donating" to all the politicians in EU countries, then the EU itself attacks you anyway. Oops! A whole 'nother level of government to "donate" to.
The error in many thinkers is laying this on corporations rather than politicians, who go into politics to get rich getting in the way, to get donated to to get back out of the way.
It is brutal and obvious in corrupt countries, just not so much in countries with a free press.
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Humans are humans, politics is power (Score:3)
> Both politicians and executives in corporations are people.
That's true.
> Chances are both are into the "erotic of power". Chances are they are both equally corrupt and guilty.
The DEFINITION of a politician is "someone seeking power".
That's what politics is - the division of power.
The head of an electric car company might be in that position because he wants to make electric cars. As a side-effect, he has some power as the head of the company. A politician, someone who runs for an office of power, d
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In Canada, only flesh and blood people are allowed to donate and only about $1500 (it's indexed).
No companies, unions etc donating and most politicians do not get rich though it does a pay a decent wage and excellent pension if they can get elected twice.
There's still lobbying and the revolving door so it's not perfect
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It is not donations to candidates(those are limited and recorded as well), but to political organizations(including the parties themselves an political action committees). These organizations may not be able to advocate for specific candidates by name, but they can put out as many attack ads as they want not to mention 'get out the vote' and other operations focused on neighborhoods likely to be favorable to their party.
There is also preferential press(paying to have negative news stifled, or positive news
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The donations to political groups are also regulated in much the same way as well as ads during an election. They tried to regulate the ads other times but the courts struck that down. Generally the elections are run by non-partisan election people and try to get everyone out to vote.
We're having an election here in BC, I basically hear ads from the 3 main parties and reminders to vote from Elections BC and see the odd one from other groups.
Microsoft case was twenty years ago (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope.
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If I'd meant that, I'd have said that. Instead, I said something else.
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Microsoft was found guilty and settled.
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft was found guilty and settled.
Microsoft was found to have abused its monopoly position by the USDoJ and then Bush's AG Ashcroft announced that it would not be in the best interest of the nation to punish them.
Microsoft was found guilty and settled in the EU. This action is being taken in the US, so what happened in the EU isn't relevant.
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"On November 2, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case."
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, 'single, alone' and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, 'to sell') exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity.
This definition is on a (Wikipedia) page I found searching for "monopoly" using Alta Vista.
It's pretty easy. You should try it.
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It looked ok when I pasted it
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity.
I don't have to tell you.
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:5, Insightful)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
It looked ok when I pasted it ...
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity.
I don't have to tell you.
Case law precedent clearly shows there are things akin to "practical monopolies" where total lack of competition is not required. If you have overwhelming market share and use it to create barriers to competition, you're eligible for an antitrust lawsuit.
Standard Oil the poster child for antitrust litigation and is but one example among many. Was Standard Oil the only petroleum firm in existence at the time it was taken down? Absolutely not. Were they abusing their market dominance? Absolutely they were.
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Was Standard Oil the only petroleum firm in existence at the time it was taken down? Absolutely not. Were they abusing their market dominance? Absolutely they were.
Almost nobody knows the actual story of Standard Oil.
It is a tale of two monopolies, or rather, approved monopolies helping to create an anti-trust situation.
The approved monopolies were the railroads. The railroads were charging Standard Oil's competition more than they were charging Standard Oil. This went on for years and years. Standard Oils competitors had no recourse against the railroads because those monopolies were government approved and due to the large amount of bad publicity during their
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:4, Informative)
Part of it is pure fiction.
The Standard Oil Trust (evaluated as a whole- because it *was* a whole) was the largest oil refiner on the planet, and controlled nearly all aspects of the oil trade in the continental US, by 1904 having 91% of all oil production.
While it's true that it really *is* a tale of 2 monopolies- downplaying the monstrosity that was the Standard Oil Trust is bordering on gaslighting, because I just can't imagine where you actually learned information so very wrong.
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Wasn't that where the idea of common carrier came from?
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
What they're being prosecuted for, however, is not for being a monopoly. It is for illegal restraint of trade "through several exclusive business contracts and agreements that lock out competition, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak on the record. Such contracts include Google's payment of billions of dollars to Apple to place the Google search engine as the default for iPhones. The agency will argue that Google, which controls about 80 percent of search queries in the United States, struck agreements with phone makers using Alphabet's Android operating system to pre-load the search engine on their phones and make it hard for rival search engines to become a replacement. By using contracts to maintain its monopoly, competition and innovation has suffered, the suit with argue.
(that's from the summary above. Original link is here [nytimes.com]
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It looked ok when I pasted it ...
Um... welcome to Slashdot? </sarc> Honestly, I'm surprised you even got HTML entities out of it.
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now they want to punish Google for paying to be first, but NOT paying to be the only option, and not in the operating system itself which is way more important, but in search.
Correct.
If this actually goes through it will be for completely partisan reasons, and have nothing to do with enforcing the law whatsoever.
This is the part you're wrong about.
The Clayton and Sherman acts make it flagrantly illegal to protect a monopoly you have. Monopolies can be had if they're natural- but you're not allowed to do shit all to stay on top.
That includes paying to maintain your monopoly.
That's why it's dangerous being a monopoly. You have to play by a different set of rules.
Google has been a monopoly for a long time, in multiple markets, and so has Apple.
This is part of a reckoning.
We simply haven't been enforcing the laws that were on the books.
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We simply haven't been enforcing the laws that were on the books.
Right, we didn't enforce them against Microsoft, which is why we're still hearing about/from Gates in any way than "from a prison cell". Now we're going to enforce them against Google? If we do, it will NOT be because they broke the law; US v Microsoft proves that. It will be because they are pissing off the current administration.
I'm not against holding Google accountable, I'm against doing it for partisan reasons, while Bill Gates continues to fly around the world shitting on it [latimes.com] with other people's money.
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:5, Insightful)
We simply haven't been enforcing the laws that were on the books.
Right, we didn't enforce them against Microsoft,
That was twenty years ago
which is why we're still hearing about/from Gates in any way than "from a prison cell". Now we're going to enforce them against Google?
Because one administration failed to lower the hammer hard on Microsoft twenty years ago is not a reason to never again prosecute anybody for antitrust.
From the evidence, this looks like an open and shut case. Yes, they should be punished; this was egregiously bad behavior, and also illegal.
(and, if Bill Gates is flying around the country doing illegal things he should be punished, too. But I'm not sure what laws you think he's violating.)
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You weren't wrong, that's my bad.
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that we DID enforce the laws against MS. Just because you personally don't like the settlement doesn't mean the law was not enforced. The outcome of the MS case was that MS changed its behavior. That is the desired outcome of antitrust actions. Sometimes the 'change in behavior' can only happen by breaking up the company (SO, AT&T). Sometimes the change in behavior is the settlement (IBM 1956 consent decree).
I can't for the life of me figure out what 'logic' you used to jump from 'I hate Bill Gates so prosecuting Google is partisan'. All I can think of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
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(Note how old that article is. Nothing has changed.
The only thing that hasn't changed is your unquestioning hatred of Gates and your outdated knowledge of the Gates Foundation Trust's investments. [holdingschannel.com]
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/gates-divest-fossil-fuels/
Maybe you should get back on topic and talk about Google instead of posting bullshit about Gates.
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We simply haven't been enforcing the laws that were on the books.
Not quite. The problem is the laws in the USA are actually piss weak. You really need to build a case showing actual harm as a result. You're not quite right about being allowed to do nothing to keep your monopoly. You're allowed to engage in perfectly normal competition just fine. You're not allowed to abuse your market power to keep the monopoly position.
The key thing in the USA is how do you demonstrate market abuse? It's easy in the EU because they decide something is abusive on the mere terms of it wit
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Wow... it's so terrible that the government has to have evidence of a company actually harming people before punishing it! /s
Just think if President Trump could instead just unilaterally decide a company was doing something illegal without any evidence and declare their punishment. Such an improvement in the process for everyone, right?
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You don't have to prove harm to prosecute for antitrust.
The laws exist because the "harm" done by antitrust exists at a level where it harms *the market*.
That being said, there are tort provisions under the antitrust laws as well that allows for special reparations for individual harm done via monopolistic practices.
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Not quite. The problem is the laws in the USA are actually piss weak.
No, they are not.
You really need to build a case showing actual harm as a result.
No, you do not.
You're not quite right about being allowed to do nothing to keep your monopoly.
Yes, I am.
You're allowed to engage in perfectly normal competition just fine.
No, you are not.
You're not allowed to abuse your market power to keep the monopoly position.
Any use of your market power as a monopoly is "monopolization"; and it is illegal.
Literally everything you just said is wrong.
Among things directly illegal for a monopoly to engage in (that are perfectly normal competitive practices) are exclusive dealing, and product tying.
As a monopoly, you're allowed to compete- but you are not allowed to do anything to get an advantage outside of hoping your product is the best; which is *not* the rules that
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Microsoft paid not just to be first on PCs, but actually paid OEMs to NOT install other operating systems. Then they didn't actually get punished for their anticompetitive actions.
Direct from Wikipedia:
You can argue Microsoft was not severely punished but you cannot argue they escaped punishment entirely. Microsoft saw the writin
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I can argue that Microsoft escaped punishment altogether. Breaking them up would have been punishment. The way the case was settled was window dressing to give the DOJ an out, not punishment of Microsoft. Changing their behaviour in such a way that merely requires them to follow the law in the future is not pu
Re:Is that the standard now? (Score:4, Interesting)
If this actually goes through it will be for completely partisan reasons, and have nothing to do with enforcing the law whatsoever.
This is not partisan. Cory Doctorow suggested that this is exactly what is needed in a recent conversation with David Pakman: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
which is not to say that they aren't spying on us like crazy. They are. And it's not to say that that's not harmful. It's super is. And it's and it's not to say that they don't distort our discourse. They do. But they do so because they're monopolists and monopolies get to subvert the regulatory process so they can do dangerous things like over surveillance and over retention of data. And then, you know, if there's only one place we go to ask questions, the answer that they give us matters a lot to what we believe, but not because they have a mind control ray, just because they've become a canonical source.
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If this actually goes through it will be for completely partisan reasons, and have nothing to do with enforcing the law whatsoever.
The summary suggests that it has support on both sides of the aisle, what makes you believe that it doesn't?
Conservatives like President Trump and liberals like Senator Elizabeth Warren have been highly critical of the concentration of power in a handful of tech behemoths.
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Whaaa? Trump is about as conservative as a riot.
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Whaaa? Trump is about as conservative as a riot.
I do believe there are other republican that has a problem with google, would you need a source for that?
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Now they want to punish Google for paying to be first, but NOT paying to be the only option
Well actually Google did pay to be the only option. That's precisely what got them fined in the EU, the requirement that Google Play certification prevents a competing search engine from being installed.
But all of that is irrelevant. Even the schoolyard bully complains when you punch them in the face.
If this actually goes through it will be for completely partisan reasons, and have nothing to do with enforcing the law whatsoever.
If this goes through it will be a miracle of law enforcement. The problem in the USA is that anti-trust abuse is incredibly hard to prove and the fines are very weak. Partisanship has zero to do with it. I mean
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First good comment. Expressing my basic concurrence and noting that the resulting discussion seems productive. (I actually used Microsoft as my example in my "Where the heck am I?" comment on this story. However I was using "standard" in a different sense.
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Nonsense in every way. Microsoft had to agree to do things that they otherwise never would have done. The antitrust lawsuit was the beginning of the end of wintel for starters. Microsoft had to start cooperating on interoperability, which was previously a really big pain for anyone that wasn't Microsoft. They also had to start publishing things to meet standards that they never would have otherwise agreed to do. Much like with Standard Oil this forced them to be competitive when they didn't want to be.
The r
Choose another search engine! (Score:5, Interesting)
On all my appliances, I moved over to DuckDuckGo - Chrome didn't complain. It doesn't mysteriously reset my preferences at an upgrade, unlike Windows 10, which does this regularly. And for browsers, I run Firefox on a number of platforms. I struggle to see how it strongarms the competition and am interested to see what Justice's arguments are going to be.
Now in terms of information collection, that's a different thing. But there are likely dozens of large quiet companies out there that amass volumes of personal data and then use it in less-than-ethical ways.
Re:Choose another search engine! (Score:4, Funny)
On all my appliances, I moved over to DuckDuckGo - Chrome didn't complain. It doesn't mysteriously reset my preferences at an upgrade, unlike Windows 10, which does this regularly. And for browsers, I run Firefox on a number of platforms. I struggle to see how it strongarms the competition and am interested to see what Justice's arguments are going to be.
We the Justice Department, find The People guilty of extreme laziness. The problem is so rampant that we must now look to legislate default settings, because asking the average luser to do an extra click or two in order to modify those default settings is deeply offensive, and now considered an Act of Mental Terror against the Snowflake Generation of hand-holding tablet dwellers who justify the existence of a idiot-proof computing experience.
TL; DR - Not too many arguments here when the challenge is to fix Stupid and cure Lazy.
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If they had 85% of the search market merely from being better than competitors, that would be one thing. But they decided to enforce that by illegally fixing the market throughtlocking out competition. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/1... [nytimes.com]
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They are not being prosecuted for being a monopoly. They are being prosecuted for illegal anticompetitive behavior, paying other companies to install their software as a default.
If they had 85% of the search market merely from being better than competitors, that would be one thing. But they decided to enforce that by illegally fixing the market throughtlocking out competition. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/1... [nytimes.com]
You start off by saying they're not being prosecuted for being a monopoly...and then use 207 words to describe what monopolistic behavior looks like, while linking to an article titled "U.S. Accuses Google of Illegally Protecting Monopoly"
Clearly you are one of the top US anti-monopoly regulators with incredible deductive reasoning skills, which also explains why the world is now being fucked over by monopolies.
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and then use 207 words to describe what monopolistic behavior looks like
which also explains why the world is now being fucked over by monopolies.
No it doesn't. Understanding that the proof of burden involves actual harm in the USA anti-trust laws explains it. It also explains why the bar for anti-trust abuses (note again, not the bar for being a monopoly) is far lower in the EU and rest of the world.
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Being a child is not illegal.
Gambling while being a child is illegal.
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When your product has cornered so much of the market by virtue of its usefulness you end up losing your rights as your trademark is declared "genericized". More than one person has tried to attack Google from that exact angle with malicious intent.
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And why is that any different from any sort of exclusivity agreement?
If I work for a company XYZ, they can certainlyy require me to sign an agreement that states that I will not work for XYZ's competitor at the same time, and this exclusivity could even be reflected with an accompanying pay increase.
They are paying me to not work for someone else. How is this any different?
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On all my appliances, I moved over to DuckDuckGo - Chrome didn't complain.
What makes you think this is about you? What if DuckDuckGo wanted to be the default on that appliance you bought, e.g. an Android phone? Oh fuck them Google says no unless you want to ship a phone without a Play Store. Contrived example? $1.49billion fine issued by the EU for this very anti-trust abuse says otherwise.
Abuse of monopoly is rarely about the end user being able to do something.
Love the leftist hypocrisy here (Score:2, Insightful)
EU sues Google for being a monopoly and msmash runs a headline of "EU to strike down Google's imperial capitalistic monopoly"
Followed by the usual peanut gallery crusade of "Google sux!" "Wot happened to don't be evil", "xapitalism sux!", "Yay for the EU to defend my rights to not be oppressed"
But now the US does it and the headline is weasel worded in the opposite direction "US accuses Google of being a monopoly" (because, hurr durr Orange Man Bed)
And, of course, the peanut gallery falls in line. "Trump i
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EU sues Google for being a monopoly and msmash runs a headline of "EU to strike down Google's imperial capitalistic monopoly"
Followed by the usual peanut gallery crusade of "Google sux!" "Wot happened to don't be evil", "xapitalism sux!", "Yay for the EU to defend my rights to not be oppressed"
But now the US does it and the headline is weasel worded in the opposite direction "US accuses Google of being a monopoly" (because, hurr durr Orange Man Bed)
And, of course, the peanut gallery falls in line. "Trump is shaking down an innocent and noble tech company", "capitalism sux!", "Google is an awesome company", "US sux and is corrupt"
So uh - which is it guys?
Google does have some monopolistic tendencies harming competition and creating worrying privacy implications for the Internet, and those are wrong and should be corrected (by legal force if necessary).
But this suit is not about correcting Google's monopolistic tendencies, just read the summary:
Attorney General William P. Barr, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, has played an unusually active role in the investigation. He pushed career Justice Department attorneys to bring the case by the end of September, prompting pushback from lawyers who wanted more time and complained of political influence. Mr. Barr has spoken publicly about the inquiry for months and set tight deadlines for the prosecutors leading the effort.
Why did the case need to be brought so quickly? Why is the AG discussing an investigation publicly? This isn't about enforcing the law. It's about Trump's fight against big tech and the election.
This suit is either at
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And, of course, the peanut gallery falls in line.
Your quotes are not at all representative of the comments in this thread. I see two top-level comments about Trump, only one from before your post, and it was about his perceived hypocrisy, not Trump's shakedowns or a defense of Google. I see one comment defending Google, not because Google is good but because we can't let the reds win. I see nothing about capitalism. The closest I see to a defense of Google are a couple of comments saying that Microsoft is worse.
I'm interested in how, given this, you ma
So... monopoly.... (Score:2)
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So, are they are monopoly world wide?
Antitrust law is based on US law and thus does not require a world-wide monopoly. If you're a monopoly in the US, you can be sued by the government for antitrust practices. If you're a monopoly in China, US antitrust law cannot touch you, although it can affect any US-based operations or markets. TikTok is somewhat of an example of the latter. Although it wasn't being targeted for antitrust violations, the US could certainly target its US-based ops to bring pressure on its China-based headquarters. The U
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So, are they are monopoly world wide? Because they aren't. As we've seen, China will entirely back their own companies. The US systematically dismantles their successful ones. China is more than happy to snap up the bits and pieces. The US continues to backslide and become more beholden to the Chinese. It's time to wake up. This isn't about just the United states anymore. What percent of the world population do we have? Is it really beneficial - to our entire country - to hamstring some of the most successful companies like this?
What exactly does China or Russia, have to do with SmallTown, USA, where no retail jobs exist other than at the local Wal-Mart megaShitcenter and the Amazon superWhorehouse?
Like protecting our Nation, anti-monopoly laws apply to all offenders, both foreign and domestic.
I'm certain China "entirely backed" Alibaba too. Doesn't mean that didn't result in millions of small business jobs lost, along with lives.
This is good (Score:2)
This is long overdue, and one of the few moves by the Trump DOJ I agree with (perhaps the only one). It has fairly broad bipartisan support, too. On the downside, it sounds as if it was rushed so the announcement could be timed with the election, which means the government may not be as prepared as they could be and thus might not have prepared as strong a case as they otherwise would have. Anyway, I expect it will drag in for years. I'm hoping they are preparing one for Facebook, too, as they have clearly
Re: This is good (Score:2)
I forgot to mention Amazon, as well. I felt I needed to add that.
Stop using NYT as a source (Score:2)
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DarkRookie2 complained:
The info is always stuck behind a pay wall so it might as well not exist for all the good the link does.
Funny how I don't have any problem accessing the NYT without having to login to their website, or accept a bunch of tracking cookies or data-rapist javascripts.
And it's worth noting that I have the same kind of access to Washington Post articles and columns - which is to say "unimpeded."
Bezos used to require you to accept amazon-adsystem.* javascripts even to view the WaPo's front page, but that roadblock went AWOL several months ago.
At a guess, somebody pointed out to him the hypocri
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MNNorske suggested:
If your employer has paid access for these news sites and you are accessing them from your work computer you may very well not hit the pay wall. That happens for me with some sites when I was in the office. Now that I'm remote I hit them more often because I'm not coming through from an approved IP range.
Interesting.
I surf the web from behind a VPN, coming through a server located in Santa Clara. You might try that solution, since it sounds to me like they might both be setting permissions based on IP ranges their artificial dumbness algorithms associate with non-USA-based users.
Thanks for the interesting and on-point response.
( And, fwiw, I look my employer in the eye every morning - when I shave ... )
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The info is always stuck behind a pay wall so it might as well not exist for all the good the link does.
Works for me, even with ublock origin.
Context (Score:2)
...that this suit was filed is also important in context.
This triggers a higher degree of scrutiny over whatever they do between now and the elections.
It's clear that FB, Twitter, and even Google are putting their fingers on the election scales (cue waves of liberal posters - astonishingly - ardently defending the 'rights' of businesses to do whatever they want). It's not coincidental that EVERYTHING they do now is subject to rules of evidence with commensurate penalties for hiding/destroying it. And even
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It's clear that FB, Twitter, and even Google are putting their fingers on the election scales (cue waves of liberal posters - astonishingly - ardently defending the 'rights' of businesses to do whatever they want).
If you want to prevent those three from putting their fingers on the election scales, you also have to insist that Fox News stops jamming their entire ass onto the election scales. Liberal posters may be defending the 'rights' of businesses to do whatever they want. I don't know. I'm just pointing out that this has already been adjudicated, on behalf of News Corp, and everything Facebook, Twitter, and Google are currently doing with respect to the election is entirely legal, because it's all been done be
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Different situation. Fox News is a publisher with an explicit editorial bias.
FB, Twitter, Google etc are adamant that they are *not* publishers because that would subject them to piles of regulation. However, it's blatantly obvious that in controlling their output they are absolutly editorialising. They have a huge amount of power, and they should absolutely be regulated because it's clearly being abused with a chilling effect upon free speech and democracy.
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Different situation. Fox News is a publisher with an explicit editorial bias.
FB, Twitter, Google etc are adamant that they are *not* publishers because that would subject them to piles of regulation. However, it's blatantly obvious that in controlling their output they are absolutly editorialising.
A distinction without a difference. Facebook's and Twitter's right to determine what they host is founded on the fundamental concept of private property. Do you think the Trump Supreme Court is going to interfere with private property rights?
Section 230 status is only a liability shield for illegal content they may have missed. It has no bearing on whether or not they can pick and choose what they serve to the Internet, just like Fox News does. If they were to lose Section 230 protections (which they ca
good. But take out ALL OF THE monopolies (Score:2)
Add in Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon, along with Chinese monopolies such as Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo, [synthesio.com] and Alibaba.
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China. China bad.
That's all the reason WindBourne needs for anything.
If that post was made to seek my support for a communist dictatorship, I'll just have to let you down.
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As your earlier point, even China is finding issues with alibaba and others [reuters.com]. But I have to say, that it is probably in the world's best interest to get all of these large companies to be broken up at once. It will create more competition and will make the mo
Re: good. But take out ALL OF THE monopolies (Score:2)
Thanks. AC's who just post that people are dumb don't have a great track record so I'm parcial to believe the opposite is true.
Contact SpaceX, move Google to orbit (Score:2)
google vs the government (Score:2)
Which should we be afraid of? At least a corporation doesn't have guns to come get you.
So isn't exhibit 1 how much MS spent on Bing? (Score:2)
And why isn't Microsoft's failure to gain any traction in search, despite the hard push in their operating systems for it, going to be evidence that people just prefer Google for search? Or at a minimum, some kind of argument for a natural monopoly -- search that's any good is so big and so complex that even Microsoft struggles to be any good at it, and further, if it's going to be good and not priced like Lexis/Nexis it needs advertising support?
I don't doubt that some of Google deals, like with Apple, ar
Trust's aren't illegal! (Score:2)
Having a trust (monopoly) isn't illegal under the sherman anti-trust legislation.
It takes specific actions by the trust, the first and foremost being to use that trust to leverage themselves into other markets. There are other actions, such as leveraging the monopoly to hurt potential competitors, the best example of this is exclusionary contracts with suppliers, transport or purchase contracts that prevent the customer from buying from specific parties.
Breaking a Trust is very very difficult. The level of
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no, it doesn't (Score:3)
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And Google asked me if I meant "NBA top scorers". Exactly how long are we supposed to put up with this kind of sexist horseshit from the world's largest search provider?
Google's algorithms correlate what you type with what everyone else on the planet is typing. There are far, far more people searching for NBA results than WNBA results, thus Google offers you the presumption that you mis-typed it. It's not sexist. It is driven by actual data. It's only sexist if you're looking for sexism in anything and everything.
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I imagine you don't get invited to a lot of parties.
People who speak the truth are often not invited to the party.
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I imagine you don't get invited to a lot of parties.
And with logic like that, I would imagine you don't get invited to a lot of conversations.
We shouldn't be asking who is racist anymore, but what is racist, human.
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And Google asked me if I meant "NBA top scorers". Exactly how long are we supposed to put up with this kind of sexist horseshit from the world's largest search provider?
It doesn't for me, I get:
wnba top scorers 2020
wnba top scorers all time
wnba top scorers single game
wnba top scoring teams
You're either lying or caught in a filter bubble of your own creation (I don't normally use google search and block as much tracking as I can so I get pretty much a pristine search).
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Google offers tailor made search results for the person searching. When I type it I get:
"WNBA Statistics - 2020 Regular Season
1. Arike Ogunbowale (DAL) 22.8
2. A'ja Wilson (LV) 20.5
3. DeWanna Bonner (CONN) 19.7"
Basically you just admitted to the world that Google considers you sexist based on your search history.
Re:Why Aren't They Going After The Drug Dealer? (Score:4, Informative)
Monopolies are governed by the Sherman and Clayton acts. It's a different set of rules that a monopoly has to abide by. It is this way to purposefully give an advantage to upstarts in the market so that the monopoly can be replaced with a competitive market. This is important for capitalism to be sustainable.
Re: Wait, I thought Trump was a libertarian? (Score:2, Funny)
Question: against whose assault must those rights be secured?
Foreign military aggression? Check
Domestic criminals? Check
Tyrannical government? Check
Tyrannical private corporations? Why not?
Trump is the broken clock that manages to tell mostly the right time most of the time. Yeah aybe in his head he's
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What's it called when you take from the people and give to yourself [newsweek.com]?
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In most places, it's called socialism.
BTW, Ron Reagan is a left-wing political commentator on MSNBC. No one who knows anything about him confuses him with holding any of Ronal Reagan the President's values. That'd be Michael Reagan [wikipedia.org], instead.
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Seems to me, you are both grossly wrong about libertarians and also grossly wrong about Trump. Essentially, you have a nice public track record of being grossly wrong.
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Google may be an asshole, but they are OUR asshole.
Right. Since they belong to our pathetic tribe, everything's OK.
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So what if Google has a monopoly? It is a monopoly that is based in the US. The money comes here. If you break up Google, guess who will swoop in?
China and Russia.
Once they get entrenched, they will never be supplanted. Google may be an asshole, but they are OUR asshole.
Ireland is floating on trillions of OUR taxpayer dollars. Did YOU make that decision, ASSHOLE?
Kindly shut the fuck up with your delusions that any US monopoly is somehow OUR monopoly. If Google were actually forced to pay US taxes, they would build their own airline in order to leave the country faster.
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Google is basically advertising with shitty search results now. Someone has to make a better search.
Re:Just close them down - NOW! (Score:4, Insightful)
Their tentacles are so in everything that if you shut them down, most of the free Internet for those who refuse to pay for anything would cease to function. It's a sad state of affairs for some.
FTFY, in case you were still wondering how we got here.
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Their tentacles are so in everything that if you shut them down, most of the free Internet for those who refuse to pay for anything would cease to function. It's a sad state of affairs for some.
FTFY, in case you were still wondering how we got here.
If there was a decent, secure, convenient system for micropayments, that would help. Call me crazy, but I'm disinclined to hand out my debit card details willy-nilly. And Paypal is of course yet another evil behemoth.
Re: Just close them down - NOW! (Score:2)
Micropayments will not work while there is a free-as-in-beer mentality. In my opinion, content pirates promote that viewpoint and are part of the problem.
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Yes, you guess, because you have to guess, because there is no option to pay. Can't really blame the (non-)paying customer when there is no option.
And, TBH, I'm not sure I'd trust a system run by Google or suchlike. If they collect and abuse the same data through the micropayment system that they currently do via advertising, then we're back to square one anyway. Something more like GNU Taler seems like right set of principles [taler.net].
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That was a temporary program designed to set ad rates... what you're willing to pay is what it costs to reach you. See also: The rising costs of SiriusXM.
Harm? Know thyself. Objective? Solution? (Score:3)
First visible comment? Really? Even for Slashdot 2020 that's sad. Can't you at least try to make the shite-FP Subject relevant or meaningful? To something?
My Subject? The key terms that I searched the discussion for without finding anything worth thinking about. So to attempt to unmuddle my thinking again, that's where I'll start.
Biggest harm: Google knowing me better then I know myself. At least I feel like that's the largest harm just after finishing Homo Deus by Harari. Not exactly a slippery slope arg
Re: Just close them down - NOW! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yep, and in 1998 AltaVisita from DEC looked unstoppable. Now, it's gone, and Digital Credit Union is all that's left.
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If the US government was able to monopolize national politics half the country would be ecstatic instead of everyone groaning at tribalism.