US Considers a Rare Antitrust Move: Breaking Up Google (bloomberg.com) 87
A rare bid to break up Alphabet's Google is one of the options being considered by the Justice Department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The move would be Washington's first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft two decades ago.
Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. Regardless, the government will likely seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of its case against Google. If the Justice Department pushes ahead with a breakup plan, the most likely units for divestment are the Android operating system and Google's web browser Chrome, said the people. Officials are also looking at trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, the platform the company uses to sell text advertising, one of the people said.
Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. Regardless, the government will likely seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of its case against Google. If the Justice Department pushes ahead with a breakup plan, the most likely units for divestment are the Android operating system and Google's web browser Chrome, said the people. Officials are also looking at trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, the platform the company uses to sell text advertising, one of the people said.
This will work. At all. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This will work. At all. (Score:4, Insightful)
and "we" failed to do so with microsoft, whose defense came down to "nothing stopping them from using Linux".
And the first thing out of googles lawyers will be "nothing stopping them from using bing, yahoo, duckduckgo, etc"
Re: This will work. At all. (Score:3)
Re: This will work. At all. (Score:5, Informative)
No, they were actually convicted, and were going to be broken up, but the judge gave an interview before the case was finalized, and MS were able to use what he said there to get the verdict thrown out.
Re: This will work. At all. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft antitrust was well-established and then Bush's AG John Ashcroft stated that it would not be in our best interest to prosecute and didn't. It had nothing to do with any interview, it was simply corruption.
Re: This will work. At all. (Score:5, Insightful)
...it would not be in our best interest to prosecute and didn't.
The case was prosecuted, and Microsoft was convicted (the conviction still stands). Microsoft appealed when it was found that Judge Jackson was giving closed-door interviews to reporters while the case was ongoing. Microsoft pushed an argument of unfair bias, and the appeals court bought it hook, line, and sinker. The findings of fact were upheld, though, but Jackson's breakup order was vacated.
Then Bush came into office and ordered the case to be closed. On the way out, Microsoft agreed to a consent decree where the Justice Department would oversee Microsoft's operations for a few years before Microsoft would be allowed to resume its monopolistic behavior.
Shortly afterward, Firefox started surging and Chrome appeared on the market. That made I.E. obsolete. Then Mozilla climbed all the way up to the top of the Stupid Tree, jumped off, and hit every branch on the way down. That allowed Chrome to take over.
Re: This will work. At all. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then Mozilla climbed all the way up to the top of the Stupid Tree, jumped off, and hit every branch on the way down.
Had you right up until this point. No Mozilla's downfall was little to do with their stupid changes. Much of them aren't enough to sway normal users.
Mozilla's main downfall came from multiple fronts: ... if you're using Chrome.
1. At the time there was suddenly a new focus on Javascript as a replacement for ActiveX and Java. A new battle was started: Which browser is the fastest. Chrome shat all over the competition. People migrated to Chrome in large numbers for the speed boost on poorly optimised websites.
2. Shortly after the world of integrated services came up. Everything is Google, and Google is everything. Got a map link? Google. Got an email? Gmail. Got a shortened link, well good chance that was Google too. Why was that relevant? "We notice that you're not using a Google Browser. For the best experience Google recommends using Chrome. X" literally in everyone's face. Especially those who use IE to find an alternate browser. Type "Firefox" in at the top right of IE and the first thing you see is "This website works best in Chrome".
3. Then finally once Firefox's market share was already abysmal came integrated systems. The first browser with remote casting? Chrome. The first browser with bookmark synchronisation? Chrome. Oh you have an Android device, guess what, you can sync to your phone
Firefox could have done everything right and would still be in the situation they are in today. They don't have the necessary market sway.
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Mozilla's downfall was little to do with their stupid changes. Much of them aren't enough to sway normal users.
People used Firefox not out of the blue, but because we nerds told them to do so. We told them to do it because Firefox was better. Normal users just opened the browser that was on their computer.
Firefox then compromised the reasons why we liked it, and so we stopped leaning into advocacy because it was harder to sell the idea that Firefox was superior while Chrome was eating its lunch.
Instead of spending money on improving Firefox, Mozilla spent money on bullshit like buying an ads network, and Pocket whic
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People used Firefox not out of the blue, but because we nerds told them to do so.
And countless normal nerds told them to use Chrome instead (that speed thing in the age of javascript benchmarks as well as the ability to actually follow web standards - another thing Chrome quickly beat Firefox at - the ACID test, was critical to that). And countless websites did as well.
I think you're projecting the wrong timeline here. Firefox started crashing and burning in popularity well back from a time before they started using bigger sounding version numbers. Before they broke APIs, back when you
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Shortly afterward, Firefox started surging and Chrome appeared on the market. That made I.E. obsolete. Then Mozilla climbed all the way up to the top of the Stupid Tree, jumped off, and hit every branch on the way down. That allowed Chrome to take over.
Google spent money wisely.
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Where you see corruption, I see collusion. You see I worked with the major telecoms who agreed to warrantless access in exchange for congress and the fcc allowing them to blatantly eliminate their competitors theough violations of the Telecom Act. Remember when verizon was allowed to remove copper from buildings to deny competition and force people into Fios? Im sure Microsoft sold us the fuck out to hang onto the pie. Google sure did. Just look at their whitehouse visits between 2012 - 2016. They had more
Re: This will work. At all. (Score:3)
Re:This will work. At all. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, isn't YT the second most searched "engine" in the world on the internet?
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At some point I'd like to think that we didnt even have to bother to prove tying, although such proof is obviously all over, some of their biggest failures tried extensive tying such as their several failed attempts at facebook-style social networks, even pushing youtube accounts into one o
Re: This will work. At all. (Score:2)
I suspect that YouTube, being a closed platform that is not quite as integrated into the web the way search is will not be as much of an issue as Chrome and Android.
However, I am not sure that forcing a divestment of Chrome will achieve much. That is one element that Google actually built from the ground up and did not acquire. It was just so much better than Internet Explorer and Firefox.
I can see a bigger case for divesting Android. I suspect that Google might ultimately accept giving Android given that i
Re: This will work. At all. (Score:2)
Apple built WebKit on top of KHTML!
Is open source / free software. Itâ(TM)s not stealing
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Apple built WebKit on top of KHTML!
Is open source / free software. Itâ(TM)s not stealing
And like CUPS, kept it Open Source.
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Spin off YouTube, Chrome, and Android.
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It doesn't happen often, but in this case, I am in FULL agreement with you.
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How do Android and Chrome survive as separate companies? They have no revenue model inherent to the actual products. They're free products that exist solely as a means to drive other Google business. They'd either need to go the foundation route as is Mozilla and hope they get industry investments, or re-create all the in Google infrastructure to create a revenue stream. Something that would be very expensive to do.
That was a completely different circumstance. (Score:3)
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When I was growing up, it was said that K-Mart was going to take over all retail. Later it was said Walmart will take over all retail. These days its said that Amazon will take over all retail.
The dangerous monopolies expl
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Actually, the government was trying to break-up AT&T since the 1960s (1950s?) Eventually, new management took over and gave-in, circa 1984. This would also allow AT&T to enter the computing market with its shiny UNIX operating system.
The problem was old management had been lying about the profitability of long-distance vs short-distance, in order to reduce taxes. Short-distance is taxed more heavily, so they shifted the profits towards the long-distance division. So the new management was like "s
But how? (Score:2)
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The company that owned the physical lines going to everyone's house, the infrastructure, and even the handset sitting in your living room? Yes, tell us all about how that's the exact same as a free website that no one is forcing you to use and has several viable also-free alternatives.
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"...because we broke 'em up so good."
The goal of breaking up a monopoly is not so that the kids will never hear about them. Also, AT&T of today is hardly related to what was broken up. They were broken up "good".
Failed to do so with Microsoft (Score:3)
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Google needs to hire the Microsoft attorneys that successfully prevented the breakup of Microsoft in 2000
It likely won't help. We live in very different times, two whole generations later.
Remember, they were found guilty of search monopoly - one of only two things they are as far as possible away from having any monopolistic control over with dozens of competitors that control far more market share than google does.
If they can be found guilty of that, the upcoming lawsuits over their actual monopolistic business practices like advertising is all but a slam dunk.
Throw in an EU opinion, where people decided the
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Remember, they were found guilty of search monopoly - one of only two things they are as far as possible away from having any monopolistic control over with dozens of competitors that control far more market share than google does.
WTF? Google has over 90% of the search market.
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This depends on how you define the "search" market.
Years ago, they already described Amazon as their #1 competitor in search, and I'm sure they'll use this in court.
"Amazon a search engine, what!?"
If you want to search for a product to purchase, is Google or Amazon your first thought? While Google search web pages, Amazon search products, and products just so happens to be one of the largest search categories in the world.
-NOT- defending Google here, just giving details that maybe, just maybe, they are not
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If you want to search for a product to purchase, is Google or Amazon your first thought?
Depends what I am looking for. If it is a TV or a chainsaw or just generally bigger than a breadbox I go to Google first. If it is something trivial I am likely to buy from Amazon (and yeah I got some socks, a cheap meat thermometer and an SD card from them in the last week) then I just go straight there. I go to Amazon to buy things from Amazon. I go to Google to buy things from anywhere.
The difference between global search and site search seems kind of obvious to me, but I'm not a judge or juror so I
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WTF? Google has over 90% of the search market.
The fuck you are asking what of is all in the words I said: "having any monopolistic control over"
There is no reality that exists where you can't type some other search engine in, instead of typing "google" This includes Google's own hardware, browsers, and operating systems.
Microsoft Windows has more market share than any other OS (72% last year) and their browser defaults to Bing. That's 70% of the entire search engine market that had Bing forced upon them and willingly chose to switch to google.
This is not monopolistic control under any definition.
Splitting hairs does not help. Google has 90% of the world general purpose search market. That is a monopoly and it is a problem.
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Google should hire the IBM lawyers. IBM was famous for being the fighting the government for years, and not losing. I think there was a consent decree at the end of it. Essentially, IBM proved that if you spend enough money on lawyers, you can beat the department of justice.
This article [cato.org] summarizes a bit of the history, and makes the point that the anti-trust suit didn't lower the prices for IBM's customers.
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the time tho... (Score:1)
Bing was such a great name (Score:1)
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Microsoft lost hard when they ditched the "Live" branding. They didn't give it enough chance, and it was associated with all the wrong things. Perfect domain name, terribad marketing.
Free Products (Score:1)
Yes, yes. Let's ensure that this company doesn't give away too many free products.
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It gives away free products.
Today's episode of "Good idea, bad idea" (Score:2, Interesting)
Good idea - breaking up a government-created monopoly (AT&T) to spur competition and innovation - not necessarily at AT&T, but nonetheless . . .
Bad idea - breaking up Google because they found new and amusing ways to be despicable - and were really good at it . . .
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What Google does deserves to be regulated like a utility. They weren't good stewards. Poor them.
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It's perfectly legal to have a monopoly, whether it is state-chartered or a natural monopoly.
Regulators break up natural monopolies for participating in illegal anti-competitive practices. Theoretically they can be broken up for other reasons such as national security or concerns over their negative economic impact, but as far as I can tell this hasn't happened since the railroads were broken up in the late 1800s.
I'm of two hands about this. (Score:2)
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Hypocrisy Incorporated (Score:1)
Make as much money as you can until we say you can't.
This societies karma is way worse than mine.
Good (Score:2)
Let's do it. And then do Microsoft.
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and De Beers, Amazon (mostly for its marketplace), and Apple (for app store and for the phones themselves).
Bust up UnitedHealth Group too! Since that one actually does literal harm to people.
Cencora does some pretty nasty games that squeeze many small town pharmacies, without many alternatives.
And to me, the most egregious one we always ignore. Italian eyeglasses company, Luxottica. They own: Oakley, Ray-ban, LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, Target Optical, and EyeMed. Nearly all eyeglasses in the
Good Good (Score:3)
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Jesus can we wait until someone actually succeeds at something before we call for them to divert their attention to something else? The legal world is built on precedents, let's set one first before we throw resources at the next problem.
Apple customers would have been so much better off (Score:3)
What? This is not about the benefit of the customer, it's about the benefit to the competitor? Oh, well that's so much better.
I remember when BING was first released and it was explained that BING stood for BING is not Google. That later changed to not meaning that.
I also remember when BING hit the market and Microsoft was publishing how many hits were being returned and then I looked and noticed page after page of repeating links. Google just works and works well, Microsoft has always been lagging and only leads by leveraging their desktop position.
They'll be singing the wrong song if they bust them up.
LoB
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Apple customers would have been so much better off if Microsoft's BING were their default.
Apple customers would be so much better if Apple had been motivated to make their own search engine rather than relying on Google.
Google is a monopoly because they are the best, but that's not a crime. The question is whether they are abusing their monopoly.
Google just works and works well
That's going too far. Google is also filled with SEO spam pages.
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It might be possible to boost other search engines by breaking up Google. For example, Google uses its mapping division to provide data for search. Places local to the user, estimated time to travel there, public transport information, street level photos, embedded maps etc.
YouTube is another valuable source of data. They have more than just the title of the video, they have all the metadata like chapter headings and performance metrics.
If those two things were spun off and were selling access to that infor
Wont really fix the problem (Score:3)
But Android isn’t anywhere close to a monopoly, and neither is Chrome. Plenty of alternatives to those products. So I don’t see how breaking up google will solve the problem. Whichever company winds up with Google Search will still be a monopoly.
If google is smart, they’ll do a microsoft-maneuver and pull back on their search monopoly jjjuuuusssstttt enough to keep from getting broken up. Dumping a few of those exclusive search contracts would probably do it, and drop their market share down by 10 or 20 percent. But they certainly wouldnt back off unless the government convinces them that a breakup is a legit possibility.
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I think even if they stopped paying apple and Mozilla, they would still be the default. They can't make their competitors not suck. Google may be shit now compared to what it was, but it's still better than anything else. Apple would get nothing but grief from their customers if they switched.
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Right but my argument is that even if they stopped paying Apple, the default won't change, so those people will still be using Google. Apple will be forced by their own users to make Google their default. Therefore, it's impossible for Google to "back off on their monopoly 10%" by stopping payment to Apple. The outcry from users will force Google as the default even if a formal quid pro quo doesn't.
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But Android isn’t anywhere close to a monopoly, and neither is Chrome. Plenty of alternatives to those products. So I don’t see how breaking up google will solve the problem. Whichever company winds up with Google Search will still be a monopoly.
The way Google pushed Chrome on to everyone was clearly unethical, if not illegal. They were only able to do it because they had the monopoly in search.
Google did not push Chrome on anyone (Score:2)
Re: Google did not push Chrome on anyone (Score:2)
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We willingly chose Chrome. IE was crap. Firefox had become a bloated shit show. Opera was just weird.
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Re: Wont really fix the problem (Score:2)
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I Hope They Do Go After Search (Score:5, Interesting)
The simplest solution here would be to break up Google by disconnecting unrelated products. For example, YouTube could easily be spun into its own successful company. I hope though that the government takes the longer, more difficult road and tries to split Google's search product up (or at least regulates it like a utility).
There are a couple of big problems with Google's search currently. It has gotten effectively worse as their fuzzy matching technology focuses on matching the search phrase to popular results rather than the closest match. There are indications that this will get even worse in the future as Google has recently said that they are going to start discarding websites from their search options. I'm not sure what they mean by this but it's easy to imagine a situation where Google simply doesn't return results on unpopular websites.
Thus the opportunity is here to split Google into a variety of search engines and let each one tackle search in different ways. Ideally this would be done by opening up Google's massive indexing engines to their competitors and allowing pretty much anyone throw together a rival search engine that was able to run its own algorithms against pre-collected data. In principal this could create a very exciting field where consumers could choose specialized search engines (technical, celebrity gossip, world events, etc) for their particular query.
Now there are a couple of complications to this approach. The first is that Google would probably also need to open up their advertising engine to their competitors as well and allow the reselling of ad space. It is unrealistic to expect anyone to meaningfully compete against Google's adwords system - advertisers would certainly prefer to just buy ad space in a single market. Another major issue would be managing SEO, scammers, and hackers. Currently Google does an ok job here in that they generally return reputable websites for their searches. In order for the competitors to be able to offer an equivalent search experience, Google would definitely have to collaborate with the other search sites, even though the result could easily be a central authority that decides whether websites are legitimate or not.
My view here is that search really has become too important to be left in the hands of a single unregulated entity. It would be extremely difficult to regulate search in a meaningful way but doing so has the potential to really improve the online community in the long term. I hope that the powers-that-be take a serious look at this direction.
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One motive for starting a company is to achieve a big exit pay day. That does drive innovation and add to the economy.
Many small startups would never get needed funding to develop their idea without the potential of being bought out eventually. Those ideas that could become something big would never be seen. Alternatively, instead of being seen in a year or two, they'd take a decade or more to develop on a shoestring budget.
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Focussing on particulars like 'search', 'youtube' or 'products' is beside the point, IMO. The lasting solution to this monopolism is going after the source of their network externalities: in the case of internet companies, the one arising out of 'memory' (or data storage) that the founders of the World Wide Web neglected. Why can't the Regulated Asset Base (RAB, of the 'utility') simply involve developing and enforcing a protocol for that on the lines of IPFS et. al.?
Just Peeved (Score:2)
Yeah, lets break up Google, Microsoft, and everything else that's successful and American so that the Chinese can walk in, pick up the pieces, and beat us all to death with them.
Tired of it. It's like success is UnAmerican or something.
Can make things far far worse (Score:2)
If not handled correctly, this runs the risk of handing the consumer electronics ecosystem market to a vertically integrated monopolist which is becoming a far more disruptive monopoly to begin with. Apple destroys proper companies and markets, Google is mostly just a big leech instead of a lot of little leeches. Google and windows inertia keeps a vast and diverse hardware market alive, taking Google away would be disastrous.
I think Android+Chromebook+peripherals could be a competetive ecosystem, but they w
Break em all up (Score:1)
How are these contracts allowed? (Score:3)
The type of contract that both Microsoft and Google are in, where they specify that their software is the default or only software / search engine pre-installed with penalties if a competitors software or search engine is installed should be illegal, and come with a fine huge enough to erase all benefits to such a contract.
Basically, any contract that has a penalty in for utilizing anything from an unrelated third party should fall under this clause.
That should stop this silliness.
BREAK APPLE & AMAZON TOO! (Score:1)
say goodbye (Score:2)
Say goodbye to all that free stuff, like maps, navigation, search, gmail, android, ...