I completely agree, and this has been my main headscratcher since we first heard about a possible anti-trust case.

For starters, I still think things like banks, telecom, and probably oil, and defense industry companies probably need to be broken up, and that they should be much higher priorities. To say nothing of the obscure industries we wouldn't normally think of (Luxxotica with glasses) that are monopolized. There's probably others for obscure things I'm not even thinking of.

And even within tech, I wouldn't even rank Google ahead of Amazon, and I'm not 100% that I would rank them ahead of Facebook either.

And, if that's not all, I think Google at least serves as a check on the other Frightful Five, and subtracting Google will serve to further consolidate tech. And if that's not enough, I feel that the tech industry has served as a useful check against other entrenched industries. Their clash with cable, and occasional work to protect an open internet are a healthy counterbalance to voices of other monopolized industries.

Leveraging your monopoly in one market to constrain business in another market is.

Microsoft wasn't prosecuted because Windows was a monopoly, Microsoft was prosecuted because it leveraged that monopoly to block out other competitors (you could not buy a PC without a Windows license, even if you wanted to put another O/S on it).

IBM wasn't investigated because it dominated mainframes, but because it leveraged that domination to control other markets.

AT&T wasn't prosecuted for antitrust because of its monopoly on phone service in the US…the US government had effectively granted AT&T that monopoly in the first place. It was prosecuted and broken up because it leveraged that monopoly to box out competitors across multiple markets that intersected with the telephone system.

Google’s weak spots are not their monopolies in search nor ads. It’s having leveraged those monopolies in the browser and mobile phone markets. If I had to guess, they will offer to separate ad spots on search results into a separate market place, offer to spin off Chrome and Android to foundations funded initially by Google but expected to stand on their own (ala Mozilla/Firefox) after some time period, offer to separate ad placement from ad serving, and generally rearrange the chairs and org chart with a series of consent decrees requiring regular reporting to Congress or the DOJ.

That's what the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit should have been primarily about. The central issue in the lawsuit was including IE with Windows. Now 20 years later, the idea that they shouldn't include a web browser with their OS just seems silly.

Big question mark in my mind is if there’s hard evidence that Google employees required customers of one service (say, Cloud) to utilize another Google service (ads, G Suite/Workplace, etc.) in order to get a discount or some other preference. That's a slam dunk. My suspicion is that there'll be a lot of activities that hew extremely closely to that line without crossing it.

None of these, with the possible exception of telecom, are monopolies or engaging in specific anti-competitive behavior. I agree that the pattern of consolidation there is bad, but I fail to see

a. how this announcement precludes any other lawsuits against the companies you're mentioning b. why the fact that other industries also ought to be broken up has any bearing on whether Google has engaged in anti-competitive behavior?

I feel like the answer to this is pretty obvious, but to state the obvious, Google exists in the same timeline as the companies in other industries that I listed, and in most cases have arrived later on the timelines and engaged in less egregious offenses than a number of other companies, yet Google were prioritized for anti-trust action ahead of those other companies.

>why the fact that other industries also ought to be broken up has any bearing on whether Google has engaged in anti-competitive behavior?

I think if you read my comment and heard "Google is not engaging in anti-competitive behavior", you heard something I did not write. I think a wide range of companies ought to be challenged for anti-competitive behavior, including Google, and many of them have engaged in much more egregious offenses than Google, yet Google is targeted while others haven't been. Whatever impetus would have lead to prosecuting Google out to have lead to targeting a number of other companies before getting to Google.

The hypothetical possibility that worse companies that ought to have been higher priorities might possibly be prosecuted in the future is not something that I feel is responsive the to point here.

Trying to bag multiple tech companies seems like a recipe for failure.

> the government will only be able to put its best lawyers on some cases.

Also, I think you really underestimate how many competent prosecutors the government has - they can handle more than one anti-trust case at a time.

From MMA/WWE to Varsity/Gimnastics

UFC is not a monopoly but does engage in anticompetitive behavior, including for example restricting its fighters from competing for other promotions, controlling the sponsorships they can receive, and even the sponsors they may promote in the ring. Their practices affect their fighters, but have no discernable effect on their audience. You can easily choose to watch one of the other promotions, like Bellator.

WWE is the oldest and most successful wrestling promotion, but it has a dozen or so major competitors, and there are hundreds of wrestling promotions at the local and regional levels.

Gymnastics and the other Olympic sports don't have monopolies, why do you think they do? Track athletes compete in multiple professional events over the course of the year (most of which aren't televised in the US due to lack of audience but many of which are broadcast globally), and most olympic sports, gymnastics included, are not commercial draws outside of national championships and olympic qualifiers.

Gymnastics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24769576

As for I was thinking cheerleading but didn't got the words right. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24638896

Also cant find it on hn algolia but the young runner and Nike Oregon Project came to mind.

However, USA Gymnastics is not a monopoly, and there are other entities that organize gymnastics competitions (and most gymnastics competitions are not USA Gymnastics competitions). USA Gymnastics is simply the organization that is tasked with overseeing the national championship and Olympic qualifiers.

There is absolutely no monopoly in running. There are literally thousands of different races around the world, and nearly as many race organizers. Each of the big major marathons is organized by a different company. Each of the major track events is put on by a different company. There are dozens of running shoe and apparel brands. There are hundreds of running clubs like Nike's Oregon Project, many of which were just as, or even more successful, as NOP (see, e.g. North Arizona Elite).

In the book, The Age Surveillance Capitalism, the case is made the Google is actually worse than FB but lesser known for many of the things people complain about.

Google may be the easier monopoly case to go after given the Doubleclick merger, the way Chrome is used, etc.

Also, based on the story I saw the Google one is pretty straight forward. The deals they have made to force their search onto things like the iPhone (with Apple) and Android (with the carriers/manufacturers) is the issue.

For Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, I think similar accusations can be made, but it's not as "shooting fish in a barrel" easy as Google.

"The rumor is that a suit against Facebook will soon follow" [1] said Matt Stoller in his latest BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly and finance. It takes a lot of resources to file those suits, so don't expect them to be announced at exactly the same time.

[1] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-would-president-biden...

PS: Since it contains quite a bit of interesting and relevant information about the cases against GAFA, I submitted this particular newsletter at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24837931

The issue with doing anything during an election is that people on the other side accuse the administration of suspicious timing. The issue with doing nothing during an election is that everyone accuses you of being a lame duck. This is, more or less, business as usual for the administration; they've been on Big Tech's ass for at least a year now, and finally something is coming of it.

Every big tech company needs looked at, and potentially split up. And, maybe, they'll all get their turn. But resources are limited; when the US went to war with Germany, we didn't airdrop troops in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, and Frankfurt on the same day. Actually, we didn't even start with Germany. Starting with Google allows some legal precedent to be set on some of the very weird, novel antitrust issues the case is going to face, which will make future cases easier. I tend to think Amazon should have been the first, but Google is certainly up there, and probably (IMO) a more potentially harmful monopoly than Apple, Microsoft, or Facebook.

I'll agree that Amazon is Scarier. But I also think that Google's behavior is a lot easier to scrutinize/prove in court thanks to their actions in/around Android and Search

That's usually how this stuff works.

> And why didn't Facebook get sued too

You can't make one case against multiple companies, and resources are finite. It will take many years for each of these cases to play out.

I wouldn't be surprised if a Biden administration drops this too.

So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Biden drops it, but only because he was likely part of the problem to begin with. Google wouldn't be the problem it is today if the Obama/Biden administration was doing their job.

(Still voting for him, mind you. It's not like we have better options.)

But basically, a massive number of Google employees were installed in high-level positions of the Obama administration, and a lot of Obama administration folks got great jobs at Google. Obama installed a professor who wrote studies about how Google shouldn't face antitrust scrutiny (who was paid by Google to do so) as the FTC Commissioner (Joshua Wright, who is now a lawyer at Google's preferred law firm... he went from Google shill to government official and now back to Google work), and an FTC case against Google where staffers recommended litigation inexplicably got shoved under the rug.

Then you'd see things like a former Googler in Obama's administration announce an initiative to budget billions of taxpayer dollars to buy computers for schoolchildren... unshockingly, these were intended to be Chromebooks, which get kids started early as Google account holders. (I believe Congress ended up rejecting this particular budgetary line item, or reducing it significantly.)

(Bear in mind, my post both speaks ill of Obama, who might as well be Jesus to the Democratic Party, and also made it clear I'm voting against Trump. So I ingratiate myself with very few politically in the parent comment.)

Maybe the next administration will give equal scrutiny to all of the big tech companies rather than seemingly targeting just one of them.

Apple is not in a situation where they need to be broken up to ensure a free market like Facebook, Amazon, and perhaps Google are.

If you don't like Comcast, you could move to an area with a different ISP, and there's a certain point where you probably would move, if Comcast's service became egregious enough. But I don't usually see this argument when people refer to Comcast as a monopoly, because it's understood that the switching cost is unreasonably high.

Monopoly's are whether or not a product or service dominates a specific sector, industry or market. A company can't have a monopoly over its own products which by definition would cover most product/service companies.

Given iOS market share is about ~25% of the Mobile OS Market, it currently doesn't qualify as a Monopoly although it's currently under EU investigation & Epic lawsuit which may rule differently.

Separately, it's worth noting that iOS has ~60% market share in the United States[1]. It's lower globally, as you pointed out, but I'd argue domestic market-share should be what matters in US-based suits.

1: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

No it's just a software platform that's open to 3rd parties to develop for, just like Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Smart TV's, Speakers, Watches, embedded platforms, etc. you could go as far and say that Cloud Providers or even Game Engines are software platforms.

But a single platform doesn't define a market, the prominent market iOS is in would be smart mobile OS's of which Android is apart of. Its 60% US Market share could be a determining factor in the US although they do have a clear unobstructed competitor in Android - time will tell as rulings from current investigations & trials get handed down. Of course it's not illegal to have a monopoly, only if its dominant Monopoly power position is abused for anti-competitive purposes, typically for creating a monopoly in a different market, but there are a few other abuses.

I've switched between iOS and Android before. What's the big deal?

Saying something is or is not a monopoly is distracting from what actually matters. It's deflecting.

Anti-competitive behavior can be illegal all by itself. Price fixing is one obvious example but there are plenty of others.

If you got the monopoly without doing anti-competitive behavior, such as by simple having a better product or by getting lucky and having competitors that all made stupid mistakes that sunk them, your monopoly may be legal.

Cable companies and cell companies should be hoisted up next.

If one company actually had a monopoly on windshield wipers for cars and another had a monopoly on windshield wipers for trucks, that doesn't change just because there is somebody who has both a car and a truck. When you need windshield wipers for your car, there is still only one place you could get them.

- Sent from my android

FB is being used by foreign powers to shape US elections, and you think Apple is the biggest problem here?

https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/06/microsoft-store-revenue-share...

But still 30% for XBOX/games where they once again have market power in that market.

Antitrust action has never required the lack of an alternative.

> FB is being used by foreign powers to shape US elections, and you think Apple is the biggest problem here?

Apple is being used to attack democracy campaigners in Hong Kong, mainland China and Belarus, and has a long history of attacking sexual minorities and sex education efforts.

Yes, Apple is 100% the biggest problem here.

I would love to see some sort of regulated 10% rake cap on digital marketplaces (both mobile and gaming) and ticket sales. Note that this would apply only to games being distributed through the platform owner's marketplace, and that consumers would be allowed to install by right software from other sources as well.

There is no right "non-suspicious" timing for this type of scrutiny.

"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."

It's wild to me that this is even a question. A lawsuit like this a couple weeks before the election from a DOJ which might not exist in 4 months is nakedly political. Why is anyone taking this seriously?

I mean, Amazon definitely has issues, but apart from some incredibly good acquisitions and sharp business practices, I don't see the anti-trust case against Facebook.

Full disclosure: I own one share of FB.

The rent-seeking by Google + Apple seems pretty clear to me.

It's incredibly successful because of the FB acquisition, so I'm not sure what the anti-trust concern is.

Now, Whatsapp is a completely different matter, and that should probably never have been allowed to happen (and if Whatsapp had been popular in the US, I'm not sure that it would have been).

A reasonable thought on the surface, but this has been pushed by many people on both sides of the aisle, including Elizabeth Warren.

Ie lots of people pushing a change, not pushing a theory.

"He [Barr] 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."[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/technology/google-antitru...