I sort of agree, but part of me also thinks that if a company builds the world's best mobile OS and search engine and ad platform and video streaming service and internet browser and mapping service... well, good for them! They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it.

It's different if a company like Google establishes its dominance via one great product (search) and then wields that power to artificially protect its other lines of business through e.g. contracts, the same way Microsoft did with OEMs.

Sure, nothing "illegal" about it, but ultimately, it fits the de facto understanding of antitrust being about "consumer welfare." A company leveraging its dominance in one business to exert control over others =/= a company having success because it built the best products.

Except they purchased their way into many of these.

Their advertising business was built on a number of acquisitions (DoubleClick, AdMob) - strategic acquisitions, surely, and they improved on them since - but it is not as if they bult the business from the ground up. The same goes for video streaming (YouTube - after attempting to create their own), and mobile OS (Android).

With Android in particular it can be argued that it would not be what it is today without them, but they also heavily leveraged their other services to promote and maintain control over Android.

> Except they purchased their way into many of these.

They did. But youtube.com wasn't that big when they bought it. In fact by definition most of the things they bought (like maps.google.com) weren't big. The obvious corollary is Google is very good buy scaling something up while keeping it rock solid.

And, they are. Examples of original things that did come out of Google are Kubernetes, the Site Reliability Engineering Handbook, and pulling off something I thought was impossible: Spanner, a global distributed ACID database. From what I can tell they have constructed the fastest, most reliable distributed computing platform on the planet.

They are the Toyota's of the computing landscape: nothing particularly outstanding in any particular model of car, the secret sauce is the infrastructure and processes they've developed to manufacture those cars that ensures they are both cheap and reliable. And so it is with Google. They aren't particularly good at coming up with new products. In fact they often buy them. But then those products get moved onto best computing infrastructure on the planet. If the products are any good, they seemingly grow without effort to become a dominant player.

> youtube.com wasn't that big when they bought it

YouTube then wasn't then anything like it is now, but it was by far the largest video website of its type. I felt like they bought it because Google Video failed to compete with it.

I see this oft repeated comment about Google acquiring YouTube, DoubleClick and Android. Yes they did. But the companies they acquired were tiny upstarts, which might have even died on their own. Google built them into what they are today, and deserve 90% of the credit for their current significance.

The same applies to FB and Instagram as well, fwiw. Though imo, not as much for WhatsApp, which already had 400MM users and would have organically reached 1B+ users on its own.

YouTube was delivering an average of 100 million video views per day in July 2006, months before the Google acquisition for $1,650,000,000 that same year. It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup."

Likewise doubleclick was HUGE in the ad space I remember seeing all the doubleclick.com urls in slow page loads

How many views per day does YouTube now deliver per day?

>It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup."

YouTube had 65 employees when they were acquired.

I do agree that they were not a startup. This word should only be used for companies that are starting up; getting their legal structure together, hiring, and initial R&D. Once you are offering widgets (ad space), you are no longer a startup. Profitability is immaterial to startup status.

Why does the number of employees matter? If anything that's a testament to how valuable they were, to be able to do so much with so little.

It doesn't. My comment was about the word tiny" and 65 is tiny especially when compared to Google.

And Instagram had like what... 8?

Not every company that's successful and has millions of users needs to have a bloated org

WhatsApp had 55 employees before FB acquisition

I'm sorry are you joking? You do realize DoubleClick had it's IPO 10 years before Google bought them?

YouTube saw the writing on the wall early - Google's capital allowed them to scale without paywalling or drowning viewers in advertisements like they are now.

The Android acquisition is a redherring - manufacturers started adopting Android en mass because it was royalty free(ish) and they had to compete against Apple's new app store mostly with feature phone OSes entirely unfit for the job.

Neither Youtube nor Google's selfless "donation" to the consumer electronics industry would have been possible without the ad business. IANAL but that looks like textbook predatory pricing (and in Android's case, can't be defended by pointing at Apple, since they don't participate in the smartphone OS market).

The power that Google used to build those other lines of business was not artificial, but it was very effective. The existence of that power is anti-consumer because no one else can afford to build anything better, because Google makes more money than your hypothetical new world's best product ever by charging absolutely nothing for their competing product.

Step 1, in 1997, was to build the world's best search engine.

Step 2, was that running the world's best search engine allowed them to create an ad network that most accurately knew what the largest number of viewers were looking for, best ad platform and massive revenue. All others follow from that.

Steps 3 and on were to start an email service (what are people talking about), create an image search tool (shows what pictures people are looking for), acquire/develop a mapping application (where are people and where are they going), acquire a video hosting platform (what are people watching), create a mobile OS (get more people on the Internet and especially on their parts of it), create a web browser (get more people on the internet and especially on their parts of it), etc. etc. etc. Those other properties only work because they're financed by and create value for Google's ad network.

It sounds like you want to punish them for being successful. I still haven't seen the harm to the consumers. They build search and ad networks and email and android. I use them all the time. I now have access to youtube and infinite amount of information on it on my fingertips.

> I still haven't seen the harm to the consumers.

IMO the main problem is the existence of an institution that is (arguably) more powerful than any government in the world.

That's not necessarily a problem on its own.

It becomes a problem when those same institutions have a very small number of people with specially concocted classes of shares that give people like Zuckerberg majority control of the company despite owning < 30% of actual shares.

I don't want to live in a world where 1 person can have such immense and unchecked power. Especially when that 1 person is immune from, for example, being removed as CEO.

I'm not sure if it's still the case today, but I believe Sergy / Larry had 51%+ control of the company despite only owning ~10% of shares.

> IMO the main problem is the existence of an institution that is (arguably) more powerful than any government in the world.

Which is why the US government has been collecting all the data they can from google. It's a perfect means to perform mass surveillance on everyone and google has no power to refuse to hand that data over or even to tell anyone about it.

if we allow that this combination of market power (search + ads + channels of distribution like youtube, android) wld lead to mass surveillance, what prevents other companies from arising and abusing this power? Other countries would hv to go along. I don't think trading Google dominance outside the US for Baidu solves anything.

I guess if google went full evil they'd have enough blackmail material to take down just about anybody at this point including politicians. The backlash if they were caught would be huge, but honestly what would we do about it? Switch to Bing who is just hoping to get enough data on us to do the same (and leveraging data collected from our own PCs to do it)?

They only way I can think of to solve this would be to limit the amount of data that companies are allowed to collect, but can we expect the government to vote for that until google does start to abuse what they have on us? Right now they can take that data and benefit from it as well.

> It sounds like you want to punish them for being successful.

People are worried by their power.

Too much power is dangerous.

Google works at global scale, if even the US want to stop them from becoming even more powerful there must mean something.

If you think about it the NBA draft was invented to avoid that the best team chose the best players year after year

It's what you call "punish their success"

I cal it "enable competition"

Facebook came after google, and managed to compete in ad business, got orkut and google+ discarded pretty quickly. Playing devil's advocate here, but doesnt that prove that no matter how big/powerful you are, some random kid could still take you down. Look at Big 3 and Tesla...etc

Facebook ad business have become a thing after an enormous amount of money have been poured into the company

Google is king of the keywords (products and services), Facebook is king of targeting (brand awareness)

But they are not really competing against each other on the contrary the gap is widening

Google made 61 billions more than FB in 2018 and 65 more in 2019

That's why FB is moving towards a marketplace based on their own cryptocurrency

People who produce content for YouTube and have had content - or entire channels - removed for no good reason might disagree.

Also, there's the issue of public trust. We have no choice but to trust Google not to skew its search results. It's not obvious this trust is justified.

Google can literally make individuals, companies, and events disappear from the Internet. You can put up your site or your business and if Google removes you from search you might as well not exist.

A moment's thought will suggest that this is exactly the same as the YouTube problem, but on a larger scale. And that's an unhealthy amount of power for a corporation that isn't subject to any oversight or accountability.

> charging absolutely nothing for their competing product.

Most people prefer this. What you're suggesting is to subsidize the rich by removing free products thus making everyone share the costs for the premium services.

I.e., this is not a local maximum preventing the global utopia of premium services for the rich. The current design serves the world better than that exclusionary, elitist dream. (Though the market is actually open for such elite products as well, when the rich actually want to pay their own fees; Hey.com is a thing.)

In no way am I suggesting that we "subsidize the rich". I'm suggesting that we do the opposite, that we restrict and regulate the richest monopolies (Google) to preserve freedoms for the poor.

We're very much at risk of being a world in which people either have to be rich or not participate in society to avoid privacy invasion by companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. If you're poor, you can have a free email address, but that comes at a cost of allowing Google to read your email (and pass it to their ad customers) so they can serve you ads. The answer to this hegemony is not "Well, Google provides free email addresses, better let them keep doing what they're doing so we don't discriminate against the poor", it's to regulate them so they're not allowed to read your emails, or otherwise provide some alternative service that can provide email addresses for cost plus a small profit margin.

And yes, I know that in this particular example there are other free or inexpensive email providers, but they're not world-dominating products; the market is distorted because the few willing to pay are signalling something pretty strong by rejecting the free, high-quality option offered by Google.

> If you're poor, you can have a free email address, but that comes at a cost of allowing Google to read your email (and pass it to their ad customers) so they can serve you ads.

Google doesn't show ads based on email contents.

"When you open Gmail, you'll see ads that were selected to show you the most useful and relevant ads. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated. These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google. We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads."

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

This is a relatively recently change.

Why would Google continue to provide free emails if this has no benefits for it? Even if it continues because it has already paid most of the cost and the small marketing benefit will be worth the maintenance, it will not develop the product further. This also sends a signal to all the economy that success will be punished, creating distorted incentives and huge deadweights. The reality that you advocate is very much giving the elites what they want, with little innovation and choice power for ordinary people.

> otherwise provide some alternative service that can provide email addresses for cost plus a small profit margin.

As I said, for email specifically, because we already have the necessary interop, there are solutions such as hey.com. What more do you want?

PS: It's much more efficient for your government to just subsidize open-source solutions based on their usage levels.

> part of me also thinks that if a company builds the world's best mobile OS and search engine and ad platform and video streaming service and internet browser and mapping service... well, good for them!

We don't know if they make the best services. Perhaps there would be much better mobile OS or search engines made by others, if it were not for Google's dominant position discouraging new entrants or crushing them in their infancy.

I dont think one can cal Android worlds best mobile OS - one that had most money dumped on it to make the abomination usable, sure. Most pushed by a cartel (Open Hedste Aliance) mobile OS - definitely. But definitely not the best.

They became world dictator fair and square!

^ this guy gets it! IBM PC dominance didn't mean much when OS became the thing. And Windows PC OS dominance didn't mean much when web became the thing. Search dominance (which is one way of interacting with the web) didn't mean much when social/eCommerce (other ways) became a thing. FB missed messaging (is messenger a thing?). What are we doing here? can we just focus on figuring out digital privacy and call it a day?

> They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it.

No it's not. The best XXX run by a single company, is super-effective! Allowing it, we know from all of human history, is anti-consumer.

Except Google didn't build those things except search.

They bought Android in 2005, Youtube in 2004? and all of their other, non-search successes.

People say this as if the entire (or majority) of Android's success rests with what they initially purchased. In my opinion it has very little to do with that and a lot more to do with the billions of dollars invested into developing, extending the platform, creating and supporting APIs, establishing contracts with OEMs, developing apps, etc etc. Android wasn't some magic thing that anyone that purchased it would have been sure to be successful. Just look at how well MS did with Nokia's purchase.

So yes, Google did purchase Android but Google didn't purchase their mobile success story by purchasing Android.

The whole way that Google handled Windows Mobile was anti competitive imho.

They prevented Windows Phone users from being able to access Google Maps by checking User Agents.

They didn't release a native Youtube app for Windows phone, and when Microsoft wanted to make one themselves they restricted them to HTML5 and non-native access. This penalized battery life on Windows Phone platforms for 2 very large and important services.

Google got success with Android by frankly bullying every other viable competitor out of the market (Amazon Fire, Windows Phone) by again bullying in regards to play store services.

You realize that Amazon Fire is Android, right?

Didn't GMail start as a 20% project?

I don't know about Gmail, but Google Maps was originally one.

Was it? There is a lot of Keyhole in there too. And remember maps.* and local.* both existed for a long time.

You can't break the site guidelines like this. We've had to warn you more than once before. Would you please re-read them and stick to the rules?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

As for "the bias on HN"—when it comes to $BigCo arguments, it's very much in the eye of the beholder. The people with opposite views to yours (for example, who like G and dislike A) complain of exactly the opposite "bias".

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

But you're not cornered in. You might think they have a large influence over what is happening online (and they do), but you as an individual have a choice if you want to use the services they provide.

Also this large influence is additionally strengthened by the fact that no other company can offer services (above mentioned) that match the quality of the product Google is giving.

I can't speak to all of the points but when it comes to video hosting - no you don't. Content creators can't move off of youtube since it's more of a discovery service than a hosting service and it has locked viewers into its platform - it doesn't offer any way for dailymotion, vimeo, nebula, acorn, amazon, netflix, twitch or dlive to promote videos on their home page and due to their enormous market share content creators can't survive on any of the other platforms.

And, again with respect to video hosting there are plenty of very valid competitors technologically - with respect to search if you secretly rebranded google to bing I doubt anyone except the most techie would notice a difference - they win in search because everyone "googles it" - they used to win because alta vista, ask jeeves, lycos and yahoo were all trash, but now there is legitimate competition.

In regards to video hosting; Should they? When you go to Mcdonalds, should they provide (or be force to) the option for you to buy a Whopper, if not, why should YouTube be forced to? Nothing is forcing users or content creators to use the platform, they simple do because they know that is where the customer base is, and user know that is where content is.

And I agree that most "common" users could use Bing and not know the difference, but then again that destroys the U.S's whole case of a "monopoly" market.

Twitch, however, seems to be doing great without being able to advertise their videos on Youtube.

This is more of a discussion of walled gardens than typical monopoly abuse.

I'm pretty sure Youtube will overtake Twitch as a streaming platform within a year now. They have implemented the features they lacked a couple of years ago like premium subscriptions for channels. And since they advertise streams in your watch next recommendations in youtube you will get a lot of spontaneous people watching them easily, while you only go to Twitch if you specifically want to watch a stream.

Some video game streamers on youtube reach 50k+ viewers regularly and donations of $10+ just keeps raining in with that audience. That isn't any less than top Twitch streamers, and the Youtube will only grow since it is so much easier for people to discover Youtube streaming than Twitch streaming.

So really I don't see Twitch being a major player in a few years. There is no reason for content creators to stay with Twitch once youtube gives them a bigger audience and more money.

I think you make a very good point. I would add that in the short to mid-term, Twitch could also grow thanks to the pie getting bigger. Video streaming, I believe, is far from having peaked.

I agree - I think twitch is really failing to support the pre-baked video content though and that's a good way to hook new viewers.

If you're interested in some tips on a game and search for it (maybe "In game X I'm having trouble on this level") chances are you'll get some hits from youtube of people running the level as a walk-through - twitch highlights don't tend to be as indexed or as accessible since the metadata about what's actually in the video is a lot weaker by default.

Those hits on folks looking for a walk-through will end up with some conversions to stream subscribers and I think that's why Twitch is really destined to struggle.

From what I've heard from most streamers - Twitch is not competitive. The account banning rules are a lot less clear and the monetization isn't up to the level streamers can usually pull in from YT super chats. Additionally I think there's a bit of an issue in the fact that a lot of creators (streamers as well) will end up posting highlight videos or stand-alone video content to supplement their channel (i.e. someone playing fortnite might put together a guide on how to scavenge efficiently for newbies) and that video can end up driving traffic to their regular steams - but it'll only do that if the streams and the video are on the same platform (so a stream highlight on twitch will get twitch stream viewers while a video on youtube will get youtube stream viewers) - with the discoverability of regular videos being much higher on youtube it puts youtube in a stronger position.

Twitch is a streaming service, not a video hosting service. The amount of views the vast majority of vods get on Twitch is abysmal, and by default those vods are only kept for a minimal amount of time.

Youtube is attempting to move into Twitch’s space with live-streaming, but Twitch is certainly not competing with youtube as a video hosting product. Vimeo is the primary competitor there, and I have no idea how good a job they’re doing really.

Exactly I didn't always use Google I switched to their products because it was better than the competition; I used to use Yahoo mail but it sucked, so I switched to Gmail. I used to use Ask.com but it gave inferior results to Google Search. I have tried Bing and it was inferior so I continue to use Google Search. I use Android because its more open then the competition iOS.

When Google is not the best I don't use it. I use Audible and Kindle not Google Play Books. I use a opensource pod catcher I like rather than what ever the google android podcast app is. I use Open/LibreOffice rather than Google Docs. I have Chrome installed, but can't remember the last time I opened it as I much prefer Firefox as my daily driver because its superior in the measures I care about extensions, customization, and privacy.

Google only has me a as a customer as long as they offer me better service, if they don't I go elsewhere easily.

> you as an individual have a choice if you want to use the services they provide.

How would the common folk avoid Analytics or Ads?

Google benefits from me even when I visit completely unrelated websites.

Ad blocking software is very easy to install. Also the EU more or less already gave this to us for free with GDPR.

Use duckduckgo

They are the definition of a monopoly -- quality of service in the search space depends on the number of users who use your service (search trend data and tuning for page rank information) and your ability to crawl the web (which directly correlates with your financial resources). Once someone is on top of that space, only gross hilarious mismanagement could result in them going below 50% market share.

I don't buy this argument. You, as someone up-to-date on technology, have a choice. But if you think that the average middle-to-later aged individual has the knowledge to make this choice and avoid their influence, than I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

But why is that Google fault? Short answer, it's not.

> strengthened by the fact that no other company can offer services (above mentioned) that match the quality of the product Google is giving.

This is somewhat similar to TikTok's situation. There's currently no other company that can offer services that match the quality of the product TikTok is giving. The US government's solution? Force ByteDance to divest unless it wants to get banned. This is Big Tech protectionism, perfected.

In the same vein, the US is going to force Google to break itself into fragments. This can also be seen as a Big Tech protectionist measure, because Google has no incentive to improve its monopolistic byproducts. In fact, it routinely kills them. Spinoff companies of Google will compete with each other and undoubtedly yield much better (and pro-consumer) products, no matter which way you look at it.

1) best search engine

2) top online ad platform

3) top mobile OS

4) top video streaming service

5) top internet browser

6) top mapping/navigation service

Okay, you listed 6. What should the law say is the new limit for how many they should be able to have?

Reminds me of "Life of Brian"

REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!

XERXES: The aqueduct?

REG: What?

XERXES: The aqueduct.

REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.

COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.

LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?

REG: Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.

MATTHIAS: And the roads.

REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--

COMMANDO: Irrigation.

XERXES: Medicine.

COMMANDOS: Huh? Heh? Huh...

COMMANDO #2: Education.

COMMANDOS: Ohh...

REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.

COMMANDO #1: And the wine.

COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah...

FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.

COMMANDO: Public baths.

LORETTA: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.

FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.

COMMANDOS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.

REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

XERXES: Brought peace.

REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!

It's not the number that OP is arguing, its this:

> Their assets give them undue and unsupervised influence over a very big chunk of what's happening online. This gives them ability to control big part of collective human consciousness, across languages and borders.

Agreed, that’s an overly reductionist way of seeking a resolution.

I say focus on worker capture.

The only “market” Adam Smith mentioned is a free labor market, which is free by its ability to move between offers fluidly.

We have that to an extent in tech but not really and it’s hardly pervasive.

If the problem is the billions to influence culture, IMO its employee culture spend that’s the biggest downside to monoliths.

Wealth-caring becomes the corporate mantra. Or Jesus in the old days. It’s clear there is a biological addiction to privatized monoliths boxing in agency to fetishizing the monolith, by tickling our limbic brain just right and repeating “New trend we’re selling!” all day.

Let’s not let them do that, but let people work.

Actually, they said,

"I do have a problem with them being the best [six things], at the SAME time."

It's reasonable to read that as the OP thinks the number should be less then 6.

Yes, they also said other things, but I think I'm giving them a fair read of that sentence.

It's not in the number of the products, it's in the scale of each of those products and the influence that they give them.

What should the law say is the new limit for the scale and influence they should be able to have?

Well if you look at the Sherman antitrust act I imagine the answer is whenever the scale and influence starts to touch on things that act says is a no go.

Obviously that's a bit over simplistic but probably a good place to start.

Are there any anti-competitive behaviors they have engaged in w/r/t #3, #4, #5, and #6 or would this just be punishment for punishment sake?

I remember browsers before Chrome and Firefox. They were terrible. I'd love to see why Google should be punished for making a good product. I'm open to a good explanation.

Same for Youtube. I cut my cable because we now get all our entertainment from Netflix and Youtube. We dont get locked into 2yr cable agreements, dont get magical regulatory recovery fees, $100 of charges, and stations that disappear (e.g., Disney on Fios). I'd hate to lose it just because the product is too good

Also for youtube, how many people are now able to make a living producing content which they fully own and have control over the means of distribution?

I love the fact that the Youtube ideal has let independent creators make so much good content for the world. And after some haggling, Youtube has let the creators retain full ownership.

But the various de-monetization and search algorithm changes show that Youtube retains full control over distribution (and ability to make said living). The creators are totally at the mercy of Youtube and their advertising.

Imagine if there were Utube, Vtube, and Wtube, and a creator could shop around for the best placement and ad deal. It would not be better for the viewer (more like which network now has my favorite show, and do I have to subscribe to all 3), but it would be better for the creators.

Come to think of it, I'm surprised Netflix hasn't gone after some of the big YouTube channels or that Patreon hasn't expanded into curated video hosting. Imagine if Netflix Community had 100's of what we now call Youtube channels--all the respectable ones and none of the dreck.

>> Imagine if there were Utube, Vtube, and Wtube, and a creator could shop around for the best placement and ad deal.

Except there is already a Utube, Vtube, and Wtube and they have been around for 50 years. They are called ABC, NBC, CBS, and there are also like 50 others.

You can "shop around" your product to them, but you have to:

1. Have to gone to the right schools to meet decision makers

2. Have the right connections

3. Not be a minority (there is literally almost no diversity in the industry amongst decision makers.)

I publish on YouTube. There is no way I could publish on ABC, NBC, CBS, Disney, or almost any other broadcast service. Even though I meet criteria 1 (ivy league degree), I dont have the connections and "dont have the look"

Before we burn down YouTube, can we step back and consider how much YouTube has enabled people? Can we also see the very obvious ulterior motive the MSM has to dislike YouTube?

Clearly, I was mimicking the TV network model in my proposal, but the "Utube" naming was meant to imply they all follow the YouTube model (free video hosting website) not become broadcast media with all the elitism that entails. There would be 3 choices when you create your own videos, each offering different ad/placement deals (as opposed to accepting YouTube's or perish).

As the sibling comment states, Twitch is an alternative, but I think that however big the gaming and live video market is, it doesn't generalize to most YouTube content. I'm not sure if Vimeo has ever reached the same level, every time someone on HN mentions them, a creator has said they tried and got no traction/views on Vimeo.

Patreon is odd, they host some exclusive content, but it seems nearly all creators retain their YouTube channel for discovery and Patreon is mostly for processing the donations. I guess in a way, they have siphoned off some YouTube functionality, taking the cream off the top (paying subscribers), and letting YouTube do the expensive part of hosting the content.

I suppose that short of the feds swinging the anti-trust hammer and breaking YouTube into 3 equal companies that compete in the same market, the YouTube monolith is here to stay by market forces alone.

But a creator can? There's Vimeo, Twitch, and Patreon to name the big ones that come to mind.

Youtube has real issues with de-monetization and search algorithms that should be addressed in some way, but I don't see how it's anti-competitive that they have built a platform that attracts tons of viewers, nor that they've found a way to monetize those viewers.

I do like to point out that whatever shenanigans YouTube is doing with their discoverability and promotion features, they still provide unlimited lifetime 8K video hosting for free. And that's a pretty good deal.

Not only that, they allow anyone to become a publisher. You can be poor, you can live overseas, you can be a minority, you can have no connections -- and you still get to publish on YouTube -- and if you are good, they even send you traffic.

Now show me another major media network that allows that.

Yes, it’s called dumping, and it’s illegal to do this to expand a monopoly.

Dumping is only bad if it is temporary. Otherwise, it's called a natural monopoly.

Good question.

These are questions we possibly should have asked in the 60s or 70s with the Automakers.

Heck, let's think about THAT for a moment. When we look back at history we see that the big 3 took a number of anticompetitive actions over the years while managing to usually avoid government action through careful planning. (GM at times would hold back products in those decades, knowing if they went over a magic number of market share it was bad news.)

But look at the RESULT. Look at 2008. Look at the future of self driving cars and the future of the trucking industry.

By letting large monopolies run unchecked, they embed their ways of dependence into society such that impacts can be felt for generations.

Maybe its not about the number but what the damage is.

Edit: hit reply early, sorry.

The big 3 managed to get taken down by the factors of the oil embargo and the growing Asian auto industry, but we still felt the effects I listed above.

And, to that end, its worth restating that GM specifically tried to 'avoid' fitting the government definition.

So put a tax on bigness equal and opposite to its negative externality. Put the tax revenue in a rainy-day fund for whole-economy stimulus after market crashes.

Think about it like this: what are the chances any other competitor will be able to challenge those products and succeed?

If some other innovative company “started in a garage” or whatever does challenge one of those, Google has the power to kill it before it becomes a threat, cripple it while they copy the technology or poach the development team, acquire the company with a truckload of money, etc.

So in the end, Google will always come out on top, and consumers will always be stuck with them. The only remedy to that situation is government intervention.

This is often repeated, but historical evidence does not support it.

Today, Google shares the majority of it's presence in online ads market with Facebook.

Did Google try to "kill" facebook? Yes, they tried super hard in 2011 with the launch of Google+. And that completely flopped and now Facebook is a major rival for Google.

If we look at Facebook - facebook probably tried to kill snapchat and tiktok, major rivals to Instagram, and look how well those services are doing.

Microsoft couldn't stop iOS or Android.

The list goes on...

I think a competitor could rise by doing the same thing tech giants do. Start small in a unrelated niche than with the success in that niche enter other sectors until you can compete with Google.

One is plenty. Especially if "OS" is in the list. Microsoft in the 90s, and Apple and Google today have all used their OS supremacy to quash competition... quite often in extremely questionable ways.

Assigning an arbitrary number in a law like this is ridiculous. So 1 under you're good, and 1 over that you're suddenly a law breaker?

Furthermore, as other point out, how do you even objectively count these categorized "things" correctly?

Even once you do have a number of "things" specified in a law, and this is somehow "objective", remember that objective reality cannot be perceived outside of the lens of the subjective.

Therefore, your honor, your laws on blood alcohol level when driving are asinine and I rest my case.

They all feed off each other and that's a problem. When iOS was taking off, Google was legit worried about their search dominance being threatened. That's why they paid Apple top dollars to replace Bing as the default search engine on iOS. Same reason why they bought Android to make sure Apple doesn't get to dictate terms. Also the reason why they built Chrome. All of this made sure they have the most eyeballs and the data to train their search models better and better and better. If you look at history of Standard Oil, you'll see a similar pattern. Antitrust regulations were invented when people saw how this perfectly logical combination of actions could accumulate so much power.

I sure hope anti-trust law makes a distinction between good business decisions (that build moats around your business and allow you to not become obsolete and be outcompeted) and anti-competitive decisions. Or are we going to say now that pretty much any good business decision is anti-competitive if it's about trying to not lose market dominance?

The same antitrust law that dictated breaking up AT&T and Standard Oil (among others): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Mo...

I don't think breaking up AT&T was a success story. Instead of a national monopoly, you got regional ones and a long-distance provider. It was all still very over-pried and silly. The situation didn't improve for consumers until cell phone plans got close to the price of landlines.

It's not like they are content dominating just those verticals. Agriculture anyone?

https://x.company/projects/mineral/

It's not about the number, it's about how much influence other society one company should have.

If we're not careful we may simply lose democracy to corporations. Some argue that it might already be too late.

I read this with "best" implying a product they choose to use and "top" implying more like "inescapable".

isn't all six combined into one giant Monster? each one of these six also feed off each other. that's scary. isn't it?

Lets say 1.

The divisions are arbitrary.

A search engine is a number of components - e.g. a crawler, an index, and a user interface.

Why should one company be able to own all three of these? Why not just one? Perhaps crawling should only be able to be sold as a wholesale commodity.

What is the exact point that a crawler needs to be decoupled (at the corporate level) from it's front end? Is it measured by MAUs? Pages scraped? Or is it going by "it can be decoupled, so it should".

The extreme version of your argument would have companies own the IP to a particular for loop's iterator variable name.

Indeed.

“My” argument is a generalization of the argument people are making that Google should only be allowed to operate “one” service.

So the ad business, which generates all the revenue is split off from everything else. All the various services including search die b/c they can't self sustain and all that's left is an ad platform akin to the former double click scenario. Now what?

Bing becomes the number one search engine.

one seems about right

Then government shouldn't have allowed them to buy YouTube back then. So Google might ask -- why it was legal to acquire YouTube back then, but now it's illegal.

We need to seriously reconsider SEC rules for approving acquisitions.

Law’s official motto is also “In God We Trust”, can you define God?

I happen to think it should not be the motto of the United States. In part because I don't think the Government should be trying to define what God is or is not.

"I think Google is the best search engine."

The OP is arguing that this case is about default settings, similar to the Microsoft case.

In practice, someone else is deciding what is the "best" search engine for the vast majority of users, as these users never change default settings.

It is arguable Google is paying millions of dollars to remove choice, and the question of what is the "best" search engine. If there were no "search from the address bar" or other "built-in search" with Google set as the default, what would happen. Would users choose Google. We cannot know because Google's distribution agreements have foreclosed the issue. Even if we all agree users would choose Google anyway, because it is unquestionably "the best", this does not explain why Google, with its monopoly on search, pays millions to become the default.

Because the use of a search engine has been made a matter of "settings", e.g., address bar as search box, and not a conscious choice, e.g., typing the address of a search engine, Google's distribution agreements have removed user choice. The choice of search engine has already been made for them.

It is like crapware that comes pre-installed on computers. One can argue users make a "choice" whether to use these programs or not, but the choice of whether to install them in the first instance has been removed, in exchange for payments. Sometimes the distributors make it difficult or near impossible to remove these programs, assuming a user even knows how to remove programs.

Thanks to Google's negotiations with distributors, in order to "not use Google search", users have to change "settings". Generally, relatively few people ever modify settings. Hence there is a certain permanence to "settings". Companies pay millions to become the "default". There is nothing inherently "illegal" in making such agreements. However when the company paying millions to become the default already has a monopoly, then we have to question what is the true purpose of these distribution agreements.

Scope and scale don't transition into being a problem until they begin to behave with a political (or religious, or...) bias and work to influence their customers in ways outside of providing value. Your phone company, auto manufacturer or favorite restaurant chain should want to provide value regardless of their customers' politics.

It's definitely crossing a line for them to covertly influence the political leanings of their customers.

Any decision they make can be classified as "influencing political leanings". If they just serve you content that you agree with, that's influencing your political leaning by reinforcing your beliefs (IMO this is what Youtube already does). If they serve you any other content, unless it's random and therefore useless, then anyone can claim they are influencing political leanings. In fact, any company whose business model includes providing information can be claimed to "influence political leanings" since that's as well-defined as saying "adds information". So a library also falls under this, as does Netflix, and Spotify, etc.

I agree, which is why I specifically said 'covertly'. Netflix and Spotify suggest movies and music they think you'll like, and they tell you they are doing so. Their recommendation engines add value.

When I search Google, there is no disclaimer that they are slanting the results to match their political leanings in order to influence me away from mine.

> This kind of power for a good reason has been historically reserved for elected governments, made accountable to the people.

I actually think that if the current government administration (or any administration really) had power over search, news and YouTube, it would be more abused than under Google.

It is my firm belief that companies will be larger and have more influence than (all) countries (combined).

It’s also possible that the groundwork has been laid already with Google, Facebook, and Apple (along with other non-tech companies).

IMHO every dollar you spend is more of a vote than the political votes.

> This kind of power for a good reason has been historically reserved for elected governments, made accountable to the people.

IMO, not even governments should have this kind of power. The same way we desperately needs to break big companies, we also need to stop big governments.

I think all of those things are fine, in isolation, but it's pushing them all into the big draw, which is the search engine.

Putting their own hotel/rental metasearch above the fold on mobile when searching for a hotel.

Buying ITA and freezing out other users.

If they had the kind of control over the human consciousness that you're suggesting they probably wouldn't be in the position of being sued by the federal government in the first place.

So what's the solution?

Impose laws that don't allow Google to share information between their services/products?

Break out Google into independent companies.

The antitrust law already exist.