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This is actually pretty explosive news. Several of the ongoing antitrust cases involving the tech giants would require a more relaxed definition than the curren

This is actually pretty explosive news. Several of the ongoing antitrust cases involving the tech giants would require a more relaxed definition than the current antitrust standard which necessitates linking direct consumer harm. This standard was established by a somewhat radical pro-free market court decision that reversed an earlier interpretation that viewed monopolies in and of themselves as a condition subject to antitrust litigation (without the direct consumer harm piece). The current definition poses an almost insurmountable challenge for regulators as all companies need to do in order to avoid meeting the statutory requirements for antitrust is to refrain from colluding and/or abusing their market dominant position (engaging in anti-competitive practices). It seems like Google and Facebook crossed that line in a pretty blatant way which is quite shocking considering they are fully aware of the consequences. They opened themselves up with this one in a way that could lead to their undoing. Crazy stuff.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Google and Facebook crossed that line in a pretty blatant way which is quite shocking considering they are fully aware of the consequences If they're stupid enough to do this there's a lot more candy in the sofa.
- reilly3000 6y ago
  More than you know. Break down the ad auction, DFP, ad exchange, Adsense, and see what insanity they have been calling business as usual. There are so many ways they’ve stole from the rest of the ad business with monopoly practices. This goes back to Atlas and why there is no such thing as a pure play ad server. Header bidding was the last best hope for democracy in the ad marketplace, but has killed the mobile webs batteries, bandwidth, and paved the way for AMP, which is another de facto ad monopoly. I ran ad ops at a header bidding outfit serving in the 10 figure impressions each month. You’d see pubs be ecstatic to have 30% of their ad revenue be non-Google, with most closer to 90-100% sold, served, and tracked by Google. They have the world’s most complete record of the thoughts of humanity for the past 20 years. They sell audiences of all ages to the highest bidder, take an auction fee, fees for ad placement tools, fees for ad selling tools, exchange fees, data fees, platform fees, mandatory minimums on giant contracts, and virtually no support. It’s a monopoly over billions of dollars and trillions of minutes of people’s time. And it’s one hell of an AI.
  - pbourke 6y ago
    Can you explain how the public is harmed? I (think) I get the affect on various players in the ad ecosystem. Can anyone quantify the harm to the public?
    - calibas 6y ago
      This affects the whole online ad market, not just Google's competitors. That's a whole lot of "the public" that's directly affected. How do you quantify it? I don't know, how about we look at how much money Google is making?
      - pbourke 6y ago
        Is every dollar that Google earns a dollar of harm to the public?
        inetknght 6y ago
        Why can't it be? Every dollar of harm translates to more than a dollar of knock-on effects
    - jonahbenton 6y ago
      One has to have a theory of (public) harm. There are a bunch of them from a legal perspective, and maybe they will carry the day. They don't necessarily make sense from a non-legal colloquial perspective. From a non-legal perspective, one of the big harms (I would argue) is in the destruction of the business model for small ad-supported publishers. Google was taking 80% of money that should have gone to them, and digital and physical publishers (like local newspapers) have had a mass extinction. That said, out of the ashes, rises the phoenix. Substack and other subscription models owe their opportunity to Google's monopoly, and in many ways they're the mammals in this ecosystem of dying dinosaurs.
      - pbourke 6y ago
        > Google was taking 80% of money that should have gone to them This seems to presuppose an alternate universe in which Google doesn’t exist but ad revenue is the same?
slim 6y ago
there's this related thread by Cory Doctorow from last week https://mobile.twitter.com/doctorow/status/1336832819675316227 https://mobile.twitter.com/doctorow/status/13368328196753162...
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
I suspect they regard themself as 'too big to fail', in the sense that they might think that the practical implications of such a breakup would deter anyone from even considering this scenario.
- dkobran 6y ago
  Interesting, I have never heard this argument before. I don’t think there is a case to be made that the individual entities that make up Google or Facebook couldn’t operate independently. Google Search, G Suite, Google Cloud Platform, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. are all viable businesses in their own right. Many of them would still even qualify as “tech giants” eg WhatsApp is absolutely enormous with 2B monthly active users. In other words, a breakup wouldn’t result in failure and therefore wouldn’t satisfy the too big to fail criteria.
  - alexeldeib 6y ago
    At least for Google, it would be interesting how much technical effort that would require. I don't work at Google, but lets say some large subset of their systems runs on Borg. The cost of separating out GCP and Gmail for example could be quite large. Not that that's necessarily a legal defense, but the technical ramifications of a breakup are interesting.
    - bilal4hmed 6y ago
      Dont you run the risk of creating a super monopoly if Gmail, Maps, Youtube etc that are split dont survive. The only choice is Apple and maybe thats why they are so keen on this, because the govt hands them ultimate control
      - dkobran 6y ago
        Antitrust does not discriminate against a single company. If Apple is in violation of antitrust regulations either today or at some point in the future, regardless of how they got there, they would be subject to the same legal action. So no, theoretically speaking and practically speaking, this is not a risk.
deathgrips 6y ago
The case in the US would be around the market power of Facebook, Google and Amazon. That vertical merger case is being run by the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. The European Commission is also investigating the same three companies under its EU Merger Regulation rules. The EU competition enforcer has opened a case against Google for some e-commerce practices.
switch11 6y ago
Yes, They also do a lot more than this stuff like astroturfing click fraud fake submissions on forms etc They basically operate completely recklessly We are getting a lot of attacks from Google. I took screenshots just today of them doing fake submissions and they don't even hide it. From Google servers * Basically, their modus operandi is A) Silent Agreement between Amazon, Google, Facebook and a few other companies (not sure which) to divide internet among themselves B) Use any and all method to slow down any company growing fast Usually this is 'plausible deniability' methods such as removing apps from app stores, kicking you off your payment processor, dropping you in organic search, shifting your adwords to 90% fake clicks, etc C) If above methods don't work then they start using illegal methods i.e. modifying search results when people search for you hacking attacks using gmail to hide your emails to customers and/or not deliver your invoices to new customers click fraud on other ad networks (Bing, etc) fake submissions Contrast the HUGE number of enterprise side and B2B companies that are going public now compare with how few customer to business companies are doing the same * It's not random any customer facing company that is begining to do well has to face Google disappearing them from Search Facebook disappearing them from Facebook and Instagram attacks from a few other Silicon Valley Companies There is going to be A LOT of candy in the sofa It's going to be Snowden level stuff There will be a list of Top 10,000 companies to kill off and also Top 500 threats And there will be a playbook of all the methods to use to wipe them out There will be even totally crazy stuff like sending spy employees Trojen Horse VC Investments etc
dragonwriter 6y ago
> It seems like Google and Facebook crossed that line in a pretty blatant way Well, I mean, everything always seems blatant when you read the complaint in a lawsuit by itself. OTOH, there's a reason that the legal system doesn't just take the complaint and decide based on that.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> Google and Facebook crossed that line in a pretty blatant way which is quite shocking considering they are fully aware of the consequences If they're stupid enough to do this there's a lot more candy in the sofa.

reilly3000 6y ago
More than you know. Break down the ad auction, DFP, ad exchange, Adsense, and see what insanity they have been calling business as usual. There are so many ways they’ve stole from the rest of the ad business with monopoly practices. This goes back to Atlas and why there is no such thing as a pure play ad server. Header bidding was the last best hope for democracy in the ad marketplace, but has killed the mobile webs batteries, bandwidth, and paved the way for AMP, which is another de facto ad monopoly. I ran ad ops at a header bidding outfit serving in the 10 figure impressions each month. You’d see pubs be ecstatic to have 30% of their ad revenue be non-Google, with most closer to 90-100% sold, served, and tracked by Google. They have the world’s most complete record of the thoughts of humanity for the past 20 years. They sell audiences of all ages to the highest bidder, take an auction fee, fees for ad placement tools, fees for ad selling tools, exchange fees, data fees, platform fees, mandatory minimums on giant contracts, and virtually no support. It’s a monopoly over billions of dollars and trillions of minutes of people’s time. And it’s one hell of an AI.
- pbourke 6y ago
  Can you explain how the public is harmed? I (think) I get the affect on various players in the ad ecosystem. Can anyone quantify the harm to the public?
  - calibas 6y ago
    This affects the whole online ad market, not just Google's competitors. That's a whole lot of "the public" that's directly affected. How do you quantify it? I don't know, how about we look at how much money Google is making?
    - pbourke 6y ago
      Is every dollar that Google earns a dollar of harm to the public?
      - inetknght 6y ago
        Why can't it be? Every dollar of harm translates to more than a dollar of knock-on effects
  - jonahbenton 6y ago
    One has to have a theory of (public) harm. There are a bunch of them from a legal perspective, and maybe they will carry the day. They don't necessarily make sense from a non-legal colloquial perspective. From a non-legal perspective, one of the big harms (I would argue) is in the destruction of the business model for small ad-supported publishers. Google was taking 80% of money that should have gone to them, and digital and physical publishers (like local newspapers) have had a mass extinction. That said, out of the ashes, rises the phoenix. Substack and other subscription models owe their opportunity to Google's monopoly, and in many ways they're the mammals in this ecosystem of dying dinosaurs.
    - pbourke 6y ago
      > Google was taking 80% of money that should have gone to them This seems to presuppose an alternate universe in which Google doesn’t exist but ad revenue is the same?

slim 6y ago

there's this related thread by Cory Doctorow from last week https://mobile.twitter.com/doctorow/status/1336832819675316227 https://mobile.twitter.com/doctorow/status/13368328196753162...

MichaelMoser123 6y ago

I suspect they regard themself as 'too big to fail', in the sense that they might think that the practical implications of such a breakup would deter anyone from even considering this scenario.

dkobran 6y ago
Interesting, I have never heard this argument before. I don’t think there is a case to be made that the individual entities that make up Google or Facebook couldn’t operate independently. Google Search, G Suite, Google Cloud Platform, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. are all viable businesses in their own right. Many of them would still even qualify as “tech giants” eg WhatsApp is absolutely enormous with 2B monthly active users. In other words, a breakup wouldn’t result in failure and therefore wouldn’t satisfy the too big to fail criteria.
- alexeldeib 6y ago
  At least for Google, it would be interesting how much technical effort that would require. I don't work at Google, but lets say some large subset of their systems runs on Borg. The cost of separating out GCP and Gmail for example could be quite large. Not that that's necessarily a legal defense, but the technical ramifications of a breakup are interesting.
  - bilal4hmed 6y ago
    Dont you run the risk of creating a super monopoly if Gmail, Maps, Youtube etc that are split dont survive. The only choice is Apple and maybe thats why they are so keen on this, because the govt hands them ultimate control
    - dkobran 6y ago
      Antitrust does not discriminate against a single company. If Apple is in violation of antitrust regulations either today or at some point in the future, regardless of how they got there, they would be subject to the same legal action. So no, theoretically speaking and practically speaking, this is not a risk.

deathgrips 6y ago

The case in the US would be around the market power of Facebook, Google and Amazon. That vertical merger case is being run by the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. The European Commission is also investigating the same three companies under its EU Merger Regulation rules. The EU competition enforcer has opened a case against Google for some e-commerce practices.

switch11 6y ago

Yes, They also do a lot more than this stuff like astroturfing click fraud fake submissions on forms etc They basically operate completely recklessly We are getting a lot of attacks from Google. I took screenshots just today of them doing fake submissions and they don't even hide it. From Google servers * Basically, their modus operandi is A) Silent Agreement between Amazon, Google, Facebook and a few other companies (not sure which) to divide internet among themselves B) Use any and all method to slow down any company growing fast Usually this is 'plausible deniability' methods such as removing apps from app stores, kicking you off your payment processor, dropping you in organic search, shifting your adwords to 90% fake clicks, etc C) If above methods don't work then they start using illegal methods i.e. modifying search results when people search for you hacking attacks using gmail to hide your emails to customers and/or not deliver your invoices to new customers click fraud on other ad networks (Bing, etc) fake submissions Contrast the HUGE number of enterprise side and B2B companies that are going public now compare with how few customer to business companies are doing the same * It's not random any customer facing company that is begining to do well has to face Google disappearing them from Search Facebook disappearing them from Facebook and Instagram attacks from a few other Silicon Valley Companies There is going to be A LOT of candy in the sofa It's going to be Snowden level stuff There will be a list of Top 10,000 companies to kill off and also Top 500 threats And there will be a playbook of all the methods to use to wipe them out There will be even totally crazy stuff like sending spy employees Trojen Horse VC Investments etc

dragonwriter 6y ago

> It seems like Google and Facebook crossed that line in a pretty blatant way Well, I mean, everything always seems blatant when you read the complaint in a lawsuit by itself. OTOH, there's a reason that the legal system doesn't just take the complaint and decide based on that.