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Penny Arcade - Comic - Anti-Trust Issues
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Anti-Trust Issues
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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I can't even log into my account anymore. it doesn't take passwords
But arguing that Google has a monopoly on Search Engines is still pretty funny, objectively speaking they don't, and compared to Bing and Yahoo Search which seem to heavily filter results, they seem the least exclusionary.
I hate google for many reasons, mostly related to them shitcanning products people use willy-nilly, but I think they buy a lot of goodwill by making products that actually work well. They made some shackles, but they were the most lightweight around, with velvet lining and had some stretch in the links. They didn't totally fumble it like most every other company (I'm looking at you Microsoft) and make it obvious to everyone that you were going to use their products whether you liked it or not. It will probably happen eventually, but I still haven't seen them adopt the "fuck it, we're on top so now lets get lazy and wring every ounce of 'value' out of what we got" approach that is so loathsome.
I don't think most people deny that google has a monopoly or are a top player in a whole lot of things. I think the hard part is quantifying just how much they are an abusive monopoly.
See also my opinion on Valve and Steam. Yes, monopolies are bad and I understand that, but it's hard to work up a proper anger at someone who acquires a de facto monopoly by being so much better for customers than anyone else that they dominate the market.
And making exceeding products is much less hard if you can just throw tons of data in a neural network processed by larger server farms where regular engineers have to come up with smart alorithms.
Every now and then they have to make a show of doing something. If there's a long doldrum between controversies maybe they'll do a big drawn out inquiry like with Zuckerberg, and accomplish just as much (a bunch of apologies and updated ToS and other gestures that require no effort or change).
I think it's still pure self preservation. Google has enough power to decide elections. They may view it as a do or die moment. Break Google's power now, before they permanently subvert our democracy, and more importantly to them, jeopardize their careers. It's a tepidly bipartisan issue. At least for now. Probably won't last long before things polarize around it.
I think there's a very obvious reason why google is having an executive branch antitrust investigation opened on it at this particular moment.
You mean the report that equally recommended antitrust action on Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google? Oddly enough, only one of those four have been taken up by this administration. I wonder what the difference could be? Especially since Google (Alphabet) is the third largest fish. Really, it is impossible to figure out.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Yeah, to hear it from a couple progressive news outlets, they can basically cross out "Microsoft", write in "Google", and recycle the case the won in the 90's. One specific example I heard that slots in quite nicely with that precedent is Google paying Apple just oodles of money to make Google the default search engine on all iDevices.
As a consumer though, I like that they are powerful enough to keep each other in check as they move out of their own oligopolies--and sometimes apply pressure in these markets as well. Bing isnt even close to unseating google in search, but more than anyone else they forced Google to realize that they couldn't half-ass things and assume people would have no alternatives.
Maybe an ideal world, no dominant tech companies would exist, so no big companies would be needed to keep them in check. In practice, the nature of tech is that network effects, economies of scale, and synergistic knowledge/skills will drive a positive feedback loop for the most successful firms--meaning that even if you break up all the Microsofts, you just clear room for the rise of google.
More targeted regulation and consumer protections carry their own pitfalls, but they might be more sustainable as a long term fix
The cases got split. The DoJ took Google and Apple while the FTC got Facebook and Amazon. They’re all proceeding but of the DoJ’s 2 cases the one against Google is far simpler and more straightforward which is why it came out first. The FTC is still moving forward on their two also and we’ll hear from them too.
Citation needed.
(By someone who would actually know.)
Quoting Earl Long (Louisiana governor) from the 40's or 50's, when quizzed by a reported if he had ever bought a congressman: "I have *never* bought a congressman, sir."
*pause*
"Renting them's cheaper."
Antitrust law in the US goes back to the late 1800's, but the first really landmark cases were the Northern Securities Company (1902, tried to build a transport monopoly in the north west), Standard Oil (1911), and US Steel (1920, won their case).
Ma Bell getting split up came later (1982), and my understanding is that they were being obstructionist about carrying computer transmissions over the phone lines (basically they wanted to have control over any equipment connected to their system, and electronics companies didn't want to play ball), so various interests put pressure on the government to step in, causing AT&T to be split into the long distance phone carrier and a number of regional phone companies.
A salient reminder that the rent-seeking bullshit that eg: Apple inflict on their customers is by no means a new attitude.