I’d really encourage people read the lawsuit. It’s long, but most of the reporting on it seems to be way too superficial and leads to people saying things like “they should split YouTube and Google search”, which really has nothing to do with the complaint…
curl https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66753787/1/united-states-v-google-llc/ \
|sed '1,/div id=\"opinion-content\">/d;/<pre>/s//<meta charset=utf-8 \/>&/;/<\/pre>/,$d' > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
Or feed the courtlistener.com URL directly to w3m or another text-mode browser.
This is probably going to have a lot less effect than what people are assuming it will have.
Google and Facebook have never had more competition in the Ad space. Apple and Amazon are building big Ad businesses fast. That's not the problem. The problem is they play both sides of the market and they dominate both sides of the market. Therefore they have a lot of pricing power.
This isn't the reason they are making 100s of billions a year. The reason they are making that amount is because they are the best at what they do and you can't find the service they provide any where else except Facebook and Google.
I do believe that the 're-targeting' Google can afford by having their assets on the majority of sites helps them maximise CPM, which would certainly be a problem for any alternate search engine who isn't interested in tracking people around the web/net. I can't remember specific figures but noted in the UK CMA report that Google generally makes twice as much as Bing on search ads (and worth bearing in mind that much of the rest of the entrants are essentially Bing meta search engines in the West)
But I agree they're certainly considered the best at search in many ways, though the increased CPM they make allows them to be made the default search engine of choice on most devices.
Becomes a bit of a chicken and egg problem when the most prominent search engine can reinforce its position as one.
Facebook and Google are really the only two ad platforms that I know off that you can really target ads to the people you want and you can build ads around those you are targeting instead of making generic ads like you see on other platform and TV.
It would open up some possibilities for actors in that space to shift the balance of (pricing) power a bit, but I’m unsure the impact will be huge. All the big new advertising platforms tend to own their whole stack like you mentioned (Amazon, Apple) and for good reasons.
I hope something comes of this, but other than a change in administration, what's new on this in the last decade? Hasn't Google essentially controlled most of online advertising for eons? In fact, perhaps more recently Facebook/Meta has chipped into that market more than how things were 8-10 years ago.
I was part of an acquisition that Google made in the ad-tech industry back in 2011 and there was a months long DOJ investigation before approving the purchase. The conclusion was it would not harm competition. Within less than two years our product was eliminated or folded into Google's and the staff scattered to the wind (inside and outside Google), and our customers became Google's customers. They've been doing this forever, back to DoubleClick, etc.
Is this timing connected in any way with layoff announcements? Or a general push by the Biden admin generally?
Not American, so not as informed about the ins and outs, and genuinely curious.
So largely, someone new, with new ideas, took over a regulatory body that has been coasting along on its lorals. The FTC will now behave non-traditionally, disregarding what has been a very consistent school of thought (defined by Yale Law School professor Robert Bork and University of Chicago Law School professors Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook) since the 1977 Continental Television v. GTE Sylvania Supreme Court Case redefined the Judicial Systems perspective on anti-trust, neutering the Sherman Act.
In 1978 Robert Bork wrote the book The Antitrust Paradox and Richard Posner wrote Antitrust Law, summarizing the previous decades shift in attitude towards government intervention in the marketplace. Khan believes the those three people influenced the government to become too lenient and hands-off, when it should have been doing more to protect the marketplace from harmful entities that threaten competitiveness.
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
For more context. A long but good read on the current FTC chairman.
Is this a puff piece? She's just some government employee - she doesn't produce anything. It remains to be seen whether her aggressive interpretation of antitrust law will actually benefit consumers. We can split up Google into 100 companies and then we'll find out that the bales of cash advertising produces are no longer subsidizing the less profitable services. Maybe you'll have to pay to upload to YouTube or you won't get 15 GB of free gmail space or Hangouts will require an enterprise plan. But it'll all be worth it because some other adtech company who cares even less about your privacy than Google will now be able to sell search ads?
But the idea of big tech being a wonder that unequivocally makes life better and doesn’t need oversight seems to be falling apart. Both for good (privacy) and bad (‘kill section 230!’) reasons.
Now both parties see the threat (albeit for differing reasons), but the federal government needs a lot of time to build a case like this, and Google is extremely adept at stalling for time.
During the EU investigation, Google waited every deadline to the final day, then asking for more time multiple times, and then finally on the last possible extension day tor respond would come back with a bull~~~~ one page "we don't think we broke this law" statement. They know the fine won't be nearly as big as the profits so they're running out the clock as long as possible. Every lawyer there knows they're crooks.
So that's interesting.
As the article points out, "preventing monopolies" is not the prima facie goal of antitrust law as traditionally interpreted. Monopolies are bad because of their effects on the market (e.g. they can raise prices higher than a competitive market would allow), not because of their "monopoliness".
There is a somewhat confusing quote in the article that implies that the DOJ is filing this suite in an attempt to get higher courts to revisit that standard. But then it finishes the paragraph with "put corporate America on notice", and I genuinely don't know whether that was the intent of the quoted prosecutor or not. This angle would be really big news if so, but... it seems poorly sourced.
(Full disclosure: I work at Google, but nowhere near advertising.)
That is absolutely what they are doing. The FTC has made it very clear they are taking a new approach.
The more modern interpretation has basically been "monopolies are ok if it lowers consumer prices", which sort of never made sense. Once you finish strangling all your competition, wouldn't you then raise prices? And then what, the government lets them do that until some vague line in the sand is crossed and we then actually enforce the law?
There are issues on the other side too - monopsony, where a company is so big they are the only nature buyer. You get this with Walmart being able to disproportionately squeeze their suppliers. You have this problem in labor markets sometimes because who else are you going to work for if your employer is super sized?
Lina Khan's writings, and the fact that Biden admin appointed her, indicates these recent assumptions about allowance of monopolies can probably be thrown out the window.
That's why you see this lawsuit, which you are right wouldn't have happened under former administrations. "there was a months long DOJ investigation before approving the purchase. The conclusion was it would not harm competition." And they were wrong, right?
I am not a pro-Biden sort of person (I consider myself to the left of Biden, by a wide margin), but the antitrust direction is encouraging. And hopefully will get some things done before he is out of office... we'll see.
> In a July 2021 executive order, President Joe Biden articulated the administration’s broad antitrust policy. That order instructed the antitrust agencies to increase enforcement to prevent a rise in consumer prices and competitive harm in labor markets, and preserve nascent competition. Additionally, in what the order calls a “whole-of-government competition policy,” it charged more than a dozen other agencies to protect competition using their authority under a range of statutes.
— "Biden’s Broad Mandate Has Altered the Antitrust Landscape, Making Merger Clearance Process Less Predictable" https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2022/01/2022-i...
That essay happens to be from from a corporate perspective that does not like that the administration has made mergers "less predictable"! I approve of making monopolistic mergers harder, but it's interesting to see it covered from the opposite bias. You can google for more, but another source, a brief American Bar Association update:
> Biden administration steps up antitrust enforcement: Antitrust enforcement in the Biden administration is about o change, according to Timothy Wu, who played a key role in the executive order President Joe Biden signed in July aimed at limiting corporate dominance and making American businesses more competitive...
> Wu serves as the Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy, National Economic Council. He is a key figure on the White House Competition Council, which was created in Biden’s executive order to bring a whole-of-the government enforcement effort to promote competition in the U.S. economy.
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...
In addition to the July 2021 memo, it can see in who he has chosen as appointees to key roles -- various people who have been pushing for stronger antitrust enforcement and new legal theories:
"Biden’s Antitrust Team Signals a Big Swing at Corporate Titans" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/business/biden-antitrust-...
Think less "EU fair practices violations" and more "Ma Bell breakup." The difference is that the EU lacks criminal authority (or jurisdiction or, like, an army to extrajudicially invade the United States) to jail Sundar Pichai, but the US absolutely could if the company is found to be an illegal trust and he fails to take steps to remedy the situation.
It's hard to know how big of an impact that had on them. They definitely stagnated and missed huge product opportunities like search, social, and mobile. But it's not clear whether they would have missed those anyway based on their business model and culture at the time.
Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league?
> The lawsuit said Google had “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising.”
Indeed, the original purpose of anti-trust laws was to prevent trusts and cartels--multiple companies collectively fixing prices and ensuring that no new entrants can compete.
Also, having a monopoly (even an absolution monopoly) does not automatically mean you are violating antitrust law. You had to do something anti-competitive to get that monopoly or be doing something anti-competitive to maintain it.
The easiest way to think about it is that US antitrust law is about preventing monopolization, not about preventing monopolies.
The relevant part is around paragraph 187, under the "Google Further Stunts Header Bidding by Working to Bring Facebook and Amazon into Its Open Bidding Fold" header.
Maybe relevant disclosure: I used to work for a company that was a launch partner of Facebook's Audience Network [2]. In a separate lawsuit in 2020, some state attorneys general claimed that Facebook's internal communications showed that FAN was just a smokescreen to get Facebook leverage to make a deal with Google. Oops, silly us.
[1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1563746/downl...
[2]: https://www.facebook.com/audiencenetwork/news-and-insights/h...
Being a monopoly doesn’t mean you have no competitors - it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something (ie that there was not enough competition for efficient pricing).
Does it? Then why isn't every App Store's 30% developer fee a much more obvious monopoly?
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.53...
I think that behavior should be broadly illegal on the basis that it’s tantamount to false advertising and extortion.
Google claims to be a search engine; if you search for something very specific and well known like Spotify, providing you a paid advertisement as the top hit is essentially fraud.
Also, is Google's ad tech or third-party ad tech better from a privacy point of view? A lot of people distrust Google, but why would they trust no-name third-party ad tech any more? Are there any online advertising companies that have a better track record on privacy?
It seems the anti-trust framework doesn't map very well to consumer concerns about advertising.
Good choice of words. I worked there, and in the summer, there were so many visiting groups of people that "theme park" was the very phrase I thought of.
It doesn't matter if Little Caesars pizza is the cheapest option, if there aren't any other pizza options, consumer welfare is severely negatively impacted because some consumers won't like Little Caesars.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg—despite being lionized by liberals—was an extremely pro-business justice who played a strong role in the Supreme Court siding with businesses in all but one antitrust case from 1995ish on. With her gone, I think this case may actually have a chance
I googled this because it seemed interesting.
The first two articles I looked up emphasize how little influence she had on anti-trust cases. At her hearing she said "Antitrust … is not my strong suit." It seems like she went along with other more experienced judges in this area such as Scalia or Breyer who is noted for being very business-friendly.
Where is your idea that Ginsburg was the lynchpin for weak anti-trust rulings coming from?
And although it's not necessarily a liberal vs. conservative issue, it would be deceptive not to point out that this is entirely because of the Republican justices.
Taking the position that market intervention isn't needed until consumer harm can be sufficiently demonstrated vs. market intervention is needed when any firm wields monopolistic power is a discussion about the role of government and what produces the best outcomes, not "look this side bad."
They'd have less bureaucracy, which might help them to innovate and move faster, and in different directions from each other.
Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter seems to have highlighted anyone with the greatest of intentions is never going to please everyone, and that choice and freedom to express that choice is good.
I dunno, wouldn’t that require assuming that Elon Musk had “the greatest of intentions”, as well as being a generalization to “never” from a single failure?
Imagine: A flight search engine as a marketing gimick starts a web search engine, and shows flight results if someone searches for "flights to ...". Seems like a good thing, no? It seems like no other flight search engine would have a right to complain about unfair competition here.
Do you have a citation for this? All I could find was that about 5% of searches end up with an ad click, but surely that means they need to show ads on way more than 5% of searches.
I stopped using Google search quite a long time ago. I'm pretty sure it was heavy on ads for most search queries.
Not that it will. I'll die before I let AI be used for advertising.
Then I started to see their little ads tricks and the story on how they "acquired" google maps aka terra vision and yes , wouldnt put it beyond them to use every trick in the book they can get away with.
I think you're thinking of Google Earth, and wasn't that story made up for a movie?
edit: wiki says[1] there actually was a lawsuit the miniseries was based on, but the accuser lost because they had actually taken someone else's ideas for Terravision and then turned around and patented it?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#Other_concerns
Google engaged im negotiations to buy the patents.
And the software was presented in kioto in 1994, way before anyone else.
Don’t worry, I felt made a fool of after watching too. The producers of Billion Dollar Code are weak for doing what they did, even if it makes the story better.
The German group presented the app at Kyoto, before anyone else did.
It appears at least to zooming tech was borrowed by google.
Google won in court, based on hearsay and date of patents.
I have to add, I have not even watched the movie, so my view should not be distorted, but I will give myself the unfiltered "based on a true story" as soon as I can.
So far, my opinion was based on reading about it, the blogs are often controversial, but I habe a tendency to conclude I will not trust Google on this matter for now.
They haven't been "limited" so much in the past as "unmotivated and inept," which has been changing over the last few years.
If you're actually interested in the changes, check out Matt Stoller's newsletter: https://mattstoller.substack.com
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/06/...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/06/...
https://www.axios.com/2023/01/24/egg-prices-gouging-ftc-inve...
Having FTC leadership that isn't insanely conflicted makes a difference.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/388069-ftc-names-lawye...
> Oil prices remained depressed for the rest of March. On 2 April, U.S. President Donald Trump, after significant internal pressure, called Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, threatening to withdraw U.S. military support if OPEC and its allies did not cut oil production.[33] The following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered energy minister Alexander Novak to prepare an extraordinary OPEC meeting and stated that global production could be cut by 10 million barrels. In response to Putin's statement, oil prices jumped.[34] Even with a 10 million bpd cut, the International Energy Agency estimated that global oil stockpiles would still increase by 15 million bpd. IEA's director, Fatih Birol, stated that 50 million jobs related to oil refining and retail was at risk globally.[35] US oil prices increased by 25% on 2 April, the biggest one-day increase in history. Brent oil increased to $32 on 3 April.[36]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Russia%E2%80%93Saudi_Arab...
Almost as soon as we became a net exporter, we joined in on everything we complained about others doing in the 70s.
Here's hoping the US government turns a new page and starts a new era of anti-trust breakups. Pretty much every industry has been destroyed by monopolies over the past 20-30 years with next to no enforcement.
Google has deserved this for a long time coming. AMP, Chrome, removal of ad blocking, defaulting to Google on Chrome and Android, strong arming of web standards...
The government only gets involved when there is some abuse.
Similar to Google paying Mozilla Firefox $400m+ per year or otherwise Chrome would be the only dominant browser on the market and scrutinized much more.