Shit or get off the pot.
Didn’t Google already break up? It’s called Alphabet now.
DoJ is edging y’all too hard here
I will believe it when I see it
They have the concept of a antitrust breakup.
Agreed.
No f’in way this happens, especially not in the same week when Kamala Harris goes on national TV to say she’s a capitalist.
With that said, I still hope they try. It should be inconvenient at least to run a monopoly.
especially not in the same week when Kamala Harris goes on national TV to say she’s a capitalist.
You can rest assured that that is a meticulously prepared statement to curry favor and win elections in specific areas, and nothing to do with her personal ideology or how she will run things as President.
I’d love to believe that, but Democrats have ruled as pro-corporate assholes for 40 years now. The last Dem we had with the balls to oppose corporate rule was LBJ.
Look, I’m voting for Harris, and even as a leftist I’m half excited by it. But let’s not pretend a mainstream democratic party politician is anything other than a capitalist. She might have good policy ideas, ones that will genuinely help people, but she’s still a capitalist.
It should be inconvenient at least to run a monopoly.
The best our government can do is make mega corpos pay lawyers … So at least we got some extra jobs out of it 🤡
Since they are creating extra jobs shouldn’t government reward them with state aid for it?!
The trail went really really badly for Google. I know it’s trendy to be all nihilist with regards to government competence but they’d make way more other powerful corporations angry if they didn’t break up Google.
Considering
Investigating
Discussing
Will put forward a possibility of
Listen, its this government or we go with the GOP version where its just the MOVE bombing every couple of weeks, while the DOJ issues briefs about busting open a child’s testicles to get information out of his father.
Do Nothing or Do Something Awful. Those are your choices.
If they ruin Google Fiber I will personally de-bone every one of those motherfuckers.
Google saw this coming years ago. That’s why they restructured, clearly defining their different services, and became Alphabet.
As much as I want this to happen, I fear it’ll drag on for years and then never happen or end up watered down where they split the company and manage them independently (a bit like BT in the UK but still owned by Alphabet.
The last major antitrust action on this scale in the U.S. 8 years to process.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
This type of lawsuit is why the billionaire bro’s are backing the senile rapist and felon. Making them play somewhat fair ruins their business plan.
A major issue for the US is that when the president changes, the DOJ can simply elect to stop processing the suit. It’s hard to get 8 years of uninterrupted movement on an action like this.
Msft under W for instance.
A big part of the “Cheney family endorses Harris” push has been corporate flacks racking up favors with the Dem side of the aisle so Harris can replace her cabinet with people who are more business-friendly in the next term.
They’re playing both sides. This isn’t just “Trump Wins: Things Get Worse” / “Harris Wins: Things Stay The Same Amount of Bad”.
Yeah I will believe it when I see it. I’m not convinced that actual Teddy Roosevelt-style “trust busting” is something that is even possible in the modern US.
It might happen if Harris wins
Trump will probably give them more money to be a monopoly.
Apple and Amazon next please.
Frankly, Sinclair Broadcast Group needs to be shattered most urgently.
And Microsoft for monopoly reasons.
Add AT&T, Time-Warner, and all of the other ISPs that own streaming platforms for anticompetitive reasons.
Uhh, do Disney!
Microsoft again?
Fuck IE, the real removed is having a monopoly over running win32/64 apps and enterprise single sign on.
Ma Bell: “Just do a T-1000, pull yourself back together slowly over a decade or two.”
What exactly does Apple have a monopoly over? Or Amazon? Both have plenty of competition, while, let’s be honest, Google cornered a segment the market really well with Search + Chrome. Google is basically dictating direction of Web based standards towards an ad-driven, zero-privacy, centralized internet.
If anything, after Google it should be Microsoft again.
Split AWS and Amazon retail.
Prime video should also have to sink or swim on its own.
Again? I guess I missed Microsoft being impacted in any way. 🤔
They’ve creeped back from another angle after IE was killed.
I don’t see Amazon as a monopoly, but as far as Apple goes, they currently hold the majority of phone sales in the US. A big reason for that is that they have a history of artificially preventing you from using certain device features with non-Apple products or services. iMessage is a good example as it took an order from China for Apple to add the RCS messaging standard that Android phones have had for years. Another example is that, while music apps on Android can use Google Assistant features, only Apple Music can utilize Siri features on iOS.
Sounds like regulations are in order, yes. EU (and ironically China) doing the good work. But it’s hardly a monopoly. They just have a successful product, like it or not.
Serious question as I guess I am unaware - What does apple have a monopoly on?
edit - thanks to everyone for the detailed responses! Much appreciated
The popular argument I’ve heard is that they have a vertical integration model which has been deemed monopolistic within other industries in the past.
The common example that would have been used is the old Hollywood studio system, when studios not only owned their lots where the movies were made, but they handled all of the distribution, owned most of the theaters where the films would premiere, owned their own film formats, and locked their big-name stars into contracts which had strict non-compete agreements.
It wasn’t impossible to be an independent theater owner and have the ability to choose what films you wanted to show, but it was very hard and required accepting a number of conditions:
- You will pay more for movies than the studio-owned theaters effectively do, which means your tickets need to be more expensive to pay your costs.
- You are subjected to “block booking”, where you can’t show only popular movies, you are also forced to buy a studio’s less popular films as bundles and give them appropriate screen time or the studios won’t sell.
- You also need to buy a studio’s proprietary projection equipment, because it is made intentionally incompatible with the formats of other studios.
The studio system was eventually deemed monopolistic by the US Supreme Court in their ruling US v. Paramount, and that allowed independent theaters to thrive and for artists to switch to contract work without the strict non-compete agreements. But I have to say “the common example that would have been used,” because the conservative-stacked Supreme Court revisited their ruling in US v. Paramount that banned the vertical integration model in Hollywood and decided it was no longer needed, so studios are once again free to resume those old practices if they wish.
So in the case of Apple, the monopoly criticism applies to their vertical integration model which draws some parallels to the old Hollywood studio system that was once deemed monopolistic:
- Apple designs and produces their own devices.
- Apple produces their own operating systems, which are exclusive to those devices.
- Apple produces their own suite of core apps, which are given preferential treatment by their operating systems.
- Apple develops their own technology standards, which are not available to third parties without additional licensing fees (e.g. the Lightning connector, up until the EU forced them to start adopting USB-C).
- Apple hosts their own app store, which is the only app distribution method allowed on their mobile platforms.
- Apple requires third-party apps to agree to their store’s terms to be published on the platform, which prohibits any pricing model in which Apple does not get a cut.
For third-party app developers, it means that even if you have your own revenue model beyond Apple’s involvement, you are not allowed to extend that to your iOS app without giving Apple their cut, which is why you see so many apps now just declaring that they are “for subscribers” without allowing you to subscribe in the app or giving instructions for where to subscribe. And it’s not possible to publish an app on iOS without going through Apple’s store and agreeing to their business model because Apple does not allow third-party app stores and heavily restricts sideloading.
Because Apple also gives preferential treatment to their own apps, it is hard to be “as good” as their own offerings, and there will always be a risk of Apple deciding to make some new category of app for a use case that third-parties currently satisfy but may get shut out of.
Apple engages in anti competitive practices, I’m not sure they need to be broken up as much as the US needs to follow the EU and mandate third party app stores, standard connectors, and interoperability.
Sometimes a writer will use what they feel is a more recognizable but ‘technically incorrect’ word as a colloquialism for a less-used term that’s more accurate, and then go into more detail in the article, but it’s good and proper to wrap that colloquialism in apostrophes (‘air quotes’).
But in this specific case, it was ruled that Google has a monopoly on general website searches and that they have utilized a variety of anti-competitive practices to bolster their presence as such.
Not dissimilar to Microsoft’s antitrust case in the late 90s, specifically regarding Internet Explorer. It was a very small chunk of a much larger antitrust suit but they were found to have used Windows in order to stifle competition for web browsers and maintain their standing as the dominant browser (they also leveraged their market share for Windows and IE with OEMs and ISPs respectively but I’m digressing).
Microsoft was ordered to split, or spin off their browser business into a different entity, but they settled with DOJ on appeal (probably what we’ll see come of this - Google will probably make a big long list of things they will change or no longer engage in, and the government will feel as though all those changes will be sufficient remedy)
Nothing, really. Usually in the USA Apple escapes this type of rulings because they don’t have a monopoly on anything and/or because it’s argued they build the hardware for which their software run on so there isn’t anti competition (which in my opinion is pure bullshit, but what can I do?)
Do EVERY other industry next.
Excellent! Break them up.
Any guesses on how this would affect Android and Firefox?
I’m not 100% on how the Android business works so I’m not sure how important Goggle’s involvement is.
Firefox relies on Google’s ‘default search engine’ bribe quite a lot, and they might not be able to offer that anymore(?)
Android has been largely gutted and depends more and more on google play services, with few exceptions like some AOSP-based roms like lineageos, iodeOS, etc
in In my opinion, it’s likely that nothing will change. If this ever happens, Google might setup an “Android Alliance” with other OEMs which will reach agreements to keep Android as is but for the USA lawmakers and such it’ll seem like everything has changed.
For Firefox, I believe Google will keep injecting money in Mozilla as long as it keeps them from having Chrome being targeted on an antitrust/competitive lawsuit or ruling.
Haha. OG conspiracy theory time! I was gonna say this breakup will never happen, but I could totally see it being a plutocratic quid pro quo to split Android from Google and set up an entirely new entity to start charging for the OS or closing it off as a pixel exclusive — something Google couldn’t do without major backlash and probably lawsuits, unless the government “forced” their hand and compelled them. The controlling shareholders would remain the same, and the government would get to act like it’s taking legitimate action, fighting for the working class, against monopolies.
Maybe that’s why they’re introducing ads. 🙄
Mozilla is definitely trying to diversify their income to not depend on Google, but let us not forget that despite Firefox’s user share declining, their AI and ad friendly CEO keeps getting raises
Salary raise is a consequence of user share declining - it’s to make him try harder. 🤸♂ 🕳
How?
When?
