The career officials at the FTC recommended antitrust action against Google back in 2012, but the political appointees shut them down.
>When the Federal Trade Commission neared a momentous decision on whether to charge Google with violating antitrust laws in January 2013, the White House was watching closely.
New emails uncovered by the Campaign for Accountability, a public interest watchdog organization, show that a White House advisor met with top Google lobbyist Johanna Shelton and top Google antitrust counsel Matthew Bye twice in the weeks before the FTC announcement.
And minutes prior to the final decision – in which FTC commissioners took the unusual step of overriding their staff’s recommendation to sue, and voted to settle the case instead – the White House official even sought Google’s talking points in the matter.
FWIW: It sounds nefarious, but the DOJ/FTC/etc quite often meet with all parties prior to taking antitrust action.
That's because (at least in the number of times i've been invited to meetings with these sorts of regulators) the relevant folks are not idiots, and in fact are trying to understand all sides of the issue before deciding what they should do.
This is actually what you want them to do, as there are rarely, if ever, truly disinterested parties in these sorts of things.
As an aside, i'm pretty sure Matthew was not the top antitrust counsel at Google at the time. I believe it was Nikhil Shanbhag. Job titles on linkedin seem to confirm my recollection.
The mental gymnastics below in the thread where people try to explain why not investigating Google in 2012 was OK and investigating it now is not OK are quite amazing.
Though to be fair, in 2012 Google exerted its monopolistic power far less than it does now.
For the life of me I can't understand why it's good that less than a dozen unelected and non-removable people in this country (Schmidt/Page, Zuck, and the owners of 99% of "independent" media) have the power to decide who wins elections, and what people think about issues.
That's one interpretation by interested parties another would be that enforcement lawyers are always aggressive and those who make the decision in the end would have to weigh the odds of winning in court and unanimously they decides not.
Regardless, the FTC would have had a much better chance than the DOJ as they have specific broad powers more suitable to this case.
In the last ~year Google has admitted to accidentally-but-knowingly stealing $75 million from Adwords customers, and settled a case they had fought four years for $11 million to avoid revealing what happens to a banned Adsense account's unpaid revenue. There is likely several hundred million dollars of fraud just in these two 'edge cases' they ignored handling for decades, so it's definitely time for someone to dig deep into this company.
I saw a similar complaint video[1] from ZoggfromBetelgeuse but didn't know the problem was pervasive. It is a shame this killed one of the best channels on YT.
lets not forget their latest and greatest of releasing chrome for free until it saturated the market and became a monopoly then maliciously making changes to reduce the effectiveness of adblockers like ublock origin
Look, I get it — the issues with Google, Facebook, Amazon. But I can’t help but think about how AT&T and other ISPs banded together to claim they shouldn’t be regulated because they are Internet companies just like FANG during the Net Neutrality discussions. When I see just how bad ISPs are acting, in lack of competition, price gouging, content ownership, data monitoring, it really seems they were successful in shifting the focus to FANG and convincing everyone to forget about Net Neutrality.
This is not meant to whataboutism, but the truth is the public/news cycles can only handle so many “tech” related items at one time. People are not “locked in” to any of the FANG companies nearly as much as they are their physical ISPs where they really do not have an option.
You're right, ISP monopolies are a bigger antitrust issue. People are overwhelmingly pro net-neutrality
They will take this action against Google, and meanwhile, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts will continue to take in an average of $100 per customer per month.
This is, quite nakedly, Comcast influencing action against Google for trying to compete in broadband.
It is convenient that Comcast owns NBC while lobbying government for legislation it wants to see.
I think more importantly, ISPs made a (in my opinion, bullshit) free market argument that resonated with conservatives. At the same time, FANG made themselves an enemy of conservatives. Conservatives are now in power.
It shouldn't be a whataboutism, it's true. They gave too much of a pass to ISPs and that needs to stop. But it doesn't stop by relaxing on tech companies like Google, that would only further normalize it.
Not only the US is affected by Google's actions and ISPs are not evil everywhere. This is why Google is the more important issue from the perspective of the rest of the world. This is a transnational issue.
I was the biggest Google fan ever. I recommended all their products to everyone I know.
Gone are those days. I now trust Microsoft (heh! M!cr0$0ft, anyone?) more than Google which is strange given I grew up rebelling against MS’s technical desktop hegemony.
I wonder when Google decided “doing evil” was okay. I wonder how the SWE’s and other senior people in this thread feel about working for a company that many now consider scum. All their excuses and retorts can honestly take a hike: It is my honest opinion that if you still work for Google you’re selling us all out.
After years of serving malware through ads and doing nothing to stop it, they’re now trying to stop us blocking ads?! That’s just the last of many strikes that set me down this road.
Dear Justice Department: Take a look at google AMP and how they use it to strong-arm publishers by linking it to search placement. You'll find some stuff.
People don't seem to understand how this stuff works in the US, Google has full editorial control over their search results protected by the first amendment and that right was affirmed in court time and time again:
If you don't like their free no lock in service go elsewhere, and that's why there is no sherman act case here, which is why if the DOJ actually does anything here it would be a waste of time and resources.
If true, this will be a landmark case and should scare FB and Amazon as well. Personally, I think this is a good thing and it's past time for the government to at least set some boundaries, but there's no telling how it will play out with the current administration and amount of lobbying dollars flying around.
While I think an antitrust suit against Google would be a waste of time, they really need to stop recommending Chrome every time you do a Google search with a different browser. Just stop, that will not play well to a jury.
Your reply almost immediately says you think a jury could be swayed by argument, sentiment or both. Does that not mean an antitrust suit may actually be reasonable, judged by a potently prosecutor?
I think you meant "I don't want them found guilty" which is a different thing. If you really think there is no case to answer I don't think you understand what an antitrust case is about. It's about market dominance and anti competitive behaviour. Something alphabet has already demonstrated they are capable of doing, as in when google, Facebook and apple agreed not to poach Staff and altered the pay rates accordingly, something of which they have already been found guilty.
Similar thing drives me nuts in GMail for iPad. Every time I open a link, it asks me to download chrome. I say no thanks, and uncheck the default “remind me later” option, yet few weeks later it happens again.
I will go ahead and bring up a related issue. Most people seem to not see it as being related but in my mind it is very closely related. So maybe consider not burying my comment completely.
Part of the reason we have these technology monopolies is that they provide ubiquitous platforms and that is very powerful for consumers and businesses (as long as your goals don't conflict with their goals).
The issue is that these platforms are being provided by private interests, but have so much scope that they act like public platforms.
My suggestion is to try to create public platforms that business or consumers could tap into/build off of. This would allow for us to audit the mechanisms and also provide a base layer that competition could be built on.
In my mind the obvious technical direction is decentralization technologies. That's the only way such public networks could be feasible.
I actually see this as covering technology in an extremely broad sense. It applies to everything from Google search and ads, to Amazon and online retail, to Uber and taxi apps, maybe even the US dollar and currency, or perhaps even government itself.
I think the slowly most businesses would realize if you are a big company, it makes much more sense to capture exclusively the high end market (iPhone) and try to stay as much away as possible from the low end market. This gives you a lion's share of the profits, while making sure you don't get labelled a monopoly (and people asking you to make your platform open). This is the exact model of Apple. iPhones dominate the high end market, and the high price ensures both a.) high capture of the profit. b.) less market share due to simply being out of reach for a lot of people.
Once you are in the above position, you can do anything on your platform, and since you aren't a monopoly, you have much more leeway than your competitors. Your competitor might be forced to unbundle and compromise the uniformity of their platform, while you can simply choose to not even allow alternative browsers, because you know, you aren't a monopoly. Getting the low end market share might be come to seen as more of a headache than required.
Distressingly absent from this list is the company that cheerfully collects and sells even more data that Google about the average American's life and collects MUCH more of their money: Amazon.
What they do with Amazon basics is ripe for antitrust. Using purchase data to find profitable products, and making a basic version of it which they then rank at the top.
Amazon does not collect more data than Google does, even by your own definition. In fact, Google uses Amazon to collect even more information than they do innately by mining Gmail for purchase receipts.
With Eric Schmidt leaving, the hanging sword has finally came down. He knew how to play lobbyist network in DC even with unfavorable administration if you had almost unlimited money supply. Breitbart publishing recent video leaks on Google execs in tears on election results meant this was inevitable.
Google has LOT to lose from this. They had previously made absurd the argument that they are not monopoly and Amazon is their biggest competition. Somehow lobby money made this argument magically acceptable and everybody moved on. Now they would have charges from Yelp, funding services like gmail using search business to bankrupt other players, making arbitrary decisions for advertisers, youtube piracy, website takedowns and de-rankings, Chrome defaults, AMP...
However, I wonder what could be the end game here for the government? Google is still very monolithic as far as revenues are concerned, so how do you even break it up in any viable way? My guess is that they would probably impose some fine and settlement agreement.
1. I fully agree with an investigation into Google.
2. Why hasn't any federal agency looked into Apple's behavior, where they sell hardware (and here bestow it's ownership to the consumer), but continue to play middleman in what apps the user is allowed to run. It's contrary to the fundamental concept of ownership, and worse, to the tenets of decades of general purpose computing
And before regurgitations of "it's unit sales aren't a majority" gets thrown at me as a justification for monopolistic behavior, please note the truth [1] that iOS install base/usage in the US is almost 10% more than Android, AND iDevices constitute a majority.
As an ex-Googler: good. Google has done a lot of good in the past, and that continues today, but it's pretty clear nobody should have as much control over "making information universally accessible and useful" as Google does. Especially after they give up any pretense of "don't be evil".
Google isn’t a monopoly and using a competing search engine is quite easy.
Pretty sad that providing an excellent service that customers love is seen as a bad thing, especially on HN. Sad bitter people celebrating the thought of Google being punished for being at the top of their game... get a life.
Questions from someone who doesn't know a lot about antitrust law, in case someone knowledgeable cares to chime in:
To what extent does antitrust law require specific intentional or knowing conduct? Is there some "knew or should have known" standard that would require Google to explain why they didn't anticipate or investigate some suspiciously favorable placement of Google products/services/affiliates? Or can Google basically shrug and say "algorithm" a lot and the Justice Department would have an uphill battle to prove intent?
It requires no intent, and iirc the argument of Standard Oil before their censure was precisely that they didn't mean to stifle trade, they were just better than everyone else at it. The Supreme Court said they didn't really care why or how, they cared that it was a monopoly in fact.
But historically anti-trust suits have usually been about what happens when negative sentiment towards American mega-corporations grows too high. Essentially the rules are different for big companies. In reality, most of the things companies need to do to avoid anti-trust cases are performative. Even more ironically, the super rich at the tops of corporate pyramids often end up profiting from these sorts of actions. All an anti-trust suit can do is mandate companies fracture into multiple legal entities. Usually the same owners retain their ownership, only now over dozens or more of companies which each individually pay upwards.
What's even more distressing about these laws is that they're quite unusable against entities that are at least as frightening, like Amazon (and historically Walmart). Amazon is the omni-company, and now they're gonna get into consumer telecom too. And because they're lateral as opposed to vertical and they choked out the competition during a recession, they don't even have to pretend the're offering a square deal to their resellers.
Monopolization requires anticompetitive conduct. To prove this, intent evidence is often helpful. For example, in the recent Qualcomm case the judge cited evidence that Qualcomm executives knew their business model created antitrust risk.
But intent evidence is not required. A corporation doesn't have a state of mind. Also, wanting to beat your competitors is fine (and good). So it's tricky to distinguish bad intent from good intent.
[+] [-] GeekyBear|6 years ago|reply
>When the Federal Trade Commission neared a momentous decision on whether to charge Google with violating antitrust laws in January 2013, the White House was watching closely.
New emails uncovered by the Campaign for Accountability, a public interest watchdog organization, show that a White House advisor met with top Google lobbyist Johanna Shelton and top Google antitrust counsel Matthew Bye twice in the weeks before the FTC announcement.
And minutes prior to the final decision – in which FTC commissioners took the unusual step of overriding their staff’s recommendation to sue, and voted to settle the case instead – the White House official even sought Google’s talking points in the matter.
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/18/white-house-official-coz...
[+] [-] DannyBee|6 years ago|reply
That's because (at least in the number of times i've been invited to meetings with these sorts of regulators) the relevant folks are not idiots, and in fact are trying to understand all sides of the issue before deciding what they should do.
This is actually what you want them to do, as there are rarely, if ever, truly disinterested parties in these sorts of things.
As an aside, i'm pretty sure Matthew was not the top antitrust counsel at Google at the time. I believe it was Nikhil Shanbhag. Job titles on linkedin seem to confirm my recollection.
[+] [-] m0zg|6 years ago|reply
Though to be fair, in 2012 Google exerted its monopolistic power far less than it does now.
For the life of me I can't understand why it's good that less than a dozen unelected and non-removable people in this country (Schmidt/Page, Zuck, and the owners of 99% of "independent" media) have the power to decide who wins elections, and what people think about issues.
[+] [-] tyingq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fyoving|6 years ago|reply
Regardless, the FTC would have had a much better chance than the DOJ as they have specific broad powers more suitable to this case.
[+] [-] kartikeye|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] benologist|6 years ago|reply
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-emails-adtrader-lawsu...
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/adsense-lawsuit/248135/
[+] [-] xkgt|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://youtu.be/SADDJY7e7cM
[+] [-] soup10|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orev|6 years ago|reply
This is not meant to whataboutism, but the truth is the public/news cycles can only handle so many “tech” related items at one time. People are not “locked in” to any of the FANG companies nearly as much as they are their physical ISPs where they really do not have an option.
[+] [-] studentrob|6 years ago|reply
They will take this action against Google, and meanwhile, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts will continue to take in an average of $100 per customer per month.
This is, quite nakedly, Comcast influencing action against Google for trying to compete in broadband.
It is convenient that Comcast owns NBC while lobbying government for legislation it wants to see.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/10/25/watch-cnbcs-full-inter...
[+] [-] creato|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fiblye|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SomeOldThrow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wybiral|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] feanaro|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsomaru|6 years ago|reply
Gone are those days. I now trust Microsoft (heh! M!cr0$0ft, anyone?) more than Google which is strange given I grew up rebelling against MS’s technical desktop hegemony.
I wonder when Google decided “doing evil” was okay. I wonder how the SWE’s and other senior people in this thread feel about working for a company that many now consider scum. All their excuses and retorts can honestly take a hike: It is my honest opinion that if you still work for Google you’re selling us all out.
After years of serving malware through ads and doing nothing to stop it, they’re now trying to stop us blocking ads?! That’s just the last of many strikes that set me down this road.
[+] [-] justinph|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fyoving|6 years ago|reply
https://searchengineland.com/another-court-affirms-googles-f...
If you don't like their free no lock in service go elsewhere, and that's why there is no sherman act case here, which is why if the DOJ actually does anything here it would be a waste of time and resources.
[+] [-] sdan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdorazio|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggm|6 years ago|reply
I think you meant "I don't want them found guilty" which is a different thing. If you really think there is no case to answer I don't think you understand what an antitrust case is about. It's about market dominance and anti competitive behaviour. Something alphabet has already demonstrated they are capable of doing, as in when google, Facebook and apple agreed not to poach Staff and altered the pay rates accordingly, something of which they have already been found guilty.
[+] [-] joemag|6 years ago|reply
Been going on for a year now.
[+] [-] jeffk_teh_haxor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shereadsthenews|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|6 years ago|reply
Part of the reason we have these technology monopolies is that they provide ubiquitous platforms and that is very powerful for consumers and businesses (as long as your goals don't conflict with their goals).
The issue is that these platforms are being provided by private interests, but have so much scope that they act like public platforms.
My suggestion is to try to create public platforms that business or consumers could tap into/build off of. This would allow for us to audit the mechanisms and also provide a base layer that competition could be built on.
In my mind the obvious technical direction is decentralization technologies. That's the only way such public networks could be feasible.
I actually see this as covering technology in an extremely broad sense. It applies to everything from Google search and ads, to Amazon and online retail, to Uber and taxi apps, maybe even the US dollar and currency, or perhaps even government itself.
[+] [-] enitihas|6 years ago|reply
Once you are in the above position, you can do anything on your platform, and since you aren't a monopoly, you have much more leeway than your competitors. Your competitor might be forced to unbundle and compromise the uniformity of their platform, while you can simply choose to not even allow alternative browsers, because you know, you aren't a monopoly. Getting the low end market share might be come to seen as more of a headache than required.
[+] [-] KirinDave|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehsankia|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] o10449366|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|6 years ago|reply
> :)
https://twitter.com/lutherlowe/status/1134621790720995328
[+] [-] daenz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] telltruth|6 years ago|reply
Google has LOT to lose from this. They had previously made absurd the argument that they are not monopoly and Amazon is their biggest competition. Somehow lobby money made this argument magically acceptable and everybody moved on. Now they would have charges from Yelp, funding services like gmail using search business to bankrupt other players, making arbitrary decisions for advertisers, youtube piracy, website takedowns and de-rankings, Chrome defaults, AMP...
However, I wonder what could be the end game here for the government? Google is still very monolithic as far as revenues are concerned, so how do you even break it up in any viable way? My guess is that they would probably impose some fine and settlement agreement.
[+] [-] writepub|6 years ago|reply
2. Why hasn't any federal agency looked into Apple's behavior, where they sell hardware (and here bestow it's ownership to the consumer), but continue to play middleman in what apps the user is allowed to run. It's contrary to the fundamental concept of ownership, and worse, to the tenets of decades of general purpose computing
And before regurgitations of "it's unit sales aren't a majority" gets thrown at me as a justification for monopolistic behavior, please note the truth [1] that iOS install base/usage in the US is almost 10% more than Android, AND iDevices constitute a majority.
[1]: http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-stat...
[+] [-] raleigh_user|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
Not a lot of detail.
[+] [-] m0zg|6 years ago|reply
I also very much hope FB is next.
[+] [-] simplecomplex|6 years ago|reply
Pretty sad that providing an excellent service that customers love is seen as a bad thing, especially on HN. Sad bitter people celebrating the thought of Google being punished for being at the top of their game... get a life.
[+] [-] 0xcde4c3db|6 years ago|reply
To what extent does antitrust law require specific intentional or knowing conduct? Is there some "knew or should have known" standard that would require Google to explain why they didn't anticipate or investigate some suspiciously favorable placement of Google products/services/affiliates? Or can Google basically shrug and say "algorithm" a lot and the Justice Department would have an uphill battle to prove intent?
[+] [-] KirinDave|6 years ago|reply
But historically anti-trust suits have usually been about what happens when negative sentiment towards American mega-corporations grows too high. Essentially the rules are different for big companies. In reality, most of the things companies need to do to avoid anti-trust cases are performative. Even more ironically, the super rich at the tops of corporate pyramids often end up profiting from these sorts of actions. All an anti-trust suit can do is mandate companies fracture into multiple legal entities. Usually the same owners retain their ownership, only now over dozens or more of companies which each individually pay upwards.
What's even more distressing about these laws is that they're quite unusable against entities that are at least as frightening, like Amazon (and historically Walmart). Amazon is the omni-company, and now they're gonna get into consumer telecom too. And because they're lateral as opposed to vertical and they choked out the competition during a recession, they don't even have to pretend the're offering a square deal to their resellers.
[+] [-] asr|6 years ago|reply
But intent evidence is not required. A corporation doesn't have a state of mind. Also, wanting to beat your competitors is fine (and good). So it's tricky to distinguish bad intent from good intent.
[+] [-] IfOnlyYouKnew|6 years ago|reply