Justice Department to sue Google over search dominance

[ARikozuM]

On 9/29/2020 at 3:01 AM, ACEHACK said:

i call total bullshit. this is not for monopoly, its for the US elections. 

Honestly, if it's going to be partisan, let it be. I'd have liked every president/DOJ to do something about Google and other oligopolies, but I'll take the action wherever it comes from. 

[Taf the Ghost]

2 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Honestly, if it's going to be partisan, let it be. I'd have liked every president/DOJ to do something about Google and other oligopolies, but I'll take the action wherever it comes from. 

The partisan aspect of Google is a little weird. Their employees outright side with a very specific slice of the Democrats, but their leadership understands the actual game. Google only gets to exist while it stays on the NSA & DoD's good side. But, and this is the other thing to watch out for, Google leadership were big Obama supporters & Google spends big in DC.  What have they gotten from it? Basically nothing. They've failed to basically get any legislation to go their way.  I was absolutely floored with how they got rolled on several things over the years. They invested, both the company & employees, 10s of millions into the Obama Administration and got nothing but the impending problems for it.

 

That's the thing to watch out for. Google has a shelf-life for usefulness to the big players. It's already been mostly broken up into separate companies, watch that become forced. Google has also badly abused its position. You're allowed to be a monopoly by being better than everyone else. You aren't allowed to abuse that position to prevent anyone from competing against you, though the biggest abuse is still YouTube. They actively prevent anyone competing against YT, but it's also pretty clear that's acceptable to the DC Factions.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The partisan aspect of Google is a little weird. Their employees outright side with a very specific slice of the Democrats, but their leadership understands the actual game. Google only gets to exist while it stays on the NSA & DoD's good side. But, and this is the other thing to watch out for, Google leadership were big Obama supporters & Google spends big in DC.  What have they gotten from it? Basically nothing. They've failed to basically get any legislation to go their way.  I was absolutely floored with how they got rolled on several things over the years. They invested, both the company & employees, 10s of millions into the Obama Administration and got nothing but the impending problems for it.

 

That's the thing to watch out for. Google has a shelf-life for usefulness to the big players. It's already been mostly broken up into separate companies, watch that become forced. Google has also badly abused its position. You're allowed to be a monopoly by being better than everyone else. You aren't allowed to abuse that position to prevent anyone from competing against you, though the biggest abuse is still YouTube. They actively prevent anyone competing against YT, but it's also pretty clear that's acceptable to the DC Factions.

Seems sort of the opposite if all the big data heat is hitting Facebook instead of them

[Rlmva]

On 9/23/2020 at 2:59 AM, lexusgamer05 said:

why is the US govt wasting their time like this? There are far more important issues at hand rather than a search engine that just happens to be really popular.

I agree. And I would say google has a monopoly over search engines because, practically every other search engine sucks. Its not that hard to see.

[Mark Kaine]

On 9/23/2020 at 8:22 PM, TigerHawk said:

I mean...I get the whole anti-monopoly thing but seriously, Google is the most used search engine for a reason. It gives the cleanest, most relevant results for like 99% of searches. Try anyone else's search engine and its usually a waste of your god damn time because they don't index pages even half as well.

 

If they want to complain Google has a monopoly on search engines, how about you just make your own damn search engine better. It's like a fat guy complaining an athlete is faster than him at the 100m sprint. How about you just work harder and try to keep up instead of trying to feed the athlete abunch of cheese burgers so you might have a chance.

This is what you (and others) don't get, you can work harder, but then Google will just buy you out and the thing you worked harder for stops existing... Money is pretty powerful for stuff like that... The American dream? No, that's why anti trust laws exist... They're just used way to sparsely, really google (and others) should have never been allowed to get into the position they're now... 

 

 

And this happened mostly because the governments of the world 'don't get the internet' which by itself is hilarious, but unfortunately a fact... 

 

 

'work harder'... Give me a break (and maybe try to understand the subject of this suit, it's not about Google being 'better' they were simply first and abused that position since...) 

[Taf the Ghost]

10 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Seems sort of the opposite if all the big data heat is hitting Facebook instead of them

Facebook's data is more useful than Google's. The heat that FB gets is about control of the data. Google gets to exist as it does so long as it doesn't lose out on favor with too many factions in DC. They made their bed. It was always just a matter of time.

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Facebook's data is more useful than Google's. The heat that FB gets is about control of the data. Google gets to exist as it does so long as it doesn't lose out on favor with too many factions in DC. They made their bed. It was always just a matter of time.

Potato potato.

[Taf the Ghost]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

This is what you (and others) don't get, you can work harder, but then Google will just buy you out and the thing you worked harder for stops existing... Money is pretty powerful for stuff like that... The American dream? No, that's why anti trust laws exist... They're just used way to sparsely, really google (and others) should have never been allowed to get into the position they're now... 

 

 

And this happened mostly because the governments of the world 'don't get the internet' which by itself is hilarious, but unfortunately a fact... 

 

 

'work harder'... Give me a break (and maybe try to understand the subject of this suit, it's not about Google being 'better' they were simply first and abused that position since...) 

Idiots with Microphones don't understand the Internet, but you can bet the farm that Governments do. That's why all of the companies have been so protected. It was Global, Factional "land rush". What we're starting to see is what happens when you don't play the Faction game well. "War of Spanish Succession" comes to mind.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Idiots with Microphones don't understand the Internet, but you can bet the farm that Governments do. That's why all of the companies have been so protected. It was Global, Factional "land rush". What we're starting to see is what happens when you don't play the Faction game well. "War of Spanish Succession" comes to mind.

The impression I’ve gotten is that many people in government don’t either.  There are very likely a few that do though.  This still seems to boil down to “didn’t suck up to the current administration hard enough for its tastes”. 

[Random_Person1234]

I wonder what's going to happen if a new administration takes over in January, which would most likely bring a new attorney general. Also of note, arguments for Google v. Oracle are being heard in the Supreme Court currently, so the Google legal team is working overtime right now.

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

I wonder what's going to happen if a new administration takes over in January, which would most likely bring a new attorney general. Also of note, arguments for Google v. Oracle are being heard in the Supreme Court currently, so the Google legal team is working overtime right now.

A major question.  This thing can’t possibly get finished before 2021 or 2022.  Leaves Google banking on a regime change.  I am not super sure that will happen.  Blue is leading but by a smaller margin than they were in 2016, and they lost last time because the blue voters all thought “we’re winning.  I’ll just let someone else do the bother of voting”, so of course they lost. It’s happened pretty much every election I’ve been alive.  If blue does win its by a much smaller margin than was projected.  Looks to be happening again.

Edited October 21, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Random_Person1234]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

A major question.  This thing can’t possibly get finished before 2021 or 2022.  Leaves Google banking on a regime change.  I am not super sure that will happen blue is leading but by a smaller margin than they were in 2016 and the lost ray time because the blue voters all thought “we’re winning.  I’ll let someone else do the bother of voting”, so of course they lost. Looks to be happening again.

Also of note, all 11 states that joined the DOJ lawsuit are "red states." If there is an administration change, a lot more states may join the case.

[Trik'Stari]

On 9/23/2020 at 3:18 AM, Moonzy said:

Sometimes I wonder why monopoly happens, then I sit down and think

 

What's better for consumers?

 

1-2 major companies using huge budget to improve their single service that everyone uses, since revenue isn't split too much.

 

Or

 

Total revenue split into 10 companies, each improving their products by 1/5 the rate of above companies due to less revenue stream to each.

 

After that, monopoly/duopoly kind of makes sense.

Innovation would stir things up, but most of the time they get absorbed by the big companies

 

PS: not saying monopoly is good, I'm just saying that I can see why it happens

It's how we ended up with Verizon and a few others, IIRC.

 

They were all split off from Bell in the 90's.

 

Periods of boom and bust are necessary in a capitalist economy. It's weathering them that needs to be taught.

[Parth2105]

On 9/23/2020 at 4:56 PM, Morgan MLGman said:

I don't think you understood what I said. Let me give you an example - what if there were, say two competing candidates in an election. What if Google, as the largest search engine in the world decided that they preferred one of the candidates over the other, and adjusted their search engine so when people googled the names of the candidate it mostly showed negative coverage of one candidate, and a mostly positive one of the other?
How could you verify that they were actually doing that, and how would you prevent such behaviour?

Google being such a dominant force will probably not do such a thing to damage their credibility considering they are so big and whistleblowers are always there.

Like Steve (GN) blew the lid off MSI's shady tactics.

[Random_Person1234]

UPDATE: The case is unlikely to go on trial until late 2023.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/18/doj-case-against-google-likely-wont-go-to-trial-until-late-2023-judge-says.html