DOJ Confirms Google Antitrust Investigation 186
An anonymous reader points to Digital Daily, writing "Looks like the fireworks have begun early in Mountain View. On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice officially notified Google that it is investigating its book deal for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act."
Re:Serves you right! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup. I also think the shit they pulled against MS was overzealous.
Government needs money (Score:1, Interesting)
"Investigation" is simply a euphemism for "let's see how much we can extort from them."
In this economic climate, to pull this kind of shit on a company that is not begging for taxpayer money, is utter bullshit.
Re:Why didnt they investigate microsoft properly (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Finally, some hope (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The DOJ is after the wrong company! (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft was already brought to court over antitrust matters, lost, and was fined. Then the Bush administration basically gave them a pass. I don't think we can drag them to court again, unless they do something significantly new.
Another thought: I'm not sure if the ISO/DOCX/ODF fiasco counts. I wish that it was looked into by the correct anti-trust officials, but I don't really know if that sort of thing breaks any laws.
On the other hand, I'm not sure if I'd agree that Google has been the shining corporate citizen that you paint them to be. They have done some questionable things (privacy issues with StreetView, China dealings, etc).
Re:Serves you right! (Score:2, Interesting)
As long as companies are dealing with everyone voluntarily, the government should not be involved. Only when a business violates an invidual's rights through force or fraud should the government get involved.
That would be true, but the government uses a lot of MS software. By keeping the specs of a bunch of things closed or by not adhering to standards, they end up costing us, the taxpayers more in the long run. By locking the government into proprietary technologies that they are the only ones who can have a 100% guarantee they are rendering the document "correctly" the government will keep buying into them. Its effectively the same as having a public works bid but only allowing one company to bid.
Anti-trust is based on the altruist idea that the more successful you are - (aka "selfish") - the more evil you are, and the evil successful need to be brought down to favor the less successful, or failures. This also happens to be the moral underpinning for bailouts, welfare, "soak the rich", government healthcare, and many more.
However, the lack of anti trust cases only work in a free economy. The economy of the USA especially with copyright, patents and IP is not free. Repeal the DMCA, software patents, reduce the length of copyrights to a sane term. Then we can get rid of anti-trust. But the problem is, in the current state of things it makes no sense to get rid of perhaps the only thing left to strike against major corporations. I agree, we should move to your ideal state where the government is small and doesn't control the economy. When we move to there, sure, anti-trust acts make no sense. But while we still have the DMCA and other copyright atrocities as laws, it simply makes no sense to abolish anti-trust acts.
Re:Serves you right! (Score:3, Interesting)
It is, is it? You don't really offer any proof to that effect. Companies are perfectly able to grow very large without government assistance, and once they have disproportionate resources (economy, manpower, social influence), its a simple matter to utilize those resources to coerce people. Government is certainly part of the problem, and is certainly corruptible. But government is, in theory, the people working together to certain ends, and is, paradoxically, the best way for us to deal with entities that are trying to infringe upon our rights.
I won't simply accept, "Government is bad, mmkay. Government is the source of all our problems, mmkay," as a valid argument. Government causes many problems, but it is also a tool that we use to fight many others. Balance is important.
Re:Anti-trust punishes success (Score:1, Interesting)
Are you talking about the time that Greenspan warned that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a "systemic risk" to the US economy?
You know, in 2005?
Stop talking about things you know nothing about.
Re:The DOJ is after the wrong company! (Score:2, Interesting)
Google was the last search engine to move into China. They don't even maintain logs of China originating transactions. They keep nothing of significance in that country. They don't deploy any of their latest 2 or 3 generations of technology into that country. They are prepared to cut it off from the rest of Google and shut it down in a heartbeat.
They haven't coughed up any data on Chinese users to the Chinese government. The fact that they have to filter data (*and* indicate to the user that it *is* being filtered) is up to their government. If the Chinese people want to change it, they can.
Given that the computer you're using to access the internet, your monitor, and probably all the switches and almost certainly all the chips in those devices, your keyboard, mouse, clothes and such are likely all made in China, I fail to see how you can single Google out for "China dealings". China firewall is run on what? Google computers? Google OS?
Privacy issues with Streetview? They drive down public streets taking photos. Like people have done since cameras have been around. The fact that they take a lot of photos (something you could always legally do), stitch them together (again, legal), and post them online (legal) is what's new about it. They apply appropriate solutions when people (or governments) ask them. Generally without going through a court case. They try to do "the right thing". Try asking MS for something.
As corporations go, they are "shining". Way above average.
Everything they do is questionable. So question it. They generally answer. And change. And improve. You cannot rationally expect everything they do to meet 1) your ethic or 2) everyone's ethic.
And...
Never mind, I just realized I'm on slashdot. no point...
Re:Finally, some hope (Score:4, Interesting)
That sort of non-copyright system would mean that anyone could block the revenue from any sort of creative work by simply making it available non-commercially. In other words, posting it on a P2P network would be legal, downloading it would be legal and nothing could be done to stop it.
That would mean I would never have to pay for a movie ever again, and there would be no legal recourse. It would mean that nobody would ever have to pay for software ever again, because it would all be free.
Oh, except for stupid people that would not know how to use P2P for downloading. They would have to pay. Too bad for them.
I agree, it would be nice, except for anyone that is paid for software today. Or movies. Or music. Or books. I guess it would be great if you work in a WalMart, because you could now afford all that stuff. My employees would have to join you at WalMart.
Back in your seats, children (Score:1, Interesting)
The AG + Google agreement *does* give them a monopoly. Any other entity, per the AG + GOOG agreement, has to deal one-by-one with authors and their proxies. Only AG + GOOG has a wholesale agreement across all authors and all publishers.
This has nothing to do with browsers or historic issues with MSFT.
It has to do with: shall the US government allow creation of a permanent de facto and de jure monopoly? The answer may be "yes", but the question is still valid.
Re:I'm ok with this, as long as..... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm ok with this, as long as they investigate the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers as well.
Nah ... all those old-line organizations seem to keep getting a free pass from any investigation. My guess is that they've been greasing the palms of numerous public officials for so long that to investigate them would air way too much dirty laundry. So the Feds pay them no attention, even though they're as dirty as the RIAA in their own way and just as deserving of investigation.