Google Just Lost a Big Antitrust Trial. But Now It Has To Face Yet Another.One (yahoo.com) 35
Google's loss in an antitrust trial is just the beginning. According to Yahoo Finance's senior legal reporter, Google now also has to defend itself "against another perilous antitrust challenge that could inflict more damage."
Starting in September, the tech giant will square off against federal prosecutors and a group of states claiming that Google abused its dominance of search advertising technology that is used to sell, buy, and broker advertising space online... Juggling simultaneous defenses "will definitely create a strain on its resources, productivity, and most importantly, attention at the most senior levels," said David Olson, associate professor at Boston College Law School.... The two cases targeting Google have the potential to inflict major damage to an empire amassed over the last two decades.
The second case that begins next month began with a lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by the Justice Department and eight states in December 2020... Prosecutors allege that since at least 2015 Google has thwarted meaningful competition and deterred innovation through its ownership of the entities and software that power the online advertising technology market. Google owns most of the technology to buy, sell, and serve advertisements online... Google's share of the US and global advertising markets — when measured either by revenue or impressions — exceeded 90% for "many years," according to the complaint.
The government prosecutors accused Google of siphoning off $0.35 of each advertising dollar that flowed through its ad tech tools.
Thanks to Slashdot reader ZipNada for sharing the article.
The second case that begins next month began with a lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by the Justice Department and eight states in December 2020... Prosecutors allege that since at least 2015 Google has thwarted meaningful competition and deterred innovation through its ownership of the entities and software that power the online advertising technology market. Google owns most of the technology to buy, sell, and serve advertisements online... Google's share of the US and global advertising markets — when measured either by revenue or impressions — exceeded 90% for "many years," according to the complaint.
The government prosecutors accused Google of siphoning off $0.35 of each advertising dollar that flowed through its ad tech tools.
Thanks to Slashdot reader ZipNada for sharing the article.
Waiting to see how this plays out (Score:2)
Color me skeptical that Google will suffer inordinately from this. Sure, they will give up something but their core business plan?
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You should familiarize yourself with the concept of a consent decree. They can hamstring a corporation's operations significantly, depending on how structured.
AT&T and IBM both operated under one of these for many decades.
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Both of those mega-corps you reference are still chugging along so forgive my skepticism that a consent decree will hamstring Google.
Exactly this. One does not simply assume they will “hamstring” a mega-corp that bought and paid their way to that status. Hell, IBMs patent war chest alone is enough to scare Innovation back into hiding.
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IBM's Vietnam may have ended with their victory; they didn't lose the decade+ long anti-trust case, but IBM was changed by wanting to avoid another war and their PC was made with standard components unlike all their other purposefully controlled custom hardware with only the BIOS being controlled. Also, they were slow to adapt to the market shift during and after their war with the government which was all about their anti-competitive distortion of the market...maybe not being used to adapting to the market
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AT&T was destroyed by antitrust action. The current entity is not the original AT&T. It's just branded the same.
IBM is a shadow of what it once was.
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Both of those mega-corps you reference are still chugging along
That's by design. The point of a consent decree isn't to destroy the target corporation, but to stop its illegal actions.
so forgive my skepticism that a consent decree will hamstring Google.
If your skepticism is only based on IBM and AT&T still being around, then it's unwarranted. The goal of a consent decree isn't to "hamstring" Google to the point where it disappears, but to "hamstring" their monopolistic practices. If you could show that either IBM or AT&T still behave like monopolists, you'd have a justification for skepticism. As it is, you don't.
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Nobody knows how different AT&T or IBM would be without the consent decrees. And both companies are a shadow of what they used to be in their markets. AT&T today is the same as the old ATT in name only.
We do know that Microsoft had a consent decree after the IE case where the original ruling was to break them up. Since then they missed the boat on social media and mobile. Would they have pushed harder into these areas without the consent decree? Possibly.
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They missed those areas because they are clueless one-trick ponies. They only know how to sleaze their way into corporate suites and then metastasize so they become corporate cockroaches.
Re: Waiting to see how this plays out (Score:2)
AT&T was literally broken up into competitors.
IBM became synonymous with massive slumbering corporations unable to make decisions without a dozen lawyers in the room - this was not an accident. iBM today is esentially an IT outsourcing / consulting company + patent holding company.
If you think this had no effect on their operations, maybe you never saw / read about how they were able to operate *before*. Imagine Apple today being forced out of vertical integration, and unable to compete aggressively on
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It's quite interesting how the two suits feed back on each other.
Without paying browsers to exclude or demote competitors perhaps another adtech company might have gained more marketshare.
The Feds thought "no biggie" when #1 & #2 merged in 2007:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-event... [ftc.gov]
So 18 years later there might be a revision - that's not "competing on Internet Time".
Google cleverly suppressed political opposition to the Obama campaigns to be too valuable to go after for eight years. It's Cluster B, but sti
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Yeah, there's no really reigning them in now that they've bought the Supreme Court.
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>> suppressed political opposition to the Obama campaign
And you know this how?
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Color me skeptical that Google will suffer inordinately from this. Sure, they will give up something but their core business plan?
Google has so much money that it is essentially impossible to inflict any meaningful damage on them.
One of the benefits of having eleventy gazillion dollars is that you can just keep hiring more and more lawyers until they eventually make the problem go away.
In the rare case where the lawyers can't make the problem go away, Google agrees to "settle" and pay an amount of money that seems large but is insignificant when compared to their total revenue.
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No regard for Big Tech? What ARE you smoking? The man is for SALE, and he doesn't give a rat's ass who buys him. See Putin for an example, or the Saudis. He's been for sale his entire life, he'd sell his grandchildren if he could get away with it.
Talk about the gift that keeps giving. (Score:3)
Siphon? (Score:3)
The government prosecutors accused Google of siphoning off $0.35 of each advertising dollar that flowed through its ad tech tools.
Er ... so in English, they charge for the use of their services?
Yes, while ensuring consumers had no choice... (Score:2)
Re: Yes, while ensuring consumers had no choice... (Score:3)
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Re: Yes, while ensuring consumers had no choice.. (Score:2)
I don't understand why you're assuming $0.35 is a flat rate. You know ad views and ad clicks have different costs, and then what do you call illegitimate views and clicks. Are you being dense on purpose?
Like with a gas pump, their fees depend on how they measure it. Duuuuuuuh
Re: Siphon? (Score:2)
Gas station charges you for gas, so what do you call it when the meter shows the wrong amount of gas dispensed, a service?
You're a tough case CSS, I'll go one lower than a car analogy for you bud.
Your mom pays you five cents for every crusty sock you put in the laundry. She pays you ten cents every time you wash a load. In a week, you ask her for $2.10. She says "No, I owe you $1.40, 70 cents for seven pair of socks and 70 for seven washes. Cass S Sheets, I am NOT paying you for fourteen loads you nasty lit
The government prosecutors accused Google of sipho (Score:3)
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>> through coercion and graft
That's how.
Looks like they have little to worry about (Score:2)
In other news (Score:3)
How about Microsoft? (Score:3)
I mean, it uses its Windows operating system to push more of their products to their users, then frustrates the ability of competitors to actually compete.
Or how about bundling more and more with MS Office?
Or how about their office product not adhering to their own standard, or being subtly incompatible with the rest?
Yeah right (Score:2)
Dude said "will definitely create a strain on its resources, productivity, and most importantly, attention at the most senior levels,"
Of Google.
How will a class action lawsuit strain Google's resources? I find that laughable. They had $305B revenue in 2023.
How about it's productivity? Are all the normal workers too worried to work, or are they quitting in disgust of Googles behaviour?
Attention of senior leaders? I suspect this is an agenda item on their schedule
Lol. Such a douche. "The sky is falling, the s