US Sues Google Over Ad Market in Escalation of Antitrust Fight (bloomberg.com) 18
The US Justice Department and eight states sued Alphabet's Google, calling for the break up of the search giant's ad-technology business over alleged illegal monopolization of the digital advertising market. From a report: "Google abuses its monopoly power to disadvantage website publishers and advertisers who dare to use competing ad tech products in a search for higher quality, or lower cost, matches," the Justice Department said in the complaint, which was filed in federal court in Virginia. New York, California and Virginia were among the states that signed on to the complaint.
The lawsuit represents the Biden administration's first major case challenging the power of one of the nation's largest tech companies, following through on a probe that began under former President Donald Trump. It also marks one of the few times the Justice Department has called for the breakup of a major company since it dismantled the Bell telecom system in 1982. Google is the dominant player in the $278.6 billion US digital-ad market, controlling most of the technology used to buy, sell and serve online advertising. A resolution in the case could be years away. The lawsuit marks the DOJ's second antitrust suit against Google and the fifth major case in the US challenging the company's business practices.
The lawsuit represents the Biden administration's first major case challenging the power of one of the nation's largest tech companies, following through on a probe that began under former President Donald Trump. It also marks one of the few times the Justice Department has called for the breakup of a major company since it dismantled the Bell telecom system in 1982. Google is the dominant player in the $278.6 billion US digital-ad market, controlling most of the technology used to buy, sell and serve online advertising. A resolution in the case could be years away. The lawsuit marks the DOJ's second antitrust suit against Google and the fifth major case in the US challenging the company's business practices.
How does google suppress other ad networks? (Score:2)
Re:How does google suppress other ad networks? (Score:5, Funny)
One or two technical details might be in order. We're supposed to be technical people. How do we evaluate this claim if there are not details.
I dunno, maybe you can google it... Doh!
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We're supposed to be technical people. How do we evaluate this claim if there are not details.
This is like the most ridiculously Slashdoty thing I may have ever read here.
So, you're going to use your technical engineering skills to evaluate whether a business anti-trust complaint that probably is thousands of pages long and references hundreds of boxes of correspondences and evidence is valid or not?
How do you evaluate this claim? You don't! There'll be a trial. There'll be a jury who has to sit through 6 months of depositions and testimony and charts and legal arguments. Unless you are extremely
Just hand over the consumer market to Apple ... (Score:2, Interesting)
They are only accelerating the formation of monopoly which is ten times worse, because it touches so much of the hardware world due to Apple's vertical integration. The relatively open world of PC hardware has spurred so much innovation and helped Apple get where it is now.
I doubt Apple can be stopped, but crippling Google will hurry it along and quickly murder far more essential markets than advertising.
Microsoft is incompetent and doesn't offer a full ecosystem, Google is tied down by the anchor of advert
Re:Just hand over the consumer market to Apple ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or the DoJ comes at them to bust them up too.
I'd rather we just had a healthy marketplace with reasonable competition though.
Re: Just hand over the consumer market to Apple .. (Score:2)
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Apple, maybe. Microsoft, no way. They already could have done and didn't. Also, Microsoft looks less like a monopoly these days than it did when they had them up against a wall and Bush's AG John Ashcroft let them go.
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The US generally says it doesn't want to punish success.
Success in Apple's case could mean vertical integration and destruction of the competitive landscape to the point the only way to compete would be to come in with a trillion dollar budget to pull a complete manufacturing ecosystem entirely from the bootstraps, to make a mobile phone first you need to start from sand.
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Google is tied down by being awful across the board at supporting their own products. Google is tied down by not having a coherent corporate strategy. Google is tied down by internal division that often breaks into prime time news.
Alphabet is right. Alphabet soup. Is there a word in there? A sentence? A paragraph? No, just a jumble. No vision, no new ideas, just some good engineers with a big server farm. If there is any tech stock worth shorting right now, it is Google.
What does enforcement look like? (Score:2)
Would this just result in fines for Google, or is there other action which is possible to break up their hold on the search industry? I'm not sure how you break up Google. You could separate out all the other non-search products into their own company, but that doesn't affect the core issue. Google is a search engine funded by advertising. Is there a feasible way to break that up?
Re:What does enforcement look like? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm no antitrust lawyer or anything, but I would think the first move would be to decouple advertising from everything else - make Android, Google Search, YouTube, YouTube TV, etc. become vendors for the Google Advertising agency who has to buy placement on those services like any other advertising agency.
And that might just be enough. Let the competition begin.
Politics (Score:1)
This is just leftist politicians going after big business and the rich, as they promised. This will be a big waste of time and will accomplish nothing - just a political circus to get the blue-haired weenies waving their fragile little fists in the air.
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Apply has a higher market share of phones, is that a Monopoly now?
Yes. Next question.