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Apple and Amazon next please.
And Microsoft for monopoly reasons.
Add AT&T, Time-Warner, and all of the other ISPs that own streaming platforms for anticompetitive reasons.
Microsoft again?
Ma Bell: “Just do a T-1000, pull yourself back together slowly over a decade or two.”
Fuck IE, the real removed is having a monopoly over running win32/64 apps and enterprise single sign on.
Uhh, do Disney!
ATT just sold all ownership of DTV. They could smell the sharks.
MS were going to be broken up at one point. https://time.com/3553242/microsoft-monopoly/
Frankly, Sinclair Broadcast Group needs to be shattered most urgently.
It was total BS when the limit on local broadcast ownership was released. The average consumer pays $5 per local channel on streaming and cable now. It’s a damn broadcast station, it’s free OTA.
Serious question as I guess I am unaware - What does apple have a monopoly on?
edit - thanks to everyone for the detailed responses! Much appreciated
Apple engages in anti competitive practices, I’m not sure they need to be broken up as much as the US needs to follow the EU and mandate third party app stores, standard connectors, and interoperability.
The popular argument I’ve heard is that they have a vertical integration model which has been deemed monopolistic within other industries in the past.
The common example that would have been used is the old Hollywood studio system, when studios not only owned their lots where the movies were made, but they handled all of the distribution, owned most of the theaters where the films would premiere, owned their own film formats, and locked their big-name stars into contracts which had strict non-compete agreements.
It wasn’t impossible to be an independent theater owner and have the ability to choose what films you wanted to show, but it was very hard and required accepting a number of conditions:
- You will pay more for movies than the studio-owned theaters effectively do, which means your tickets need to be more expensive to pay your costs.
- You are subjected to “block booking”, where you can’t show only popular movies, you are also forced to buy a studio’s less popular films as bundles and give them appropriate screen time or the studios won’t sell.
- You also need to buy a studio’s proprietary projection equipment, because it is made intentionally incompatible with the formats of other studios.
The studio system was eventually deemed monopolistic by the US Supreme Court in their ruling US v. Paramount, and that allowed independent theaters to thrive and for artists to switch to contract work without the strict non-compete agreements. But I have to say “the common example that would have been used,” because the conservative-stacked Supreme Court revisited their ruling in US v. Paramount that banned the vertical integration model in Hollywood and decided it was no longer needed, so studios are once again free to resume those old practices if they wish.
So in the case of Apple, the monopoly criticism applies to their vertical integration model which draws some parallels to the old Hollywood studio system that was once deemed monopolistic:
- Apple designs and produces their own devices.
- Apple produces their own operating systems, which are exclusive to those devices.
- Apple produces their own suite of core apps, which are given preferential treatment by their operating systems.
- Apple develops their own technology standards, which are not available to third parties without additional licensing fees (e.g. the Lightning connector, up until the EU forced them to start adopting USB-C).
- Apple hosts their own app store, which is the only app distribution method allowed on their mobile platforms.
- Apple requires third-party apps to agree to their store’s terms to be published on the platform, which prohibits any pricing model in which Apple does not get a cut.
For third-party app developers, it means that even if you have your own revenue model beyond Apple’s involvement, you are not allowed to extend that to your iOS app without giving Apple their cut, which is why you see so many apps now just declaring that they are “for subscribers” without allowing you to subscribe in the app or giving instructions for where to subscribe. And it’s not possible to publish an app on iOS without going through Apple’s store and agreeing to their business model because Apple does not allow third-party app stores and heavily restricts sideloading.
Because Apple also gives preferential treatment to their own apps, it is hard to be “as good” as their own offerings, and there will always be a risk of Apple deciding to make some new category of app for a use case that third-parties currently satisfy but may get shut out of.
Sometimes a writer will use what they feel is a more recognizable but ‘technically incorrect’ word as a colloquialism for a less-used term that’s more accurate, and then go into more detail in the article, but it’s good and proper to wrap that colloquialism in apostrophes (‘air quotes’).
But in this specific case, it was ruled that Google has a monopoly on general website searches and that they have utilized a variety of anti-competitive practices to bolster their presence as such.
Not dissimilar to Microsoft’s antitrust case in the late 90s, specifically regarding Internet Explorer. It was a very small chunk of a much larger antitrust suit but they were found to have used Windows in order to stifle competition for web browsers and maintain their standing as the dominant browser (they also leveraged their market share for Windows and IE with OEMs and ISPs respectively but I’m digressing).
Microsoft was ordered to split, or spin off their browser business into a different entity, but they settled with DOJ on appeal (probably what we’ll see come of this - Google will probably make a big long list of things they will change or no longer engage in, and the government will feel as though all those changes will be sufficient remedy)
Ah, thank you for the sauce
Nothing, really. Usually in the USA Apple escapes this type of rulings because they don’t have a monopoly on anything and/or because it’s argued they build the hardware for which their software run on so there isn’t anti competition (which in my opinion is pure bullshit, but what can I do?)
Rizz. /s
Personally I would prefer they break up all the companies that produce, distribute, and sell our food.
Apple
The return of Claris!
What exactly does Apple have a monopoly over? Or Amazon? Both have plenty of competition, while, let’s be honest, Google cornered a segment the market really well with Search + Chrome. Google is basically dictating direction of Web based standards towards an ad-driven, zero-privacy, centralized internet.
If anything, after Google it should be Microsoft again.
Split AWS and Amazon retail.
Prime video should also have to sink or swim on its own.
Something you should keep in mind is that being a monopoly is not illegal, and it never has been. If you make a great widget and, through honest competition, corner that widget market, that’s perfectly legal.
What ISN’T legal is using your market power to engage in anti-competitive behavior. It’s not illegal for Apple to dominate the phone market. It is likely illegal for Apple to use its dominance of the phone market to prohibit competing app stores from being installed on their phones. That is Apple operating in two distinct businesses - a phone manufacturer and a software retailer. Apple is using its market dominance as a phone manufacturer to gain an unfair advantage as a software retailer.
This is a pretty damning violation of federal antitrust law.
I don’t see Amazon as a monopoly, but as far as Apple goes, they currently hold the majority of phone sales in the US. A big reason for that is that they have a history of artificially preventing you from using certain device features with non-Apple products or services. iMessage is a good example as it took an order from China for Apple to add the RCS messaging standard that Android phones have had for years. Another example is that, while music apps on Android can use Google Assistant features, only Apple Music can utilize Siri features on iOS.
Nah, Amazon intentionally monitors its sellers, outbuys them, undersells the sellers until they disappear, then sell higher. They also contractually forbid them from selling lower on other sites.
Sounds like regulations are in order, yes. EU (and ironically China) doing the good work. But it’s hardly a monopoly. They just have a successful product, like it or not.
Again? I guess I missed Microsoft being impacted in any way. 🤔
They’ve creeped back from another angle after IE was killed.
Google saw this coming years ago. That’s why they restructured, clearly defining their different services, and became Alphabet.
They already lost the case for the monopoly ruling, though? It seems like what you described was designed to prevent that and already failed.
Yeah I seriously think they figured it would have happened sooner.
Do EVERY other industry next.
As much as I want this to happen, I fear it’ll drag on for years and then never happen or end up watered down where they split the company and manage them independently (a bit like BT in the UK but still owned by Alphabet.
The last major antitrust action on this scale in the U.S. 8 years to process.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
This type of lawsuit is why the billionaire bro’s are backing the senile rapist and felon. Making them play somewhat fair ruins their business plan.
A major issue for the US is that when the president changes, the DOJ can simply elect to stop processing the suit. It’s hard to get 8 years of uninterrupted movement on an action like this.
Msft under W for instance.
A big part of the “Cheney family endorses Harris” push has been corporate flacks racking up favors with the Dem side of the aisle so Harris can replace her cabinet with people who are more business-friendly in the next term.
They’re playing both sides. This isn’t just “Trump Wins: Things Get Worse” / “Harris Wins: Things Stay The Same Amount of Bad”.
Yeah I will believe it when I see it. I’m not convinced that actual Teddy Roosevelt-style “trust busting” is something that is even possible in the modern US.
It might happen if Harris wins
Trump will probably give them more money to be a monopoly.
Did she say as much or are you guessing?
I’m guessing this because the current investigation is happening under Biden and she is likely to have similar basic antitrust goals for DOJ.
I’m certain that it won’t happen if Trump is elected because he’s anti-regulation in general and specifically he’s extremely corrupt and easily bribed.
I think that’s a fair point. I do agree with the assessment.
- Aetna CVS Caremark
- Cigna Express Scripts
- fucking ticketmaster
- Kroger (and they want to merge AGAIN?)
Let’s start here for now
This is why I’m excited to vote for a democrat. Does anyone think Trump wants to pursue all these cases? Nah. First thing he’ll shut down is everything that might save us a dollar.
Doubt they’re going to rehire Barr after he refused to fuck around with the elections, but good point.
TM is low on my list. Healthcare, Amazon, Google as top priorities.
Amazon
What about a BlackRock break-up
They get around it I think because they never seem to buy more than 45% shares… just they literally own a percentage of damn near every company
I’ll be ecstatic if that happens, but I won’t hold my breath. It should have been done a long time ago for so many mega corpos, but here we are.
Wake me up when (if) something ever actually happens.
Excellent! Break them up.
Any guesses on how this would affect Android and Firefox?
I’m not 100% on how the Android business works so I’m not sure how important Goggle’s involvement is.
Firefox relies on Google’s ‘default search engine’ bribe quite a lot, and they might not be able to offer that anymore(?)
Android has been largely gutted and depends more and more on google play services, with few exceptions like some AOSP-based roms like lineageos, iodeOS, etc
in In my opinion, it’s likely that nothing will change. If this ever happens, Google might setup an “Android Alliance” with other OEMs which will reach agreements to keep Android as is but for the USA lawmakers and such it’ll seem like everything has changed.
For Firefox, I believe Google will keep injecting money in Mozilla as long as it keeps them from having Chrome being targeted on an antitrust/competitive lawsuit or ruling.
Haha. OG conspiracy theory time! I was gonna say this breakup will never happen, but I could totally see it being a plutocratic quid pro quo to split Android from Google and set up an entirely new entity to start charging for the OS or closing it off as a pixel exclusive — something Google couldn’t do without major backlash and probably lawsuits, unless the government “forced” their hand and compelled them. The controlling shareholders would remain the same, and the government would get to act like it’s taking legitimate action, fighting for the working class, against monopolies.
I think Android is big enough to be immediately forked. There’s many existing forks already, if they tried to take it private many companies would be invested in a new “Android core” being developed upstream - it’s one of the few situations where open source can work, because businesses would throw money at an org that keeps them competitive
But I’ll be hopeful but pessimistic about a Google breakup. It would be huge, it would be real change
Maybe that’s why they’re introducing ads. 🙄
Mozilla is definitely trying to diversify their income to not depend on Google, but let us not forget that despite Firefox’s user share declining, their AI and ad friendly CEO keeps getting raises
Salary raise is a consequence of user share declining - it’s to make him try harder. 🤸♂ 🕳
I don’t see why a breakup would mean a Firefox deal can’t be done anymore. Unless the search engine business shut down, they would still be motivated to have a default search engine deal with browsers.
What might change, I think, could be:
- Search engine may be way less motivated to have a deal with Firefox. FF has pretty low market share. One popular theory is that Google continues to subsidize FF partly to make it look like there is other viable browser competition and that they are helping foster it (for antitrust reasons). If search and browser were different companies - not being proposed I don’t believe, but could happen in a breakup - this might lessen. Although apparently even 2-5% of the market is worth billions so I could see it easily continuing. Especially if signs are that other browsers start losing some share.
- Less money to FF: If the ads biz does become less lucrative, that’d flow downstream to deals like the one with Mozilla.
But I don’t see any reason why they “wouldn’t be able” to have a deal anymore.
But I don’t see any reason why they “wouldn’t be able” to have a deal anymore.
It’s this part of the article that stuck out to me:
the DOJ suggested limiting or prohibiting default agreements and “other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products.” That would include Google’s search position agreements with Apple’s iPhone and Samsung devices — deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts. The agency suggested one way to do this is requiring a “choice screen,” which could allow users to pick from other search engines.
Wow, I totally missed that part. That would be a potentially different story.
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Shit or get off the pot.
Good. But let’s not pretend they won’t merge back like what the Baby Bells did back in the early aughts.
I hope they break up google. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. I’m remaining cautiously optimistic.
Isn’t this not possible considering that the U.S Supreme Court threw out the Chevron Doctrine?
It’s the courts themselves that would have to break them up, so it’s not an issue there. It’s just a very high bar to clear because the courts don’t care about anticompetitive practices unless it has a detrimental effect on the consumer. You’d be hard pressed to argue that things like YouTube and Gmail coupled with the cloud service, the ad service and the phone service are causing actual harm to the consumer that competition wouldn’t. I don’t see how YouTube would survive in its current form if it used third party ads, hosting, and CDN, the same way prime video and twitch are very dependent on Amazon Web services. Back in the day, for example, interurban electric trolleys were often owned by power companies. They used the power company’s right of way for the electric lines for the tracks too and of course their power. That’s anticompetitive, but frankly good for the consumer. That said, I wouldn’t be sad to see it burn in a fire either.
