DOJ, 11 States File Anti-Trust Lawsuit Against Google

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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13 Responses

  1. Philip H says:

    Its a great shiny target, but I’m willing to bet a cup of really good coffee it goes nowhere. All Google has to do is point to all the other US monopolies the DoJ hasn’t gone after in the last dozen or so years and any judge (originalist or otherwise) will toss the case.Report

    • Murali in reply to Philip H says:

      Nevertheless there is still precedent in how it went after microsoft.Report

      • Philip H in reply to Murali says:

        Sure – and that slowed Microsoft down how exactly? Bill gates still makes enough money to be lumped with George Soros as the latest ultra right boogey man afterall.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Philip H says:

          It slowed it down insofar as its official policy shifted from “Our products are so good that we don’t *NEED* lobbyists!” to “Okay. We’ve got lobbyists now.”

          (“Bundling”. SMGDMFH.)Report

        • Murali in reply to Philip H says:

          Just because it didn’t stop him doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t do it out of principle or cussedness.Report

        • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

          My understanding is that it slowed Microsoft down a great deal. That after they understood their behavior was constantly being put under a legal microscope they stopped the bulk of the seriously anti-consumer behavior they were doing.

          And yes, they were still a massive company that made a ton of money. However you’ll notice they haven’t leveraged Windows into taking over other unrelated fields in a long time and the complaints against them are more inequality based than abuse based.Report

  2. Kolohe says:

    The last time there was a hope with bing was 1962Report

  3. Michael Cain says:

    The biggest surprise in the Microsoft antitrust case was that the judge decided “desktop PC operating systems” was a market. I’m eagerly waiting to see — seriously, no tongue in cheek here — the government’s arguments that search results delivered at no cost to the actual user is a “market”.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Michael Cain says:

      The search results contain ads. AM/FM radio and broadcast TV, which come free over the airwaves, is a similar market. Putting ads in people’s ears or in front of their eyeballs is a major industry, even though the people receiving the ads aren’t the ones paying anything to the broadcasters.Report

      • Michael Cain in reply to George Turner says:

        Over-the-air bandwidth is an inherently limited thing. Access to the organized results of a world wide web tree search is not. Google produced better results than AltaVista. Bing and DuckDuckGo claim to produce better results than Google. Seriously. Go ask Microsoft if their business model is users should use Bing because it’s inferior.Report

        • George Turner in reply to Michael Cain says:

          Over-the-air bandwidth is hardly even used. Outside of perhaps major cities, nobody’s FM band is saturated. Mine area, for example, only has maybe 5 or 6 stations the come in clearly, out of 100 possible slots. AM is similar except at dusk.

          Of course Google might be under quite a bit of heat because they slant the information. In a recent Project Veritas video, Google engineers explain that when you search for Donald Trump, they populate the results with negative stories, and when you search for Biden, they populate the results with positive stories. They do that intentionally.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Michael Cain says:

      Interstate Commerce!
      General Welfare!Report